irit of man;
but this spirit must learn new words ere it can travel in the universe.
Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns
itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term
justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is
nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower.
Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be. The
body may revel in ill--gotten pleasure, but virtue alone can bring
contentment to the soul. Our inner happiness is measured out to us by
an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still
further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall
into the shining scale. It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be
able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the
chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his
wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of
thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had
procured for Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius. Some slight intellectual
satisfaction there may be in the doing of evil; but none the less does
each wrongful deed clip the wings of our thoughts, till at length they
can only crawl amidst all that is fleeting and personal. To commit an
act of injustice is to prove we have not yet attained the happiness
within our grasp. And in evil--reduce things to their primal elements,
and you shall find that even the wicked are seeking some measure of
peace, a certain up-lifting of soul. They may think themselves happy,
and rejoice for such dole as may come to them; but would it have
satisfied Marcus Aurelius, who knew the lofty tranquillity, the great
quickening of the soul? Show a vast lake to the child who has never
beheld the sea, it will clap its hands and be glad, and think the sea
is before it; but therefore none the less does the veritable sea exist.

It may be that a man will find happiness in the puny little victories
that his vanity, envy, or indifference win for him day after day. Shall
we begrudge him such happiness, we, whose eyes can see further? Shall
we strive for his consciousness of life, for the religion that pleases
his soul, for the conception of the universe that justifies his cares?
Yet out of these things are the banks made between which happiness
flows; and as they are, so shall the river be, in shallowness or in
depth. He