JUSTICE
The other kind is distributive justice, expressed in this passage from Romans: "Render to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor; owe no man anything but to love one another." Upon this Taylor comments, "This justice is distinguished from the first, because the obligation depends not upon contract or express bargain, but passes upon us by some command of God, or of our superior, by nature or by grace, by piety or religion, by trust or by office, according to that commandment, 'As every man hath received the gift, so let him minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.'"
Public instruction that ignores both our classical patrimony and our religious patrimony may fail to rear up just men and women. Positivist jurisprudence that denies any moral order and any religious sanction for justice may end in a general flouting of all law. We prate of "peace and justice" in a dissolving culture, without apprehending tolerably the words we employ. "Shrieking voices/ Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,/ Always assail them." These are the voices of the ideologue, the neurotic, and the nihilist, pulling down the old understanding of Justice, "to each his own."
"Justice is a certain rectitude of mind, whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him."
