In view of this perplexity it is interesting to find Herbert Spencer, when publishing an additional part of his Ethical Philosophy devoted to the exposition of justice, writing a chapter on "Animal Ethics." His previous discussions on "conduct in general" have been welcomed. It has been recognized how reasonable it is for a moralist, who is an evolutionist, to include in his observations the entire range of animal activity. And there can be no reluctance even on the part of the idealist, to honor his declaration that moral action is "the highest phase of activity," however slow the idealist may be to accept Spencer's mode of expressing it, when he makes this a phase of "universal conduct," as if conduct in general were "an organic whole."
There is an obvious perplexity in selecting justice as the ethical virtue in connection with which an attempt is to be made to illustrate traces of moral action in animal life. Among animals, a regard to justice is the very last thing we expect to find. It would seem that the very success of the Darwinian theory depends upon absence of any approach to justice in animal life. The masterfulness of force is the thing most conspicuous as we mark the conduct of animals. Food is the reward of fight; what is to happen to the one who is beaten is matter of no concern for the one who has secured a good repast. On any definition of justice that can be offered, it would seem clear that any regard to it is impossible under the conditions of animal life. This is clear under the admirable account given by Herbert Spencer of the law of justice. He says, the formula of justice "must be positive in so far as it asserts for each that, since he is to receive and surfer the good and evil results of his actions, he must be allowed to act. And it must be negative in so far as, by asserting this of every one, it implies that each can be allowed to act only under the restraint imposed by the presence of others having like claims to act."[1] This is a satisfactory statement of the ethical law; but the statement seems in itself to show how far away animal life is from moral life. We must not, however, in summary fashion, at once close
- ↑ Justice, p. 45.
