Common Sense as when he tells us the law is "that benefits received shall be directly proportionate to merits possessed," or "that individuals of most worth . . . shall have the greatest benefits" (pp. 6, 8.) But how far removed this doctrine is from the ordinary view is made very apparent by the definition of worth or merit as "power of self-sustentation " or "fitness to the conditions of existence." Mr. Spencer discovers the positive or essential element of Justice, not in the requital of desert of which the individual is the originator, but in the consequences of men's natural endowments. And as men are differently endowed, "unequal amounts of benefit are implied," that is, "inequality is the primordial ideal suggested" (p. 37) by the notion of Justice. But why society should endeavor to guarantee to its members unequal stocks of happiness or misery it is not easy from the point of view of Justice alone to understand. If such inequality is needed for the preservation of the state, the need may be recognized without dignifying it with the name of Justice. It may be that free will is an illusion, and that our sense of Justice which demands the requital of desert will disappear along with it. But if so, the new deterministic ideal of Justice is not so likely to be satisfied by the inequalities of natural selection as by the equality heralded in the writings of Bentham and Mill and nowadays demanded by the socialistic reconstructors of society. Nature's award of good fortune to inherited abilities and of ill fortune to inherited disabilities has nothing to recommend it but the brute fact of its actuality. Mr. Spencer in an unwary moment even goes farther, and by implication renounces his own doctrine of Justice. "Could we," he says, "charge Nature with injustice, we might fitly say it is unjust that some should have natural endowments so much lower than others have" (p. 158). Can it then be just that they should be obliged to take the consequences of these smaller powers?
In short, what Mr. Spencer describes as the "positive element" in Justice — the element which he gets from the biological law of natural selection — is no part whatever of Justice. The so-called "negative element," the equal recognition of others' claims, gives the essential attribute of the notion. It matters not whether you concede to each the full consequences of his nature and conduct, or something entirely different; but whatever be conceded to one, a like allotment, unless the withholding of it is justified by special considerations, must be made to every other member of the community. Nothing more than this can be prescribed in the name of Justice. As much as this, however, may always be claimed. Hence Mr. Spencer's ultimate identification of Justice with equal freedom is inadequate; for not only in the apportionment of freedom, but in the apportionment of all other benefits and of burdens must Justice be realized. Such perfect Justice cannot exist in
