The Ethical Solution
And now our political digression is ended, and we are ready at last to answer the question with which we began—What is justice?
There are only three things worthwhile in this world—justice, beauty and truth;
and perhaps none of them can be defined.
Four hundred years after Plato a Roman procurator of Judea asked, helplessly, "What is truth?"—and philosophers have not yet answered nor told us what is beauty.
procurator，检察官
But for justice Plato ventures a definition. "Justice," he says, "is the having and doing what is one's own" (433).
venture，尝试
This has a disappointing sound;
after so much delay we expected an infallible revelation.
infallible，绝对正确的
revelation，启示
What does the definition mean?
Simply that each man shall receive the equivalent of what he produces, and shall perform the function for which he is best fit.
A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best, and giving the full equivalent of what he receives.
A society of just men would be therefore a highly harmonious and efficient group;
for every element would be in its place, fulfilling its appropriate function like the pieces in a perfect orchestra.
Justice in a society would be like that harmony of relationships whereby the planets are held together in their orderly (or, as Pythagoras would have said, their musical) movement.
So organized, a society is fit for survival;
and justice receives a kind of Darwinian sanction.
Where men are out of their natural places, where the business man subordinates the statesman, or the soldier usurps the position of the king—there the coördination of parts is destroyed, the joints decay, the society disintegrates and dissolves.
subordinate，指使
usurp，撺掇
Justice is effective coördination.
And in the individual too, justice is effective coördination, the harmonious functioning of the elements in a man, each in its fit place and each making its coöperative contribution to behavior.
Every individual is a cosmos or a chaos of desires, emotions and ideas;
let these fall into harmony, and the individual survives and succeeds;
let them lose their proper place and function, let emotion try to become the light of action as well as its heat (as in the fanatic), or let thought try to become the heat of action as well as its light (as in the intellectual)—and disintegration of personality begins, failure advances like the inevitable night.
Justice is a taxis kai kosmos—an order and beauty—of the parts of the soul;
it is to the soul as health is to the body.
All evil is disharmony: between man and nature, or man and men, or man and himself.
[ 00’45” ] procurator (检察官)
[ 01’23” ] venture (冒险做……)
[ 04’15” ] infallible (绝对正确的)
[ 04’18” ] revelation (启示)
[ 04’22” ] Revelation (神的启示)
[ 05’49” ] perform the function (实现功能)
[ 07’45” ] sanction (制裁；认可)
[ 08’07” ] subordinate (下命令)
[ 08’35” ] decay (消退)
[ 08’42” ] disintegrate (分解)
[ 12’28” ] Failure advances like the inevitable night. (失败不可避免)
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