Australians, without shelter or clothing, you will find that the law
of the tribe is well defined and also implacable; and a man who has
sinned knows that he must meet it or flee; he knows that there is no
avail or recourse beyond the tribal council, and he knows what they
will decide in his particular case, because he knows the law and the
penalty of its infringement. And this rude notion of justice develops,
little by little, into the great edifice of jurisprudence, the law of
nation and the law of nations. Thus we find that the idea of the just,
and of what is right from man to man, is something which is found
everywhere; and as that develops culture develops; but the mere just
alone does not satisfy the human heart; the man who merely metes out
to his fellow that which the tribal law, or the law of the land,
requires of him, certainly is not up to the ideal of any man or woman
in this assembly or in this city.

There is something beyond that, and what is that? We find that it
rests in the idea of the good--that which is often brought forward in
the beautiful forms of religion, which tells man that above justice
there is something greater and nobler than mere ethics or
morality--the mere right and wrong--the mere giving what is due. It is
not enough to do that; there must be a giving of more than is due;
because the idea of the good transcends the present life--it passes
into the future life of the species; and it is only through going
above what is needed to-day that we may endow our posterity with
something greater than we ourselves possess. It is the idea of the
good, therefore, which lifts that which is merely just into a
higher--into, I might say, an immortal sphere of activity. It has
always had an intense attraction for noble souls, which history shows
us; and it is not to be supposed that that attraction will ever
diminish; it will ever increase, although its forms may change; and