7. The old notion, that Justice is minding your own business, and leaving your neighbour to mind his, furnishes a good rough statement of the obligations of _commutative justice_. They are mainly negative, to leave your neighbour alone in his right of life and limb, of liberty and property, of honour and reputation. But in two ways your neighbour's business may become yours in justice. The first way is, if you have any contract with him, whether a formal contract, as that between a railway company and its passengers, or a virtual contract, by reason of some office that you bear, as the office of a bishop and pastor in relation to the souls of his flock. The second way in which commutative justice binds you to positive action, is when undue damage is likely to occur to another from some activity of yours. If, passing by, I see my neighbour's house on fire, not having contracted to watch it for him, and not having caused the fire myself, I am not bound in strict justice to warn him of his danger. I am bound indeed by charity, but that is not the point here. But if the fire has broken out from my careless use of fire, _commutative justice_ binds me to raise the alarm. 8. The most notable potential parts of Justice--Religion, Obedience, Truthfulness--enter into the treatise of Natural Law. _Readings_.--Ar., _Eth_., V., i.; Plato, _Rep_., 433 A; _ib_., 443 C, D, E; St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 58, art. 2, in corp; _ib_., q. 58, art. 5; _ib_., q. 58, art. 6, in corp; _ib_., q. 58, art. 7; _ib_., q. 58, art 9, in corp.; _ib_., q. 61, art. 1, in corp.; _ib_., q. 61, art. 3, in corp.; Ar., _Eth_., V., ii., 12, 13; St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 62, art. 1, in corp., ad 2. * * * * * PART II. DEONTOLOGY. CHAPTER VI. OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. SECTION I.--_Of the natural difference between Good and Evil_. 1. A granite boulder lying on an upland moor stands indifferently the August sun and the January frost, flood and drought. It neither blooms in spring, nor fades in autumn. It is all one to the boulder whether it remain in the picturesque solitude where the glacier dropped it, or be laid in the gutter of a busy street. It has no growth nor development: it is not a subject of evolution: there is no goal of perfection to which it is tending by dint of inward germinal capacity seconded by favourable environment. Therefore it does not matter what you do with it: all things come alike to that lump of rock.