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Chapter II Justice
A discussion of the idea of justice almost necessarily precedes the subject of the next chapter, for the kind of justice which is the object of public clamour outside the law and police-courts, and beyond the dealings of man with man, provides one of the principal arguments to those who believe in human equality. In this essay, then, it is clear that we shall not be concerned either with the justice which includes the administration of the law, and the incidence of the law of any country, or with the justice which relates to the unwritten rules of conduct governing the commerce of men and women; but rather with that idea of equity which, while it enjoys a fast hold upon the imagination of all Western peoples, is supposed to have an existence apart from statutes, codes, regulations and by-laws, and human con- * "If our hearts beat, it is with this object . . . it is in order that we may rely on the future and know whether there is an all-pervading justice in the things of this world, which ultimately has its day and comes to light at its appointed time. To take an instance which illustrates this notion of justice, it is popularly supposed that for a child, who can have committed no crime sufficiently great to deserve severe punishment, to be born in a sordid home, in a still more sordid city-quarter, of drunken parents, some disturbance of the balance of justice must have occurred — a disturbance which, if it is to be corrected, must require some kind of compensation. If the compensation cannot be conceived as forthcoming in this life, another life is postulated, in which the proper equilibrium between deserts and rewards; will be restored. It is not enough to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Although the ancient Jewish view of universal justice doubtless required some such explanation, and found it satisfactory, the modern view of "immanent justice" is not satisfied by this method of settling the question. Indeed, the very idea that children should expiate their parents' sins is abhorrent to the modern mind, steeped as it is in this notion of justice. It only consents to it as a fact in the face of over- It is the suffering that can be traced to no particular transgression on the part of the individual, that chiefly outrages the modern man; that is why it seems fair to conclude that this notion of immanent justice has a moral foundation. * As a matter of fact, there is nothing more unjust than this notion of justice, but its injustice is by no means obvious. There is no outcry when a murderer is hanged, although psychology, heredity and even sociology, may be called to witness that his act was as inevitable as is the crippledom of the child born of tainted blood. There is no outcry when a vicious reprobate dies in poverty and pain. There is no outcry when an habitual criminal ends his days on the treadmill. Morality here receives its tribute. Chemistry, physiology, biology, and the laws of heredity * The present writer has even heard women declare that the lot of the female human being, with all its disabilities and physical burdens, constitutes an "unjust" apportionment of pain and pleasure when compared with the lot of the male. It is difficult to discover what injustice is meant here, unless we conclude that women who speak in this way have acquired from their stupid men-folk ideas about a certain justice behind phenomena or in Nature, which in their particular existence appears to be transgressed. In any case we are quite safe in assuming that it cannot be an infringement of man's justice that is meant here. It must, therefore, be the imaginary justice which is the subject of this essay, and which moral people read into the universe. In cases of suffering which are less easily traced to an apparently deliberate transgression of moral laws, however, a miscarriage of universal justice is supposed to have occurred, and the sympathy of all, and even the indignation of some, are immediately aroused. It is true that attempts have been made to withhold even this sympathy, as in the case of the second commandment already referred to above; but the best instance is that of David's famous observation in the 37th Psalm: "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." This, however, is so obviously a desperate endeavour to square a moral reading of the universe, or the conception of an eternal justice behind all phenomena, with the spectacle of misery and indigence, that its transparency offends the dullest vision. It is not unlike the attitude of some Eugenists who would argue that the poorly remunerated of to-day should be prevented from multiplying because they are not only the unfit, but the undesirable. To call them unfit is biologically correct; for it merely amounts to saying that they are unadapted to their environment. The idea of undesirability is, however, smuggled in gratuitously, only in order to try to account for what would otherwise appear an injustice. If the poor be made to appear as lying under a stigma, In the same way the necessity of condoling with an invalid is unconsciously resented by most of us when we endeavour, particularly to the invalid's face, to ascribe his or her trouble to some glaring imprudence or violation of rational living, through which we infer that the illness or indisposition has been brought about. We thus reduce it to a pain or penalty that the sufferer has deserved, and in this way we release our minds from the constant preoccupation concerning justice and injustice. Women, who are very much less social in their instincts, and, therefore, much harder than men, repeatedly behave in this way, even with their own children; and before they make a movement to relieve suffering, their lips will have pronounced innumerable reasons why the particular indisposition or pain confronting them is the sufferer's own fault. Why did David say that he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread? Why do certain Eugenists try their hardest to attach some stigma to poverty, or to what they call the poorly remunerated? And why do people suddenly heap all kinds of blame upon the head of an unfortunate man, woman or child, who has suddenly contracted an illness? It is suggested that the reason is because the acceptance of the view that there is a * It would only be correct to say that the poor are the undesirable as well as being the biologically unfit, it successful adaptation to modern conditions demanded the highest