ness or love is felt. It would thus seem that the mother's greater love for her own than for another's offspring would, in the greater number of cases, stand condemned.

This point has been seized upon and argued with great force by Godwin in his Political Justice. "In a loose and general way," he says, "I and my neighbor are both of us men; and of consequence entitled to equal attention. But in reality it is probable that one of us is a being of more worth and importance than the other. A man is of more worth than a beast because, being possessed of higher faculties, he is capable of a more refined and genuine happiness. In the same manner the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred. . . . We are not connected with one or two percipient beings, but with a society, a nation, and in some sense with the whole family of mankind. Of a consequence that life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the general good. . . Supposing I had been myself the chambermaid, I ought to have chosen to die, rather than that Fénelon should have died. . Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother, or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fénelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which

pronoun 'my' to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth? . . . Every view of the subject brings us back to the consideration of my neighbor's moral worth and his importance to the general weal as the only standard to determine the treatment to which he is entitled. Gratitude, therefore, a principle which has so often been the theme of the moralist and poet, is no part either of justice or virtue. By gratitude I understand a sentiment which would lead me to prefer one man to another, from other considerations than that of his superior usefulness or worth: that is, which would make something true to me (for example, this preferableness) which cannot be true to another man, and is not true in itself."

1

There is considerable force in the argument just given, and indeed, when properly interpreted, much of it may be accepted. The highest good, at least as men are now constituted, is, as we shall show later on, a social one. For its attainment the maintenance of social relations is necessary-so necessary, in fact, that the individual is able to find his best selfrealization only when he seeks his own good in the good of others and of society at large. We cannot therefore take objection to the declaration of Godwin that when the social good seems so to demand, the objects of one's affections should be sacrificed. here is the vital point. When we speak of the social good, we must conceive of that good in its highest

1 Book II, Chapter II.

But

terms. This means the absolute abandonment of such criteria as ordinary utilitarianism affords, and the acceptance of idealistic conceptions in their place. It means, furthermore, a holding in view of the ultimate, as well as the proximate, results of an act. When these conditions are observed the acceptance of Godwin's formal law of justice, so far from rendering preference due to affection or friendliness inequitable, upon the contrary affords, in the greater number of cases, the very highest sanction for their exercise. When, for example, we consider that the integrity of the family, which is founded upon parental and filial love, furnishes the surest basis of public order and morality, that within its circle are aroused and stimulated many of the highest and truest virtues,—when we consider this, we see at once that, in the broadest sense of justice, loving preferences based upon kinship are of such transcendent importance in individual as well as social culture, that the distributive inequalities to which they may give rise are of little significance. Even if justice be conceived as simply a principle of utility, the same is true, provided it be admitted, as of course it must be, that a social life is of value to men. For it is within the family and friendly circles that are engendered and cultivated the principles of conduct which render the maintenance of a social life possible.

What has been said as to the preferences arising from blood relationships applies, mutatis mutandis, to most of the exhibitions of partiality based upon sentiments of friendliness and of race and political affilia

tions. Adam Smith remarked the fact that men were more likely to be moved by the sufferings of their neighbor caused by a corn upon his great toe, than by the starvation of millions in China. Such an extreme discrimination is of course irrational, and therefore an injustice. In the aggregate, however, it is true that partialities of neighborhood, race, and nation are of enormous value in cementing the bonds which unite men and women into coöperating units. Edmund Burke expresses this idea when he says: "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle, the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love of our country and mankind." The millennial time may come when the brotherhood of mankind will have received such full recognition that ethnic and political bonds will lose much, if not all, of their present importance. As yet, however, their existence would seem to be needed. With the standard of culture that now generally prevails, abstract love of humanity, while lofty as an idea and not difficult for the ordinary mind to grasp, is yet one that can hardly be relied upon to furnish an effective motive in everyday life. Love of humanity may easily be associated with an indifference to men individually.

Professor Mackenzie, in his Introduction to Social

1Cf. Leslie Stephen, Social Rights and Duties, Vol. I, chapter entitled "Social Equality," from which the above quotation has been taken, and which has been suggestive upon a number of the points considered in this chapter.

D

Philosophy, has some admirable remarks upon the point we have been making. He introduces also the caution, which we should have stated, that the justification of discriminations founded upon love or friendship does not justify everything that may be done in their name. "The unity which is founded upon natural feeling," he says, "must precede that which depends upon acquired sympathies and thoughts. To begin with the love of humanity would be to begin with a cold abstraction. The family is like a burningglass which concentrates human sympathies on a point. Within that narrow circle selfishness is gradually overcome and other interests developed. Each one is supplied with the opportunity of knowing a few human beings thoroughly, than which nothing is more important as a first stage in the transcendence of the merely individual self. One who knows only himself inwardly and sees others only by a kind of outward observation, which in a large circle is an almost inevitable result, is apt to become for himself too entirely the centre of his world, if, indeed, he ever forms a world or cosmos for himself at all. The family enables a few persons to become, not merely objects for each other, but parts of a single life; and the unity thus effected may then be very readily extended as sympathies grow. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the family has the danger of all exclusive forms of association. The garden wall hides the horizon. The selfishness of a family may be not less repellent than that of an individual; and the former kind of selfishness is much more insidious