Another desire is developed or given play by society,—the desire to equal one's fellows in the race for benefits, and, that accomplished, to excel them. He desires to win in every game, to be the victor in every contest of physical or mental powers, and in business as well as in sports. If he is held back he feels resentment against the power assuming to restrain him. He thus feels he has a right to equal and to excel if he can. Whether competition should be enforced or stimulated by society is a question in economics. What affects the question of rights and hence of justice is whether this desire to excel should be impeded.
In this association, however, each individual man finds himself in close contact all through life with other men having like instincts, desires, feelings, emotions, etc., as his own; and who also feel like resentments and have like notions of rights possessed. If each is left by society free to gratify these desires or to enforce his claims of rights in his own way unmindful how his action may affect others; if they be left free to "take who have the power" and only they may "keep who can," society could not exist and civilization, if not the race, would perish.
Society, therefore, must frame and enforce rules for the regulation and control of the conduct of its individual members, must even restrain them to some extent from the gratification of some of their desires. On the other hand, these instincts, desires, etc., must still be reckoned with. They cannot be wholly suppressed nor even very much reduced or impeded if society is to progress or even exist. There must be left to the individual some degree of liberty of choice and action. An eminent American jurist, James C. Carter, vividly stated this, though perhaps in the extreme, when he wrote that the sole function of law and legislation is to secure to each individual the utmost liberty which he can enjoy consistently with the preservation of the like liberty to all others. "Liberty (he wrote), the first of blessings, the aspiration of every human soul, is the supreme object. Every abridgment of it demands an excuse, and the only good excuse is the necessity of preserving it." (Carter's "Law. Its origin and growth," page 337.)
There must also be left to the individual some personal motives for labor and thrift, for, after all, it is the toil of individuals that supports society and its members. It is the surplus products, not consumed, but stored up by the economy of individuals that constitutes the energy of society. However it may be improved in the future, the nature of the average man today is such that he will not toil and deny himself without prospect of rewards to accrue to himself for his own personal use. He will not strive to earn and then conserve his earnings unless he can have them for his own, to control, use and dispose of at his pleasure. However it may be with a few unselfish, devoted souls, men as a rule are not yet so altruistic as to devote themselves exclusively to the good of others, of society. I think it evident that if the impelling natural desire to serve one's self be wholly or even largely disregarded by society, little would be produced or saved by voluntary labor and self-denial. The alternative would be the restoration of some system of enforced labor, of slavery, for the vast majority of men. At this day, after centuries of exhortation to practise the virtues of benevolence, of brotherly love, of self-sacrifice for the good of others, men do not from pure love of humanity voluntarily endure heat and cold, expend their labor and savings in working mines, in braving seas, in building and operating factories, railroads and steamships, in growing corn and cotton. Even those public offices, in which the altruist might find the best opportunities for serving the people, are not much sought for unless some personal honor or pecuniary profit be attached to them. Should society decree that the laborer, whether with hands or brain, should have no individual reward proportionate to the efficiency of his labor, but only his numerical proportion of the product of all laborers, I fear the efficiency of all classes of laborers, manual and mental, would fall to the "irreducible minimum."
The foregoing statements and inferences lead to the question, how far should society go in undertaking to regulate the conduct and restrict the freedom of the individual,—that freedom which would be his if he were alone in the world? It may be thought that this is a question of expediency for economists and sociologists, and so it is largely, but it is also a question of rights and hence of justice, since every action or non-action of society affects the freedom of the individual in the gratification of his desires or, in other words, in his pursuit of happiness.
CHAPTER IV
JUSTICE THE EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN THE FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SAFETY OF SOCIETY
The question stated at the close of the last chapter is most important and, in a sense, is perhaps the crux of the whole matter. Not only may error in the solution of the question injuriously affect the material interests of individuals and hence of society as a whole, but it may cause unhappiness far greater than that caused by any material loss, viz., a sense of injustice. As said by the English judge, "Injustice cuts to the bone."