virtues and abilities of which the community is capable. When confronted with any form of suffering, therefore, the first impulse of everybody trained in this school of thought is an attempt, at once, to square the particular example of unhappiness before them with this notion of universal justice; and if it will not square, without supposing some ultimate compensation that will balance it, or some pain or crime that is sufficient to account for it, some such ultimate compensation or some such transgression is quickly imagined, which seems to satisfy the requirements of "immanent justice." If it is quite impossible to discover a sin or a crime in the individual that will account for the individual's suffering — as, for instance, when a child is born of diseased or drunken parents — when, moreover, doubts are beginning to be felt, as they are to-day, in a large number of minds, regarding the possibility of compensation in another world for undeserved miseries in this world — then a gross injustice is supposed to have occurred, and everybody who looks at the universe through moral glasses, feels acutely uncomfortable. "Why should Tommy Jones," they say, "be born of diseased or drunken parents, when Thomas Vere de Vere was born of healthy or sober parents! It is unjust!" They are indignant, and they look indignant, and those among them who cannot believe in an after-life in which this appa- Those people, on the other hand, who are persuaded that their religion can explain anything, and who enjoy the most determined optimism where the suffering of others is concerned, have yet another loophole of escape from the disagreeable certainty that a miscarriage of universal justice has occurred. Nodding their heads gravely and wisely, they say: "Who can tell? Providence moveth in mysterious ways. May not these sufferers be the most sorely tried because they are the most loved? For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." * Everything is done, every expedient is tried in order to escape from the maddening certainty that suffering is possible without a sin or a crime having been committed. When finally it is discovered that such things as pain and misery do co-exist with innocence, or at least with a lack of guilt, then the feeling arises that an injustice has been perpetrated which must at all costs be corrected. And since eternal, or universal, or immanent justice cannot be held responsible, man himself and his civilisation are frequently accused of having been guilty of an injustice of which neither is in any way capable. What is it that has forced this conviction upon mankind? Failing the comforting assurances of religion, which postulates a heaven in which the uneven balance of pain and * Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews. Chapter xii. 6. I have suggested that the average man reads morality into phenomena, that he imagines that the world is a moral world, and that consequently pain and pleasure alike must have a moral explanation or cause. It is this that creates the idea of an "immanent" justice. But, if we contemplate the world as a whole, what justification have we for postulating a moral order of phenomena? Why should we expect something so essentially peculiar to human society to pervade the design of things in general? As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of civilised human society, Nature is utterly immoral. Life is hopelessly unjust. It is not only the sinful young rabbit that provides the fox with his meal. It is not only the guilty mouse that dies an agonising death in the cat's jaws. It is not only the dissipated sparrow that is torn to fragments by the young of the sparrow-hawk. Neither is it only the vicious worm that gets rationed out piecemeal to the young of the mole. And what of the antelopes that fall victims to lions and tigers, the sheep and cattle that fall victims to man, the pheasants that fall victims to our sportsmen, the fish that fall victims to their larger fellows? Wherever we look, we see suffering — undeserved suffering — aye, undeserved agony. The world and Life are therefore essentially unmoral, they Wherever we look, either in the jungle or the prairie, we see the blood-red fangs and the carmine claws of the bully rampant! Fair play? Where is the fair play between the cat and the mouse? Where is the fair play between the stoat and the shrew? Where is the fair play between the wolf and the lamb? Justice? What is justice, where is justice in Life and Nature? In the vegetable world, which is said to be inanimate, the fierce uneven struggle is not even mitigated by the "sporting chance" of escape. Truth to tell, the word justice — whether immanent or otherwise — is meaningless when applied to the universe. Nobody has ever dreamed of thinking out the billions and billions of post-mortem compensations which would be necessary to adjust the balance of only one year's rapine and slaughter in the world of nature. Nobody has ever dreamt that such a calculation would even be possible. Injustice, if it have any meaning at all in this respect, is therefore written large all over the face of Life and Nature. Sentimentalists, like Wordsworth and Rousseau, by wilfully turning their backs upon It is not accurate, therefore, to read a moral order into the Universe. Life and Nature are essentially amoral. They are not concerned even with the A.B.C. of morality. All life outside human society, therefore, knows nothing of justice. On the contrary, "Life is appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at the very least, exploitation." There is no such thing as a natural balance of virtue and reward, crime and punishment — even in the realm of social justice this balance is difficult enough to achieve. Misery is frequently encountered in Nature — in fact, universally so, divorced from sin. To perceive anything else in Nature is to contemplate her through rather smoky human spectacles — anthropomorphically. If, then, this notion of justice exists at all, it is only in the fancy of the morally prejudiced. Morality arises only in human society; therefore justice is exclusively a social phenomenon, a social expedient. It is not a universal law, but a concept of the social-human being. It is not a principle transcending social life; it is the creation In the light of this conclusion, what is meant, therefore, when Mrs. Jelleby-Jones, of Hampstead, who is a welfare worker, exclaims over her dinner to her husband that it seems so "unjust" that the poor little diseased babies she has been