endent of man, in the universe
and in things? Is there, in a word, a justice that might be called
mystic? Or does it issue wholly from man; is it inward even though it
act from without; and is the only justice therefore psychologic? These
two terms, mystic and psychologic justice, comprehend, more or less,
all the different forms of justice, superior to the social, that would
appear to exist to-day.

3

It is scarcely conceivable that any one who has forsaken the easy, but
artificially illumined, paths of positive religion, can still believe
in the existence of a physical justice arising from moral causes,
whether its manifestations assume the form of heredity or disease, of
geologic, atmospheric, or other phenomena. However eager his desire
for illusion or mystery, this is a truth he is bound to recognise from
the moment he begins earnestly and sincerely to study his own personal
experience, or to observe the external ills which, in this world of
ours, fall indiscriminately on good and wicked alike. Neither the
earth nor the sky, neither nature nor matter, neither air nor any force
known to man (save only those that are in him) betrays the slightest
regard for justice, or the remotest connection with our morality, our
thoughts or intentions. Between the external world and our actions
there exist only the simple and essentially non-moral relations of
cause and effect. If I am guilty of a certain excess or imprudence, I
incur a certain danger, and have to pay a corresponding debt to nature.
And as this imprudence or excess will generally have had an immoral
cause--or a cause that we call immoral because we have been compelled
to regulate our life according to the requirements of our health and
tranquillity--we cannot refrain from establishing a connection between
this immoral cause and the danger to which we have been exposed, or the
debt we have had to pay; and we are led once more to believe in the
justice of the universe, the prejudice which, of all those that we
cling to, has its root deepest in our heart. And in our eagerness to
restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact
that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our
excess or imprudence been--to use the terms of our infantine
vocabulary--heroic or innocent. If on an intensely cold day I throw
myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if,
seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in