But
justice will have its turn. The higher human law cannot be the offspring
of animality. Justice is the right to the maximum of individual
independence compatible with the same liberty for others; in other
words, it is respect for man, for the immature, the small, the feeble;
it is the guarantee of those human collectivities, associations, states,
nationalities--those voluntary or involuntary unions--the object of
which is to increase the sum of happiness, and to satisfy the aspiration
of the individual. That some should make use of others for their own
purposes is an injury to justice. The right of the stronger is not a
right, but a simple fact, which obtains only so long as there is neither
protest nor resistance. It is like cold, darkness, weight, which
tyrannize over man until he has invented artificial warmth, artificial
light, and machinery. Human industry is throughout an emancipation from
brute nature, and the advances made by justice are in the same way a
series of rebuffs inflicted upon the tyranny of the stronger. As the
medical art consists in the conquest of disease, so goodness consists in
the conquest of the blind ferocities and untamed appetites of the human
animal. I see the same law throughout--increasing emancipation of the
individual, a continuous ascent of being toward life, happiness,
justice, and wisdom.
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