We become chiefly what we are more through others than through ourselves, and happy is the man whose path in life leads him only by good men and brings him together with good men. How often we forget in judging others the influences under which they have grown up. How can one expect a child to be truthful when he sees how servants, yes often parents, practise deceit. How many children hear from those to whom they look up, expressions, principles, and prudent rules of life, which consciously or unconsciously exercise an influence on the young life of the child. Yet with how little of loving introspection we pass our judgments.
In judging of others a man laboreth in vain, often erreth, and easily sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboreth fruitfully.--_Thomas à Kempis._
One definition of justice is “giving to each what he or she is due.” The problem is knowing what is “due”. Functionally, “justice” is a set of universal principles which guide people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no matter what culture and society they live in. Justice is one of the four “cardinal virtues” of classical moral philosophy, along with courage, temperance (self-control) and prudence (efficiency). (Faith, hope and charity are considered to be the three “religious” virtues.) Virtues or “good habits” help individuals to develop fully their human potentials, thus enabling them to serve their own self-interests as well as work in harmony with others for their common good. The ultimate purpose of all the virtues is to elevate the dignity and sovereignty of the human person. While often confused, justice is distinct from the virtue of charity. Charity, derived from the Latin word caritas, or “divine love,” is the soul of justice. Justice supplies the material foundation for charity. While justice deals with the substance and rules for guiding ordinary, everyday human interactions, charity deals with the spirit of human interactions and with those exceptional cases where strict application of the rules is not appropriate or sufficient. Charity offers expedients during times of hardship. Charity compels us to give to relieve the suffering of a person in need. The highest aim of charity is the same as the highest aim of justice: to elevate each person to where he does not need charity but can become charitable himself. True charity involves giving without any expectation of return. But it is not a substitute for justice. [“Toward Economic and Social Justice: Founding Principles of CESJ,” 1987.]
She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski. But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked- -as women can walk--with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot summer day in town. "It's Sunday again--another week past," she thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies' dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to her.
Non potest severus esse in judicando, qui alios in se severos esse judices non vult=--He cannot be strict in judging who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.
"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country; Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use of," continued Napoleon--hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)--"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a military commander.
On the eighth of September an officer--a very important one judging by the respect the guards showed him--entered the coach house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name." Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field. It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly. These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw the French.
He ceased, and Agamemnon thus replied Fly, and fly now; if in thy soul thou feel Such ardor of desire to go--begone! I woo thee not to stay; stay not an hour On my behalf, for I have others here Who will respect me more, and above all All-judging Jove. There is not in the host King or commander whom I hate as thee, For all thy pleasure is in strife and blood, And at all times; yet valor is no ground Whereon to boast, it is the gift of Heaven Go, get ye back to Phthia, thou and thine! There rule thy Myrmidons. I need not thee, Nor heed thy wrath a jot. But this I say, Sure as Apollo takes my lovely prize Chrysëis, and I shall return her home In mine own bark, and with my proper crew, So sure the fair Brisëis shall be mine. I shall demand her even at thy tent. So shalt thou well be taught, how high in power I soar above thy pitch, and none shall dare Attempt, thenceforth, comparison with me.
Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon Karataev.
