Before advancing further it may be well to survey the tangled ground already traversed; for in mutuality, the third great section of Altruism, I have not been able to employ the simple treatment which Manners and Giving received. The principle throughout is precise and uniform. Within a specified field the interests of two or more persons are to be accounted identical, so that a double gain becomes possible, altruism transforming itself into egoism and egoism into altruism. This is the common principle which shapes every form of mutuality. But the extent of the fields specified differs so widely as to give rise to forms of very unlike moral value, which deserve separate examination.

In the field of partnership, for example, it is understood that the union will not continue indefinitely and that it has been brought about for attaining some external end. Partnership, bargaining, voluntary association would not come into existence were it not for the prospect of mutual gain. If one party alone gains, we see that some unfairness has occurred. Yet because in these unions mutuality is restricted to a small group and to the accomplishment of external purposes, they often become engines for a selfishness more intense than their separate members would approve. A popular proverb exaggerates but little in saying that corporations have no souls.

But such perilous restrictions are unnecessary. There can be mutuality without them. Instead of referring to an external end, unions can be formed for an internal purpose. The very lives and aspirations of two persons may be joined. That is unnecessary in business relations. I may dislike my partner personally, yet judge it wise to identify my commercial interests with his. When I make a purchase at a shop I do not inquire about the character of the dealer. With that I have no concern. His life is his, mine mine. Our mutual relation touches only the value of the article purchased. And something similar is true of our voluntary associations. I join my political club in the hope of furthering public interests; but, to tell the truth, I am often ashamed of my associates there. We have a common aim, but personally I will keep myself as clear from my fellow workers as possible. Under none of the conditions which I have called partnership do lives merge. To these unions for definable ends a termination is sometimes set, sometimes indefinitely anticipated.

Now, in the case of love, these restrictions are done away. Accordingly the whole principle of mutuality comes out there with a lucidity, power, and moving appeal which it cannot possibly have in the briefly planned arrangements of trade. For though love often passes away, no such cessation is contemplated. The eternal vows of lovers have always been a subject of jest. No doubt limited marriages have been proposed. But I suspect if they ever come about, what we mean by love will be omitted. It would strike most of us as absurd for me to ask Mary to join me in identifying our lives for a single year, sharing during that time our home, our aims, our inmost thoughts, but always intending at the end of that time to go our separate ways, unable to say “we.” External relations can be formed, dropped, and resumed, the persons involved remaining unaffected. That is not true of interior relations. These fashion a new personality to which old forms of morals, even old forms of language, no longer apply. Before advancing to explain as my final topic the special modifications of mutuality which fit it for a world principle, let me sum up the whole doctrine of love in some majestic lines attributed to Shakespeare. In 1601 a curious book appeared called Chester’s Love’s Martyr, containing a poem to which Shakespeare’s name was affixed. This single fact, and the unlikelihood that any one else had such compulsive power over words, are our only grounds for thinking Shakespeare wrote the piece. It is entitled “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” and allegorically describes the funeral of a pair of married lovers, the man denoted by the turtle, the woman by the phoenix. I quote only the funeral chant, omitting the picturesque introduction and the solemn ending:

What audacity of word and precision of thought! With what accuracy the paradoxes of love are stated! “To themselves, yet either—neither.” In the first stanza the sacred word “mutual” is introduced. Where else in our language is the conjunct self so completely set forth?

Yet we cannot pause even here. To make love a principle capable of universal application, it will need to be reconstituted and, while retaining its mutuality, to be stripped of sundry restrictions.

For love is ever selective. It chooses one and leaves another. It is exercised only toward definite persons, a little group, preferably two. The smaller the number the warmer the love. But what we are trying to discover is how altruism may penetrate the whole of life, organizing society and the state. That was our ambitious ideal, and love is not comprehensive enough for it. When we give ourselves up to the single person or small group fitted to receive our love, will there not be the same danger as appeared in the discussion of partnership, that the rest of the world will be shut out? A pair of lovers is notoriously unpleasing to everybody except themselves. In that little world of theirs they are so engrossed with the joint service of a common life that what happens in the needy world beyond is hardly noticed. Love of this sort is pretty far removed from universal altruism.

