re of justice, not from {229} an abstract and _a priori_ point
of view, but in the light of historic fact, so far from finding that it
originates and operates in complete independence of religion, we
discover that from the beginning the offences with which the justice of
the primitive community deals are offences, not against the community,
but against heaven. "In the evolution of public justice," as Mr.
Hobhouse says, "at the outset the community interferes mainly on what
we may call supernatural grounds." From the beginning misdeeds are
punished, not merely as wrongs done to society, but as wrong done to
the gods and as wrong-doing for which the community collectively is
responsible to the gods. Justice from the beginning is not individual
resentment, but "public action taken for the public safety." It is
not, as Mr. Hobhouse calls it, "revenge guided and limited by custom."
It is the customary action of the community taken to avert divine
vengeance. The action taken assumes in extreme cases the form of the
death penalty; but its usual form of action is that of taboo.

If the origin of justice is to be sought in something that is not
justice, if justice in particular and morality in general are to be
treated as having been evolved out of something which was in a way
different {230} from them and yet in a way must have contained them,
inasmuch as they came forth from it, we shall do well to look for that
something, not in the unhistorical, unreal abstraction of an imaginary
individual, apart from society, but in society itself when it is as yet
not clearly conscious of the justice and morality at work within it.
Such a stage in the development of society is, I think, to be discerned.

We have seen that, "at almost, if not quite, the lowest stages" of
human development, there is something which, according to Mr. Hobhouse,
corresponds "roughly to our own administration of justice" (I, 81).
But this rough justice implies conscious, deliberate action on the part
of the community. It implies that the community as such makes some
sort of enquiry into what can be the cause of the misfortunes which are
befalling it; and that, having found out the person responsible, it
deliberately takes the steps it deems necessary for putting itself
right with the supernatural power that has sent the sickness or famine.
Now, such conscious, purposive, deliberate action may and probably does
take place at almost the lowest stage of deve