The picture thus presented by Hindu society--as made up of a confused congeries of social groups of the most varied standing, each held together and kept separate from others by a traditional body of ceremonial rules and by the notion of social gradations being due to a divinely instituted order of things--finds something like a counterpart in the religious life of the people. As in the social sphere, so also in the sphere of religious belief, we find the whole scale of types represented from the lowest to the highest; and here as there, we meet with the same failure of welding the confused mass into a well-ordered whole. In their theory of a triple manifestation of an impersonal deity, the Brahmanical theologians, as we have seen, had indeed elaborated a doctrine which might have seemed to form a reasonable, authoritative creed for a community already strongly imbued with pantheistic notions; yet, at best, that creed could only appeal to the sympathies of a comparatively limited portion of the people. Indeed, the sacerdotal class themselves had made its universal acceptance an impossibility, seeing that their laws, by which the relations of the classes were to be regulated, aimed at permanently excluding the entire body of aboriginal tribes from the religious life of their Aryan masters. They were to be left for all time coming to their own traditional idolatrous notions and practices. However, the two races could not, in the nature of things, be permanently kept separate from each other. Indeed, even prior to the definite establishment of the caste-system, the mingling of the lower race with the upper classes, especially with the aristocratic landowners and still more so with the yeomanry, had probably been going on to such an extent as to have resulted in two fairly well-defined intermediate types of colour between the priestly order and the servile race and to have facilitated the ultimate division into four "colours" (_varna_). In course of time the process of intermingling, as we have seen, assumed such proportions that the priestly class, in their pride of blood, felt naturally tempted to recognize, as of old, only two "colours," the Aryan Brahman and the non-Aryan Sudra. Under these conditions the religious practices of the lower race could hardly have failed in the long run to tell seriously upon the spiritual life of the lay body of the Brahmanical community. To what extent this may have been the case, our limited knowledge of the early phases of the sectarian worship of the people does not enable us to determine. But, on the other hand, the same process of racial intermixture also tended to gradually draw the lower race more or less under the influence of the Brahmanical forms of worship, and thus contributed towards the shaping of the religious system of modern Hinduism. The grossly idolatrous practices, however, still so largely prevalent in the Dravidian South, show how superficial, after all, that influence has been in those parts of India where the admixture of Aryan blood has been so slight as to have practically had no effect on the racial characteristics of the people. These present-day practices, and the attitude of the Brahman towards them, help at all events to explain the aversion with which the strange rites of the subjected tribes were looked upon by the worshippers of the Vedic pantheon. At the same time, in judging the apparently inhuman way in which the Sudras were treated in the caste rules, one has always to bear in mind the fact that the belief in metempsychosis was already universal at the time, and seemed to afford the only rational explanation of the apparent injustice involved in the unequal distribution of the good things in this world; and that, if the Sudra was strictly excluded from the religious rites and beliefs of the superior classes, this exclusion in no way involved the question of his ultimate emancipation and his union with the Infinite Spirit, which were as certain in his case as in that of any other sentient being. What it did make impossible for him was to attain that union immediately on the cessation of his present life, as he would first have to pass through higher and purer stages of mundane existence before reaching that goal; but in this respect he only shared the lot of all but a very few of the saintliest in the higher spheres of life, since the ordinary twice-born would be liable to sink, after his present life, to grades yet lower than that of the Sudra. Entry: HINDUISM
_Map-Making among the Romans._--We learn from Cicero, Vitruvius, Seneca, Suetonius, Pliny and others, that the Romans had both general and topographical maps. Thus, Varro (_De rustici_) mentions a map of Italy engraved on marble, in the temple of Tellus, Pliny, a map of the seat of war in Armenia, of the time of the emperor Nero, and the more famous map of the Roman Empire which was ordered to be prepared for Julius Caesar (44 B.C.), but only completed in the reign of Augustus, who placed a copy of it, engraved in marble, in the Porticus of his sister Octavia (7 B.C.). M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus (d. 12 B.C.), who superintended the completion of this famous map, also wrote a commentary illustrating it, quotations from which of Ammianus Marcellinus of Antioch (d. 330), Pliny and others, afford the only