bring trouble on a fellow-being. It calls out to me: “Stop!” and encircles the other as with a fence, so as to protect him from the injury which otherwise my egoism or malice would lead me to inflict on him. So arises out of this first degree of compassion the rule: Neminem laede. (Do harm to no one.) This is the fundamental principle of the virtue of justice, and here alone is to be found its origin, pure and simple, — an origin which is truly moral, and free from all extraneous admixture.

Otherwise derived, justice would have to rest on Egoism, — a reductio ad absurdum. If my nature is susceptible of Compassion up to this point, then it will avail to keep me back, whenever I should like to use others' pain as a means to obtain my ends; equally, whether this pain be immediate, or an