171 
If, after all, Mr. Spencer has to fall back on the guidance of 
secondary principles, does he not admit that there are qualities 
in actions constituting them good or bad, which are appre- 
ciable in themselves, independently of the ultimate result of 
the actions in producing pleasure or pain ? His subsequent 
admissions extend even further than those just quoted. “I 
go with Mr. Sedgwick/’ he says, “ as far as the conclusion 
that f we must at least admit the desirability of confirming or 
correcting the results of such comparisons [of pleasures and 
pains] by any other method upon which we may find reason 
to rely ; 3 and I then go further, and say that throughout a 
large part of conduct guidance by such comparisons is to be 
entirely set aside and J replaced by other guidance. 33 But what 
is to be thought of a principle which “ throughout a large 
part of conduct ” is “ to be entirely set aside ” ? 
17. The case, indeed, would be somewhat different if the 
secondary principles on which Mr. Spencer is thus compelled to 
fall back could only be reached by means of the primary. Mr. 
Spencer reaches some of them in this way, and expends, for 
instance, much elaborate argument to reach the elementary 
principle of the duty of faithfulness to contracts. But he 
does not uphold so wild a supposition as that the appre- 
hension of this elementary duty cannot be reached inde- 
pendently. On the contrary, he proceeds in one of the 
most effective passages of his book to controvert Bentham’s 
assertion that happiness is a more intelligible end than justice; 
and he urges the important truth, that all people, however 
primitive, have some conception of justice. “ Though primi- 
tive men,” he says, “ have no words for either happiness or 
justice ; yet even among them an approach to the conception 
of justice is traceable. The law of retaliation, requiring that 
a death inflicted by one tribe on another shall be balanced by 
the death either of the murderer or some member of his tribe, 
shows us in a vague shape that notion of equalness of treat- 
ment which constitutes an essential element in it. When we 
come to early races who have given their thoughts and feelings 
literary form, we find this conception of justice, as involving 
equalness of action, becoming distinct. Among the Jews, 
David expressed in words this association of ideas, when, 
praying to God to ‘ hear the right,’ he said, ‘ Let my sentence 
come forth from thy presence ; let thine eyes look upon the 
things that are equal / as also, among early Christians, did 
Paul, when to the Colossians he wrote, f Masters, give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal ’ ” (p. 164). But if 
the ideas of fairness and equity are thus recognised among all 
n 2 
