Justice, like purpose and prudence, is a principle of organization, owing its virtue to the larger fulfilment of interest which it makes possible. Through this principle the individual is granted independence, in order that his freedom may remove every limit from his service. He is delivered from the bondage of violence and convention, but he is delivered into the charge of his own reason, which must give bonds not only that he will keep the peace, but that he will give {110} himself wholly to that true good which he may now discern. In justice the human secular society is perfected. By a secular society I mean a society held to be self-sufficient as it is; a society in which only those interests are acknowledged which are actually present, or have actually been admitted to a place of power or prestige. But secularism or _worldliness_ in this sense suffers from the general error of materialism, the error of mistaking the _de facto_ good for the whole good. It is only another case of that blindness which is the penalty of all self-sufficiency. The ancient and the modern types of worldliness present an interesting difference which will serve to illustrate their common fault. Greek literature abounds in the glorification of the life already achieved. Thus Solon asks no more of the gods than to be fortunate and honored: "Grant unto me wealth from the blessed gods, and to have alway fair fame in the eyes of all men. Grant that I may thus be dear to my friends, and bitter to my foes; revered in the sight of the one, awful in the sight of the other." [23] To this Pindar adds the petition that, "being dead I may set upon my children a name that shall be of no ill report." [24] Even the ideal of the philosophers is only a refinement of this; {111} recognizing the superiority of such activities as engage the imagination or reason, but nevertheless finding happiness to be complete in terms of the fulfilment of the dominant desires within the existing political community. This conception was vaguely distrusted, it is true; but it represents the characteristic enlightenment of the most enlightened centre of Greek life. Its insufficiency was not clearly demonstrated until the advent of Christianity; when it was proved to lie in a lack of _pity_. Now pity is not, as is sometimes supposed, a kind of weakness; it is a kind of knowledge, wherewith men are reminded of obscure and neglected interests. It is easy to understand why the Christian revolution should have been regarded as destructive of culture. For it meant not the qualitative refinement of the good, but the quantitative distribution of it. But it none the less marks an epoch in moral enlightenment; since the bringing of all men up to one level of opportunity and welfare is as essential a part of the good as the cultivation of distinction.