ABSTRACT
Justice and social morality have not been promoted by ethical codes or Platonic discourses, but by the curtailment of powers established on foundations of irrationalism. To the revolt of reason and to the clinching arguments of pike and powder is due that measure of moral decency which graces modern civilisation and distinguishes Europe from Dahomey, the twentieth from the sixteenth century. The moral tradition which reached the conclusion of its irrationalism in that depth of inanity has successfully obscured the fact that morality is justice, that justice is the whole of morality, that to do wrong is to inflict wrong. That transformation by Stoical and Epicurean thought of the original Greek conception of morality constitutes the most profound perversion which the ethical ideals of men have suffered. Moral conduct between man and man, which does not result in the actual good of mankind is shorn of its function.
