the good you would like to receive from them.’ This is the touch
stone o f all human endeavour; as mankind becomes aware of its
implications, Justice develops. For morality is linked with the
growth o f knowledge; it is perpetually emergent, and Justice can
only be satisfied by the continual revision of institutions to keep
pace with the extension o f consciousness. In the last resort, the
knowledge of good and evil is nothing less than Equality;
Equality is as necessary to the conscience as light to the eye.
Here Proudhon is brought to the ancient controversy between
free will and determinism. In his view, determinism, which denies
man’s power to act as he wishes, when what he wishes is not im
possible, is a brutal idea that makes material entities the deter
minants of our actions and turns the thinking being into the
plaything of matter. In reality, the argument has always been
seen in false terms, since neither free will nor necessity exists in
absolute terms. Neither alone can explain human society, and one
can only present a truthful picture by acknowledging an anti-
nomial situation in which Liberty and Necessity both play their
parts as extreme terms. The series o f Liberty and the series of
Necessity are parallel and co-existent. Man owes his liberty to the
synthetic union within him o f all natural spontaneities; the free
dom o f social bodies emerges from the harmony o f all their varied
elements.
Justice is the last word of Liberty, and so the two become
identified. In practical terms, the liberty of man advances in
relation to his knowledge and practice of social organisation.
Liberty, the revolt o f man against the law of necessity, is the
inspirer of all progress, and gives majesty and power to Justice.
Religion itself, art and literature, all stem from the urge to
liberty; that urge created in Christianity the revolt against
Destiny and now, in the Revolution, it creates the revolt against
Providence. It is a power of negation and destruction so far as
the old world is concerned, but for the new world it is a power
o f affirmation and construction.
The ninth section of Justice concerns ‘Progress and Decadence,’
and it also is largely a refinement of ideas already discussed in
The Philosophy of Progress. Progress, the negation of the Absolute,
can only be attained through the understanding of Justice. AndTHE PALADIN OF JUSTICE