Nor is this danger confined to the passion of man for woman. Broader types of love show the same exclusive absorption. Each member of a household may be devoted to the rest and find his own gain through devotion to theirs. Here love attains a peculiarly beautiful mutuality. But it is still circumscribed. The family becomes sufficient for itself. Other families do not count. Love has been selective and, fixing its ardor on certain persons, shuts out the rest. Even the love of God and his children may narrow itself to interest in those only who approach him in the same way as ourselves. Our religious sympathy may not extend beyond our sect. Similar perils beset national love or patriotism.

No doubt in all these cases the narrower field may provide training for the broader; but so long as love is selective and waits upon personal interest it will be hard pressed by conditioning accident. Rightly does Spenser declare that for the combinations of love the stars’ consent is necessary. Circumstance, juxtaposition, plays a large part at the beginning of love. The one who would interest me may not happen to come my way; and I cannot love one whom I do not know. Obtaining such knowledge, too, even in regard to one very near, is uncertain business. I see some one who calls out what is best in me and am confident that joining with her will bring about a glorious life for us both. But can I be sure? An error in estimating will ruin not me alone but her too, whom I would honor. Knowledge, an important condition of love, is hard indeed to obtain. Nor in reckoning the hindrances to love as a universal principle can we pass by the mysteries of temperament. Many a person have we known to be lovable whom we could never love. Peculiarities of inheritance, training, habit, instinctive feeling in two persons, while not diminishing their worth, may render hopeless their adaptation to one another.

Selective love, then, hampered by its need of acquaintance, nearness, and knowledge, can never become a universal principle, binding mankind together. It shows, however, what we want. Nowhere else does altruistic fervor attain such depth. But it lacks breadth and is possible only within narrow bounds. We have been seeking to extend mutuality, the double gain, the abolition of both egoism and altruism, far beyond those bounds and reach a method by which mankind as a whole might engage in the joint service of a common life. Such an ideal would preserve all characteristics of love except its limitations. But the removal of these will affect it so deeply as to oblige a new name. I call it Justice.

Let us examine a case where mutualistic conduct shows traits beyond the reach of selective love. I go to a shoemaker and ask for a pair of shoes. He hands me a pair, I pay his price, and carry them home. As I come to wear them, I find them admirably made. They give me greater comfort than I have ever had before and wear longer. The leather appears to have been selected with care, and every nail and stitch to have received attention. I return to their maker and say: “That was a remarkable pair of shoes. Did you make them specially for me? Perhaps you have known me before, have taken a fancy to me, and so have been willing to put yourself to all this trouble for my convenience. That is the way with love. It takes burdens on itself to relieve another.” How astonished the dealer would be at such talk! Would he not answer: “I had no thought of you, but I made the shoes as well as I could. It is my business.” “But,” I continue, “if you never know to whom your shoes will go, why take such pains?” “Because I mean to be true to my job and not shirk my part in the ongoing of the world. If I do bad work somebody, I don’t know who, will suffer. I mean to be a good shoemaker.” Here is professional responsibility. The man deals justly with his unknown public.

And in such professional responsibility we pass from individual love to that noble public love which I have ventured to call Justice. Love remains, but it is now universal love, love freed from selection and without those restrictions of knowledge, circumstance, and temperament on which selection is based. No doubt in individual love there is an intimacy and a wealth of feeling which this case has not. But in it selfishness is also more pronounced. Knowing John well, I am confident that in joining my life with his, and with his only, we shall both be enriched. But the shoemaker carries his blessing to the unknown and joins himself rather with the public good. He gets his gain by giving gain to those whom he has never seen. It is true that the transaction may be partly explained on the grounds already noticed. An exchange has occurred by which buyer and seller have alike profited. But something more than calculation of profit has gone into these shoes. They would have sold readily with half the care. But this man respected business standards, was something more than a trader, gave not by equivalent measure, and was more concerned over possible danger to his customers than over extra labor for himself. That is the essence of professionalism. While frankly seeking mutual gain and declining anything one-sided, it abandons all thought of exact equivalence, keeping in the foreground standards of excellence approved by its group and looking to public service. Or is there in the professional man something still deeper than the characteristics just mentioned, something of which these are but the outgrowth? The professional man enjoys his work and would rather do it than not. Many of us, perhaps most, are driven to work by the need to live. We will do that work faithfully and not disappoint those who depend on us. But we often think of work as toil, do as little of it as possible, and find our enjoyment quite outside it. Days of freedom from that toil are eagerly anticipated. How different is the professional spirit! It took up its work originally not as a task but as a chance to gratify a personal interest. To following that interest through all its windings its heart has been given. Throughout there has been a passion for perfection, never realized, never abandoned. Each day carries accomplishment forward and discloses wider ranges into which skill might extend. Hardship, lack of gain, failure to be recognized are matters of slender consequence. The work itself is its own rich reward.

