buck:

I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not every
man able to say what he likes? I ask you whether the world over, or in
past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our
unrivalled happiness may last.[22]

This is an almost perfect representation of the sentimental interest in
justice. In the course of such justice, "none of us should see
salvation." It leaves wholly out of account the fact that when men are
left free to talk or act or live as they will, they will either
stagnate, or they will strive for the best and help it to prevail. If
the latter, they will be brought back to the _state as the means of
making right reason effective_, and of extending to all not simply the
leave to be what they want to be, of following what Arnold calls their
"natural taste of the bathos," but the opportunity of learning better.

Justice, like purpose and prudence, is a principle of organization,
owing its virtue to the larger fulfilment of interest which it makes
possible. Through this principle the individual is granted
independence, in order that his freedom may remove every limit from his
service. He is delivered from the bondage of violence and convention,
but he is delivered into the charge of his own reason, which must give
bonds not only that he will keep the peace, but that he will give {110}
himself wholly to that true good which he may now discern.

In justice the human secular society is perfected. By a secular
society I mean a society held to be self-sufficient as it is; a society
in which only those interests are acknowledged which are actually
present, or have actually been admitted to a place of power or
prestige. But secularism or _worldliness_ in this sense suffers from
the general error of materialism, the error of mistaking the _de facto_
good for the whole good. It is only another case of that blindness
which is the penalty of all self-sufficiency. The ancient and the
modern types of worldliness present an interesting difference which
will serve to illustrate their common fault.

Greek literature abounds in the glorification of the life already
achieved. Thus Solon asks no more of the gods than to be fortunate and
honored: "Grant unto me wealth from the blessed gods, and to have alway
fair fame in the eyes of all men. Grant that I may thus be dear to my
friends, and bitter to my foes; revered in the sight of the one, awful
in the sight of the other