Quite as difficult as the comparison of different qualities or acts is the valuation of the inequalities in the same sphere of human action. That the statesman deserves a higher salary than his secretary, that the head of a great firm earns more than his cashier, and the latter more than the youngest clerk, that the designer in a factory is more important than the porter -- in all this, public sentiment and valuation agree. But when the grades of inequality are to be measured and to be expressed in figures, which is indispensable in all the practical questions, there will be many differences of opinion; and from this point of view indeed the opinion might be upheld that the psychological judgments which form the foundations of the conceptions of the just are always a chaos without unity and clearness. The objection which we so often meet on the field of aesthetic judgment seems obvious, that there is no general judgment, that all is a matter of individual taste, that mere individual processes of feeling are in question, which are immeasurably entangled, and which a fool alone could regard as a basis of public affairs and institutions.
This would in fact be true, if the individual thoughts and sentiments of men were, indeed, only the product of independent and isolated individuals. But every disposition of mind, every word, every idea, every conception, more profoundly examined, is the result not of an individual, but of a social process. The greatest genius even thinks and feels as a member of the community; ninety per cent of what he possesses is a trust conveyed to him by forefathers, teachers, fellow-creatures, to be cherished and bequeathed to posterity. The majority of everyday persons are little more than indifferent vessels into which flow the feelings and thoughts of preceding and contemporary millions.
Language is a product of society. By means of the spoken word, Herbart says, thought and feeling pass over into the mind of another. There they originate new fillings and thoughts, which forthwith cross the same bridge, to enrich the ideas of the first. Thus it happens that the smallest part of our thoughts originates in ourselves, and that we draw, as it were, from a public storehouse, and participate in a universal generation of thoughts to which each individual makes only a comparatively scanty contribution.
Supposing for the moment that the feelings on which the estimating judgments of what is just are founded, remain wholly in the obscure realm of mental temperaments, even in this stage they are not a psychological chaos, but a rhythmic movement of masses. And the more they rise to judgments and standards of valuation, the more the mental temperaments are condensed through the medium of public discussion, to decisions which possess distinct characteristics and criteria, the more we have before us mass-judgments which are not quite uniform, it is true, but still classed according to masses, grouped according to centres and authorities, and which are clear, firm and generally admitted. On account of the same qualities, in regard to the same purposes, they give the same results again and again and become the ruling standards of valuation.
Every period has prevailing conventional standards of valuation for human qualities and deeds, virtues and vices; it conventionally values this kind of action more highly than that, and so demands accordingly in one case greater rewards or greater honors, in another severer punishments or smaller incomes. These conventional standards of valuation are more or less the starting-point of every judgment of justice. A new and changed conception is measured in the first instance by its deviation from the traditions. As every fixation of price in society is not anew the result of demand and supply, but as demand and supply only try to modify traditional values, so it is also with the valuing judgments of justice or injustice. The sum of that which has been handed down as just, invariably forms the real basis of all judgments. A refined intuition of right demands a change here and there; in opposition to the sum total of conceptions of the just, this is only a single, but an important point.
In existing customs and in existing law, these conventional and traditional standards of valuation have their real bulwark;thus they have assumed a form which firmly, rigidly and uniformly governs wide circles of mankind, and in that well-defined form they are handed down from generation to generation. But they also can be found outside of this solid ground; they originate everywhere from repetitions of similar cases and form the basis of judgments of what is just. These judgments, indeed, arise daily and hourly in the mind of every thoughtful man in regard to all social relations of life; they are not confined to actual law. In family life the sister thinks it unjust that the brother is favored; in every social circle, visits, invitations, even smiles, looks and compliments are resented as unjust preferences.