means of judging of its character. The map is supposed to be based upon actual surveys or rather reconnaissances, and if it be borne in mind that the Roman Empire at that time was traversed in all directions by roads furnished with mile-stones, that the Agrimensores employed upon such a duty were skilled surveyors, and that the official reports of the commanders of military expeditions and of provincial governors were available, this map, as well as the provincial maps upon which it was based, must have been a work of superior excellence, the loss of which is much to be regretted. A copy of it may possibly have been utilized by Marinus and Ptolemy in their compilations. The Romans have been reproached for having neglected the scientific methods of map-making advocated by Hipparchus. Their maps, however, seem to have met the practical requirements of political administration and of military undertakings. Entry: A
Cudworth, in the work above mentioned, gives no systematic exposition of the ethical principles which he holds to be thus intuitively apprehended. But we may supply this deficiency from the _Enchiridion Ethicum_ of Henry More, another thinker of the same school. More gives a list of 23 _Noemata Moralia_, the truth of which will, he says, be immediately manifest. Some of these admit of a purely egoistic application, and appear to be so understood by the author--as (e.g.) that goods differ in quality as well as in duration, and that the superior good or the lesser evil is always to be preferred; that absence of a given amount of good is preferable to the presence of equivalent evil; that future good or evil is to be regarded as much as present, if equally certain, and nearly as much if very probable. Objections, both general and special, might be urged by a Hobbist against these modes of formulating man's natural pursuit of self-interest; but the serious controversy between Hobbism and modern Platonism related not to such principles as these, but to others which demand from the individual a (real or apparent) sacrifice for his fellows. Such are the evangelical principle of "doing as you would be done by"; the principle of justice, or "giving every man his own, and letting him enjoy it without interference"; and especially what More states as the abstract formula of benevolence, that "if it be good that one man should be supplied with the means of living well and happily, it is mathematically certain that it is doubly good that two should be so supplied, and so on." The question, however, still remains, what motive any individual has to conform to these social principles when they conflict with his natural desires. To this Cudworth gives no explicit reply, and the answer of More is hardly clear. On the one hand he maintains that these principles express an absolute good, which is to be called intellectual because its essence and truth are apprehended by the intellect. We might infer from this that the intellect, so judging, is itself the proper and complete determinant of the will, and that man, as a rational being, ought to aim at the realization of absolute good for its own sake. In spite, however, of possible inferences from his definition of virtue, this does not seem to be really More's view. He explains that though absolute good is discerned by the intellect, the "sweetness and flavour" of it is apprehended, not by the intellect proper, but by what he calls a "boniform faculty"; and it is in this sweetness and flavour that the motive to virtuous conduct lies; ethics is the "art of living well and happily," and true happiness lies in "the pleasure which the soul derives from the sense of virtue." In short, More's Platonism appears to be really as hedonistic as Hobbism; only the feeling to which it appeals as ultimate motive is of a kind that only a mind of exceptional moral refinement can habitually feel with the decisive intensity required. Entry: C
JASMIN, JACQUES (1798-1864), Provençal poet, was born at Agen on the 6th of March 1798, his family name being Boé. His father, who was a tailor, had a certain facility for making doggerel verses, which he sang or recited at fairs and such-like popular gatherings; and Jacques, who used generally to accompany him, was thus early familiarized with the part which he afterwards so successfully filled himself. When sixteen years of age he found employment at a hairdresser's shop, and subsequently started a similar business of his own on the Gravier at Agen. In 1825 he published his first volume of _Papillotos_ ("Curl Papers"), containing poems in French (a language he used with a certain sense of restraint), and in the familiar Agen _patois_--the popular speech of the working classes--in which he was to achieve all his literary triumphs. Jasmin was the most famous forerunner in Provençal literature (q.v.) of Mistral and the _Félibrige_. His influence in rehabilitating, for literary purposes, his native dialect, was particularly exercised in the public recitals of his poems to which he devoted himself. His poetic gift, and his flexible voice and action, fitted him admirably for this double rôle of troubadour and jongleur. In 1835 he recited his "Blind Girl of Castel-Cuillé" at Bordeaux, in 1836 at Toulouse; and he met with an enthusiastic reception in both those important cities. Most of his public recitations