io6 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



wherein men dwell the more the higher their culture. 

 But that very sharpening of the sense and that 

 subtle refinement of emotion, -which brought such a 

 wealth of pleasures, were fatally attended by a 

 proportional enlargement of the capacity for suffer- 

 ing ; and the divine faculty of imagination, while 

 it created new heavens and new earths, provided 

 them with the corresponding hells of futile regret 

 for the past and morbid anxiety for the future. 



One of the oldest and most important elements 

 in such systems is the conception of justice. Society 

 is impossible unless those who are associated agree 

 to observe certain rules of conduct towards one 

 another ; its stability depends on the steadiness 

 with which they abide by that agreement ; and, so 

 far as they waver, that mutual trust which is the 

 bond of society is weakened or destroyed. Wolves 

 could not hunt in packs except for the real, though 

 unexpressed, understanding that they should not 

 attack one another during the chase. The most 

 rudimentary polity is a pack of men living under the 

 like tacit, or expressed, understanding ; and haying 

 made the very important advance upon wolf society, 

 that they agree to use the force of the whole body 

 against individuals who violate it and in favour of 

 those who observe it. This observance of a common 

 understanding, -with the consequent distribution of 

 punishments and rewards according to accepted 

 rules, received the name of justice, while the contrary 

 was called injustice. Early ethics did not take 

 much note of the animus of the violator of the rules. 

 But civilization could not advance far without the 

 establishment of a capital distinction between the 

 case of involuntary and that of wilful misdeed ; 

 between a merely wrong action and a guilty one. 



