But it is possible to construe justice and freedom only negatively, as meaning that the individual is to be allowed to go his way in peace. Such a misconception is formalistic, in that it rests on a failure to recognize the providence or fruitfulness of justice. The virtue of justice lies not in its disintegration of society, but in its enabling the members of society to unite upon the highest plane of endeavor. Justice is a method wherewith men may profit collectively, and in their organized effort, from a sum of enlightenment to which every individual contributes his best. _Anarchism_ rests in the negative protest against {108} conformity; forgetting that the only right to liberty is founded on the possession of a reasonableness that inclines the individual to the universal; and forgetting that the only virtue in liberty lies in the opportunity for union and devotion which it provides. There is a more restricted form of anarchism in _scepticism_ which attaches finality to differences of opinion, and overlooks the fact that these very differences must be regarded as converging approaches to the common truth. For men can differ only in the presence of identical objects which virtually annul their difference. To be free to think as one pleases cannot but mean to think as truly as possible, and so to approach as closely as possible to what others also tend to think. But a larger importance attaches to that mild variety of anarchism which is commonly called _laissez-faire_, and which Matthew Arnold calls British Atheism or Quietism. The reader will recall Arnold's quotation from the _Times_: It is of no use for us to attempt to force upon our neighbors our several likings and dislikings. We must take things as they are. Everybody has his own little vision of religious or civil perfection. Under the evident impossibility of satisfying everybody, we agree to take our stand on equal laws and on a system as open and liberal as is possible. The result is that everybody has more liberty of action and of speaking here than anywhere else in the Old World. {109} And from Mr. Roebuck: I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not every man able to say what he likes? I ask you whether the world over, or in past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last.[22] This is an almost perfect representation of the sentimental interest in justice. In the course of such justice, "none of us should see salvation." It leaves wholly out of account the fact that when men are left free to talk or act or live as they will, they will either stagnate, or they will strive for the best and help it to prevail. If the latter, they will be brought back to the _state as the means of making right reason effective_, and of extending to all not simply the leave to be what they want to be, of following what Arnold calls their "natural taste of the bathos," but the opportunity of learning better.