In this paper I shall explain what I take to be the nature of justice; and the method which I shall follow is that of attempting to infer the essential nature of justice from an examination of its actual practical operation. Perhaps the reader will be able to follow the drift of the argument more easily, and be more on his guard against possible misstatements of fact or erroneous inferences, if I mention at the outset the main conclusions to which I hope to lead him.

Rogery Fry in Last Lectures threw out the suggestion that the inferiority of neolithic to palaeolithic painting might be due to the birth or growth of language and the consequent temptation to dull the vivid sensibility for individual life by the practically useful habit of abstract or generalized thinking. Whether or no the birth and growth of language involved a set-back for graphic and plastic art, it certainly first made poetry possible. And the question which puzzles me is this: Would any art analogous to poetry have been possible without speech? What if a tongue-tied race had invented a system of ideograms or purely conventional gestures?

Though we should probably find it easier to detect immorality in its instances than to determine morality in its essence, we generally take it for granted that to be moral is to be good. On the assumption, I suppose, that morality and goodness are actually equivalent, some have even said that it is goodness alone that is good. And yet in the name of morality men have suppressed their vitality, stifled their generosity, surrendered their reason, and gone like sheep to the slaughter. In the name of morality men have distorted the truth and tormented the innocent. They have cut off heads in the past and they cut off heads in the present. It seems to me that alike with morality and without it, alike without it and with it, human behaviour may display brutality and insanity. Our human society may disintegrate and wither because of moral vacillation and paralysis. But it may be blighted the world over because struck by the lightning of moral frenzy.

The opinion that I want to discuss in this essay is fairly commonly although not universally held among moralists. It is the opinion that there is never a moral duty to try to promote one's own pleasure for the sake of that pleasure although, contrariwise, there is often a moral duty to try to promote the pleasure of others for the sake of that pleasure. I cannot myself assent to the view, and I want to explain why I cannot; but I allow that the opposition I have to face is formidable. Indeed there are authors like Meinong who would make degree of self-sacrifice the standard of morality.

Philosophy is commonly referred to as a “spirit” of inquiry, a general attitude toward things, rather than a body of conclusions; but as every spirit in this world must have a body, so philosophy must have a method. The expression, “philosophical method,” is used with somewhat varying meanings, but it is the question of how philosophical conclusions are attained that we have in mind in the present article.