perfect, nor do I recognise any duties whatever except
those of justice. The main distinction between justice and all positive
virtues I take to be that, whereas compliance with its behests is always
imperative, compliance with theirs never is, but is always optional and
discretionary. Of whatsoever is, for whatsoever reason, due, it is
invariably justice, and justice alone, that demands payment or
performance. Justice claims, and claims peremptorily, whatever is owing,
but never puts forward the smallest pretension to anything that is not
owing. But since whatever is _owing_ plainly _ought_ to be paid, and
since justice never claims anything but what is owing, it is clear that
there cannot be any merit in satisfying the claims of justice. Merit is
possible only in actions which justice does not enjoin, but to which
some other virtue exhorts.

From the main difference here pointed out, a minor collateral difference
ramifies. Of whatever ought to be paid or done, payment or performance
may be righteously enforced. Here I have the satisfaction of proceeding
for a few steps side by side with Mr. Mill, although only, I am sorry to
say, to part company again immediately. 'It is a part,' he says, 'of the
notion of duty in every one of its forms that a person may rightfully
be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be _exacted_ from a
person as one exacts a debt. Unless we think it may be exacted from him,
we do not call it his duty.'[15] Now, since justice never asks for
anything but what is due, never makes a requisition compliance with
which is not a duty, it follows that all those persons to whom its
requisitions are addressed may be rightfully compelled to comply with
them, whereas, since what every other virtue requires is always
something not due, compliance with its requisitions is never a duty, and
cannot, except unrighteously, be enforced. This--viz., the rightfulness
of using compulsion in aid of justice, as contrasted with the
wrongfulness of resorting to it in aid of generosity, rather than the
rightfulness of punishing breaches of the one and not of the other,
seems to me the 'real turning-point of the distinction' between the two.
For gross disregard of generosity, and indeed of any other virtue, may
rightfully be punished, justice fully sanctioning the punishment
although indicating also the nature of the penalty to be inflicted in
each case, and restricting it within certain limits. Whoever plays the