and the grapes, the action of the fox is due to
the folly of a too fluent attention. Similarly, he who lets go his
present hold of the web of interests simply because his eye happens to
alight on another vantage-point, is as much the blind slave of novelty
as the self-centred man is of familiarity. In both cases the fault is
one of narrowness of range, of arbitrary exclusion.

Egoists, then, are guilty of a kind of stupid provinciality. They are
like those closet-philosophers whom Locke describes.

The truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the
intellectual world, where light shines and as they conclude, day
blesses them; but the rest of that vast expansum they give up to night
and darkness, and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty traffic
with known correspondents, in some little {63} creek; within that they
confine themselves, and are dexterous managers enough of the wares and
products of that corner with which they content themselves, but will
not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to survey the riches
that nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less
solid, no less useful than what has fallen to their lot, in the admired
plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them contains
whatsoever is good in the universe.[9]

The impartial or judicial estimate of value is properly recognized as
essential to the meaning of _justice_. I do not here refer to justice
in the more narrow and familiar sense. Retributive justice, or justice
in any of its special legal aspects, is a political rather than an
ethical matter.[10] But political justice must be based on ethical
justice. And to the definition of this fundamental principle some
contribution has now been made. There is a parody of justice, a
justice of condescension, that the principles already defined do
discredit. For it has sometimes been thought that justice required
only a deliberate estimate of interests by those best qualified to
judge, as though the settlement of moral issues were a matter of
connoisseurship. The viciousness of this conception lies in the fact
that qualitatively regarded there is no superiority or inferiority
among interests. The relish of caviare is no better, no worse, than
the relish of bread. Preference among interests must be based on their
difference {64} of representation, or their difference of
compatibility. A wide and safe interest is better than a na