Such is professional responsibility at its best. It is responsibility to no individual, not even so much to the general public as to the profession chosen. Perhaps we catch the spirit most readily among artists and scholars, who proverbially show little regard for financial results. But even where regard for money is patent and necessary, this professional spirit is often also present.

I am ill and call a physician. He comes to my bedside day by day, studies my case with elaborate care, gives up large amounts of precious time to my whims, and never allows his moods to intrude, so that on my recovery I cannot help saying: “What a sympathetic person you are! I do not see how you can hold an interest in so many people and feel their afflictions as if they were your own.” Such a remark would be as inadequate as if I had said: “You have thoroughly earned your fee.” Both would be true, and both would point to motives which might rightly influence him. But into that complex motive would go a third factor more influential still, if he was a worthy physician. He cares for the healing art. Of course he is unwilling that I, this individual person, should suffer. But it is not the “me” element nor the money element which made him take his trouble. He would have done the same for a stranger. And this impartial attitude is, on the whole, best. Personal sympathy is often disturbing. Let him coolly survey me as a case of typhus fever, and I shall get his best service. Through me he relieves suffering, obtains for himself a due income, gains larger knowledge of disease and skill in combating it; in short, meets the responsibilities of an arduous and interesting profession.

One may wonder why I call this impersonal extension of love Justice. Because justice seeks to benefit all, but all alike. It knows no persons, or rather it knows every one as a person and insures each his share in the common good. All the altruism of love is here, but without love’s arbitrary selection and limited interest. We do wrong in thinking of justice as chiefly concerned with penalties. These are incidental, inflicted on those who refuse to find their gain in the gain of others. The main work of justice is its equal distribution of advantage and its insistence that each individual shall be faithful to what he undertakes for the benefit of all. Justice is therefore thoroughgoing love, its mutuality guarded, rationalized, stripped of personal bias, and brought near us through the avenues of our special work.

Only we must not confine the professions to the four usually reckoned: teaching, preaching, medicine, and the law. The professional spirit may vitalize work of every sort. Here is a poor man to whom few enjoyments are open, who goes out morning after morning to shovel gravel or to engage in some other labor equally uninteresting. He earns his two or three dollars a day, takes it home, and hands it to his slatternly wife. Once he was drawn to her by romantic love. With her he figured a real union, each continually happy in the sight of the other and each day bringing to both an inward joy. He did not know her. He had neither the opportunity nor the ability to study her temperament and learn whether it was adjustable to his. It proved not to be so. Children came, cares increased, she neglected herself, her home, her husband. There was no longer any warmth of affection between them. But still he goes on working for her unmurmuringly. She is a wife and mother, he a husband and father. To these relationships he will be faithful. Is not his a larger love than that of the courtship? I do not see that we can say so. But it is love of a different sort and a very noble sort. We called love the joint service of a common life. Though she no longer joins him, he joins the community in maintaining the family tie. What keeps him going is his professional responsibility. Being a good husband is the task assigned him in the general division of labor. He recognizes its justice, controls his temper, and patiently meets the hardship involved. I cannot see how there is less professional responsibility here than in the case of the shoemaker or physician. Indeed, wherever any one is true to his specific task, puts his heart into it, works not for money alone nor through interest in a single individual, but, without calculating any equivalence between what he gives and receives, studies how he may most fully perform the work to which he has been called, that man is exhibiting professional responsibility, honoring love, and exalting justice in a way to deserve profound reverence.