were given for benevolent purposes, the proceeds being contributed by him to the restoration of the church of Vergt and other good works. Four successive volumes of _Papillotos_ were published during his lifetime, and contained amongst others the following remarkable poems, quoted in order: "The Charivari," "My Recollections" (supplemented after an interval of many years), "The Blind Girl," "Françounetto," "Martha the Simple," and "The Twin Brothers." With the exception of "The Charivari," these are all touching pictures of humble life--in most cases real episodes--carefully elaborated by the poet till the graphic descriptions, full of light and colour, and the admirably varied and melodious verse, seem too spontaneous and easy to have cost an effort. Jasmin was not a prolific writer, and, in spite of his impetuous nature, would work a long time at one poem, striving to realize every feeling he wished to describe, and give it its most lucid and natural expression. A verse from his spirited poem, "The Third of May," written in honour of Henry IV., and published in the first volume of _Papillotos_, is engraved on the base of the statue erected to that king at Nérac. In 1852 Jasmin's works were crowned by the Académie Française, and a pension was awarded him. The medal struck on the occasion bore the inscription: _Au poëte moral et populaire_. His title of "Maistre ès Jeux" is a distinction only conferred by the academy of Toulouse on illustrious writers. Pius IX. sent him the insignia of a knight of St Gregory the Great, and he was made chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He spent the latter years of his life on a small estate which he had bought near Agen and named "Papillotos," and which he describes in _Ma Bigno_ ("My Vine"). Though invited to represent his native city, he refused to do so, preferring the pleasures and leisure of a country life, and wisely judging that he was no really eligible candidate for electoral honours. He died on the 4th of October 1864. His last poem, an answer to Renan, was placed between his folded hands in his coffin. Entry: JASMIN
KEITH, FRANCIS EDWARD JAMES (1696-1758), Scottish soldier and Prussian field marshal, was the second son of William, 9th earl marishal of Scotland, and was born on the 11th of June 1696 at the castle of Inverugie near Peterhead. Through his careful education under Robert Keith, bishop of Fife, and subsequently at Edinburgh University in preparation for the legal profession, he acquired that taste for literature which afterwards secured him the esteem of the most distinguished savants of Europe; but at an early period his preference for a soldier's career was decided. The rebellion of 1715, in which he displayed qualities that gave some augury of his future eminence, compelled him to seek safety on the Continent. After spending two years in Paris, chiefly at the university, he in 1719 took part in the ill-starred expedition of the Pretender to the Highlands of Scotland. He then passed some time at Paris and Madrid in obscurity and poverty, but eventually obtained a colonelcy in the Spanish army, and, it is said, took part in the siege of Gibraltar (1726-27). Finding his Protestantism a barrier to promotion, he obtained from the king of Spain a recommendation to Peter II. of Russia, from whom he received (1728) the command of a regiment of the guards. He displayed in numerous campaigns the calm, intelligent and watchful valour which was his chief characteristic, obtaining the rank of general of infantry and the reputation of being one of the ablest officers in the Russian service as well as a capable and liberal civil administrator. Judging, however, that his rewards were not commensurate with his merits, he in 1747 offered his services to Frederick II. of Prussia, who at once gave him the rank of field marshal, in 1749 made him governor of Berlin, and soon came to cherish towards him, as towards his brother, the 10th earl marishal, a strong personal regard. In 1756 the Seven Years' War broke out. Keith was employed in high command from the first, and added to his Russian reputation on every occasion by resolution and promptitude of action, not less than by care and skill. In 1756 he commanded the troops covering the investment of Pirna, and distinguished himself at Lobositz. In 1757 he commanded at the siege of Prague; later in this same campaign he defended Leipzig against a greatly superior force, was present at Rossbach, and, while the king was fighting the campaign of Leuthen, conducted a foray into Bohemia. In 1758 he took a prominent part in the unsuccessful Moravian campaign, after which he withdrew from the army to recruit his broken health. He returned in time for the autumn campaign in the Lausitz, and was killed on the 14th of October 1758 at the battle of Hochkirch. His body was honourably buried on the field by Marshal Daun and General Lacy, the son of his old commander in Russia, and was shortly afterwards transferred by Frederick to the garrison church of Berlin. Many memorials were erected to him by the king, Prince Henry, and others. Keith died unmarried, but had several children by his mistress, Eva Mertens, a Swedish prisoner captured by him in the war of 1741-43. In 1889 the 1st Silesian infantry regiment No. 22 of the German army received his name. Entry: KEITH