acknowledges that the interest of mankind collectively, or at least of
mankind indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent when
conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he uses
words without a meaning: for, that a rule even of utter selfishness
could not _possibly_ be adopted by all rational beings--that there is
any insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption--cannot
be even plausibly maintained. To give any meaning to Kant's principle,
the sense put upon it must be, that we ought to shape our conduct by a
rule which all rational beings might adopt _with benefit to their
collective interest_.

To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule of
conduct, and a sentiment which sanctions the rule. The first must be
supposed common to all mankind, and intended for their good. The other
(the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by those who
infringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the conception of
some definite person who suffers by the infringement; whose rights (to
use the expression appropriated to the case) are violated by it. And the
sentiment of justice appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel or
retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one
sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by the human capacity
of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligent
self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives its
morality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of
self-assertion.

I have, throughout, treated the idea of a _right_ residing in the
injured person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element in
the composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in
which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a