The first degree, then, in which this natural and genuine moral incentive shows itself is only =negative=. Originally we are all disposed to injustice and violence, because our need, our desire, our anger and hate pass into the consciousness directly, and hence have the _Jus primi occupantis_. (The right of the first occupant.) Whereas the sufferings of others, caused by our injustice and violence, enter the consciousness indirectly, that is, by the secondary channel of a mental picture, and not till they are understood by experience. Thus Seneca (_Ep._ 50) says: _Ad neminem ante bona mens venit, quam mala_. (Good feelings never come before bad ones.) In its first degree, therefore, Compassion opposes and baffles the design to which I am urged by the antimoral forces dwelling within me, and which will 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 after-consequence, whether it be effected directly, or indirectly, through intermediate links. I shall therefore lay hands on the property as little as on the person of another, and avoid causing him distress, no less mental than bodily. I shall thus not only abstain from doing him physical injury, but also, with equal care I shall guard against inflicting on him the suffering of mind, which mortification and calumny, anxiety and vexation so surely work. The same sense of Compassion will check me from gratifying my desires at the cost of women's happiness for life, or from seducing another man's wife, or from ruining youths morally and physically by tempting them to _paederastia_. Not that it is at all necessary in each single case that Compassion should be definitely excited; indeed it would often come too late; but rather the rule: _Neminem laede_, is formed by noble minds out of the knowledge, gained once for all, of the injury which every unjust act necessarily entails upon others, and which is aggravated by the feeling of having to endure wrong through a _force majeure_. Such natures are led by reflecting reason to carry out this principle with unswerving resolution. They respect the rights of every man, and abstain from all encroachment on them; they keep themselves free from self-reproach, by refusing to be the cause of others'