inspecting that afternoon should have been born with such a heavy handicap? Whose injustice, what injustice does she mean? Does she know what she means, and does she mean anything? We have seen that if her statement is to have any meaning at all, it must signify that mankind is unjust, that human society is unjust, and that, therefore, her particular form of human society is unjust; consequently that she and her husband, as forming part of that society, are unjust. Truth to tell, she will mean nothing half as intelligible as that; but since this is the only meaning her remark can have, let us examine it calmly. She supposes an injustice to have been perpetrated because — say — three babies she has seen were born diseased. This happens in every class, irrespective of banking account, and the poor are not more unhealthy than the rich. She says the babies will be handicapped. Their disease is an obstacle in their road; therefore it is unjust. She is perfectly right, in a sense, when she says that disease is an obstacle. But it might be pointed out to her that to be born of stupid or criminally disposed parents would also constitute an obstacle. Psychologists now tell us that even to be born of parents Mrs. Jelleby-Jones might reply that illness or disease is at least an obstacle that could be avoided, whereas to have as father the King of England, is not a fate that could so easily be circumvented. Agreed! But only flagrant cases of illness or disease are even noticeable. What about those more subtle gradations of health or ill-health which though they are frequently sufficiently virulent to convert a potential genius into a merely talented man, or a potentially talented man into a fool, are nevertheless not sufficiently glaring to be observed or guarded against? Would Mrs. Jelleby-Jones argue that to be born of ugly parents, for instance, is an injustice? To be ugly is certainly a great disadvantage, particularly to the women of any tasteful country. Is it also an injustice? Look at it how we will, injustice, or inequality of endowment and of chances of survival, is rooted in the very heart of Nature. Society endeavours to mitigate Natures harsh rule by means of preventing What, then, do these people really mean who rail against this so-called injustice — this necessary survival of natural and vital This "injustice" of their fancy, however, as we have seen, is built up upon an idea of universal and eternal Justice which is a pure myth. Justice exists nowhere outside civilised man's own institutions, and least of all in Nature. Whenever and wherever, therefore. Nature, pure and undefiled, peeps out even in our civilised societies, as it does in procreation, there also appears, and cannot fail to appear, what these people call "injustice." Civilised man has done his utmost to mitigate Life's natural "injustices" — to use these people's language — but since in order to survive he is bound to allow Nature a certain modicum of free-play within his societies, a certain modicum of so-called "injustice" cannot be removed from even the most ideal and perfect community. * Thus, far from this "injustice" of the stupid sentimentalists à la Gambetta, etc., * So long, that is to say, as free mating is not made a criminal offence, and even then the harshness of the natural law will only be partially mitigated. Apart from the creation and administration of law in an organised society, therefore, and the accepted rules which control the treatment of one man by another, or of a child by its parents, or vice versâ, justice has no genuine existence at all. To complain about the absence of a purely fantastic conception, therefore, is an absurdity. As well might you complain that your son is born without wings, or that you yourself do not possess seven-league boots. In its essence, however, this act of. setting up an impossible ideal which is supposed to belong to the very scheme of the universe, amounts to an attitude of hostility to life, because it is tantamount to a refusal to accept life as she is — that is to say, amoral. It is equivalent to setting up a false scale of measurement, in order to depreciate human society and its value. When once these people are convinced that the "injustices" about which they complain really are rooted in Life and Nature, they cry out desperately: Look how dreadful Life is, she is unjust! But it is only in their benighted brains that the ideal of justice was ever conceived as inherent in phenomena, as a possible attribute of life Life is amoral; therefore she is essentially beyond or beneath justice. You can only All Life's light and shade, all her excitement, all her incitement to man to compete with energy and spirit in her game, depends for more than half its charm precisely on the fact that she is amoral — that is to say, that she produces inequalities, contrasts and divergent types, indifferently, lavishly, without taking thought, without mercy. Her call is to the brave, to the stout of heart, and to the adventurous and spirited. Those who in the midst of this great adventure cry out "Injustice!" either misunderstand, or wilfully misrepresent the whole scheme. The alleged "injustices" of Life, can never be put right by man. They are beyond his power to remedy, however just his laws may be. All he can do is to mitigate the asperity of life for those of Nature's less fortunately endowed offspring, who cannot aspire to the highest ridge; but even in doing this, he must be careful not to make it too easy for Nature's failures to multiply over abundantly, otherwise the race most certainly deteriorates. The modern tendency, therefore, which consists in deliberately confounding the issue, by pointing to a number of Nature's own "injustices" as if they were the outcome of man-made law, man-made conditions, This does not mean that there are not man-made injustices in the creation and administration of law. Unfortunately they are too often as plentiful as those of Life itself. But by far the grossest so-called injustices are those of Nature and Life, which cannot by any means be removed, and least of all can they be even mitigated in a country whose population distinguishes so imperfectly between grievances which can be rightly brought home to man, and those that are inherent in the natural order of existence, that while they blindly clamour for the removal of the latter, the former, which might be corrected and are within man's power to correct, are generally left studiously alone. |
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