CRITERION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE 271
by the actual amount accomplished, for then the factor of nat- ural gifts disturbs our calculation in the manner already exhib- ited. Some can with the greatest ease solve problems which others with superhuman exertion could not even bring them- selves to comprehend. On the other hand a subjective standard in the way of feeling is unthinkable. In the absence of any- thing to serve as a unit I can compare the intensity of applica- tion of one time with that of another only as I vaguely think of it as more or less. But whether it is twice or three times as great I myself could never tell ; indeed it would be difficult to show that these terms have any meaning whatever. But if so, how much farther are we from being . able to compare the amount of exertion which one man puts forth with that of another. Or, waiving this, how are we to equate exertion and time, so as to determine what must be the length of a period of time in which a certain number of units of exertion are put forth whatever this may mean in order to counterbalance another period with a greater number of effort units ? And, finally, how shall we equate these factors with the intensity of the man's aversion to his particular task, or to steady work in general ? Unless we can answer these questions the moralist is forced to maintain that the very notion of apportioning reward according to desert is an absurdity of the first class. The attri- bution of merit and demerit is undoubtedly a fact of human experience, but we can never know in even the remotest degree their relative amounts in any two individuals ; and if not, then our instinctive impulse to create a system of society based on the ap- portionment in proportion to such amounts of reward (and penalty) an impulse having its roots in gratitude and resentment cannot be an integral portion of the moral ideal. Rewards, indeed, we may still bestow as a sign of approval or gratitude in those cases where the problem of quantity is a subordinate one ; as where we make up a purse for a fisherman who has saved a child from drowning ; rewards we may also bestow for reasons of diency ; but to anything beyond this nature itself has set up impassable barriers in the very constitution of the human mind.
