of moral truth, the town-criers that go
shouting in the streets some sentence passed long ago in reason's court
against some inadmissible desire, know nothing of justice or mercy or
reason--three principles essentially identical. They thunder conclusions
without remembering the premisses, and expose their precepts, daily, of
course, grown more thin and unrepresentative, to the aversion and
neglect of all who genuinely love what is good. The masters of life, on
the contrary, the first framers and discoverers of moral ideals, are
persons who disregard those worn conventions and their professional
interpreters: they are persons who have a fresh sense for the universal
need and cry of human souls, and reconstruct the world of duty to make
it fit better with the world of desire and of possible happiness.
Primary morality, inspired by love of something naturally good, is
accordingly charitable and ready to forgive; while secondary morality,
founded on prejudice, is fanatical and ruthless.

[Sidenote: Uncharitable pagan justice is not just.]

As virtue carries with it a pleasure which perfects it and without which
virtue would evidently be spurious and merely compulsory, so justice
carries with it a charity which is its highest expression, without which
justice remains only an organised wrong. Of justice without charity we
have a classic illustration in Plato's Republic and in general in the
pagan world. An end is assumed, in this case an end which involves
radical injustice toward every interest not included in it; and then an
organism is developed or conceived that shall subserve that end, and
political justice is defined as the harmonious adjustment of powers and
functions within that organism. Reason and art suffice to discover the
right methods for reaching the chosen end, and the polity thus
established, with all its severities and sacrifices of personal will, is
rationally grounded. The chosen end, however, is arbitrary, and, in
fact, perverse; for to maintain a conventional city with stable
institutions and perpetual military efficiency would not secure human
happiness; nor (to pass to the individual virtue symbolised by such a
state) would the corresponding discipline of personal habits, in the
service of vested interests and bodily life, truly unfold the
potentialities of the human spirit.

Plato himself, in passing, acknowledges that his political ideal is
secondary and not ideal at all, since only luxury, corrup