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POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ISLAM

Conceptions of Justice from

Earliest History to Islam

Abbas Mirakhor · Hossein Askari

Political Economy of Islam

Series Editors
Hossein Askari
George Washington University
Leesburg, VA, USA

Dariush Zahedi
University of California
Berkeley, CA, USA
All Middle Eastern countries, with the exception of Israel and Lebanon,
profess Islam as their state religion. Islam, whether simply in words or in
fact, is woven into the fabric of these societies, affecting everything from
the political system, to the social, financial and economic system. Islam is
a rules-based system, with the collection of rules constituting its i­ nstitutions
in the quest to establish societies that are just. Allah commands mankind
to behave in a fair and just manner to protect the rights of others, to be
fair and just with people, to be just in business dealings, to honor
­agreements and contracts, to help and be fair with the needy and orphans,
and to be just even in dealing with enemies. Allah Commands humans to
establish just societies, rulers to be just and people to stand up for the
oppressed against their oppressors. It is for these reasons that it said that
justice is at the heart of Islam. In the same vein, the state (policies) must
step in to restore justice whenever and wherever individuals fail to comply
with divine rules; government intervention must enhance justice. This
series brings together scholarship from around the world focusing on
global implications of the intersections between Islam, government, and
the economy in Islamic countries.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14544
 Abbas Mirakhor • Hossein Askari

Conceptions of Justice
from Earliest History
to Islam
Abbas Mirakhor Hossein Askari
La Junta, CO, USA Leesburg, VA, USA

Political Economy of Islam

ISBN 978-1-137-54567-1    ISBN 978-1-137-54303-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54303-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933901

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
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To the one (as) waiting and awaited
 Foreword

The Islamic concept of justice, like all other facets of Islam’s worldview,
has two separate vectors that delimit its properties. The first points to
itself, that is to its own inherent qualities, boundaries and definitions.
Here, the yardstick of understanding is human, including at times the
human understanding of the divine commands. It expresses itself as justice
understood in terms of philosophy, theology, sociology, economics, and
institutions of state and society. As the idea is played out on the canvas of
history, it is affected by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Necessarily
therefore, it becomes subject to change and evolution. Certain core
notions of it appear to be permanent, but even these subtly change with
time and place. An example of this is the idea that justice is correlated to
the degree and extent to which one abides with divinely sanctioned com-
mands in societies with an overtly religious culture. In the Western world,
these have metamorphosed in time from justice as the appropriate obser-
vance and fealty to duties, to one where justice becomes in part a matter
of acknowledging rights. An inversion takes place, and rights assume the
place of duties. This is now an almost universal phenomenon, undermin-
ing traditional concepts of justice and replacing them by a desacralized
understanding.
The other vector of Islam’s concept of justice points to the Absolute, to
the One whence all manifestations of existence flow. This is an altogether
different field of understanding. It requires different tools of cognition. It
demands that an effort be made to understand the will of the Creator,
through the limited powers of human knowledge. As part of this process,
the individual has to look within himself or herself for the signs of the

vii
viii FOREWORD

Divine, to the outer worlds and to the text of the Qur’an, as the bedrocks
of the human being’s encounter with the traces of the Absolute. “We shall
show them Our Signs on the horizons and within themselves until it
becomes clear to them that it is the Truth.”1 the Qur’an proclaims.
Furthermore, another dimension needs to be understood, namely that of
the intermediary space that connects and negotiates the sacred world of
signs and meanings and the relative world in which humans dwell. This
other dimension is the Qur’anic realm of the “barzakh,” the interstice, the
world of revelation and prophecy. In consequence, the conventional
understanding of justice becomes unmoored from the here and now, and
from a purely humanist dimension. It follows an altogether different tra-
jectory. This trajectory requires the cultivation of several strands of knowl-
edge and experience: of the revealed Law, reason, the prophetic practice
and example, the path of the illumined ones and one’s own inner experi-
ence of the idea of justice. All of these combine to form an approximation
of our understanding of the will of the Creator, and imperfect though it
may be, it is essential for the realization of the counterpoint to the entirely
time and space-bound dimension.
The key to all of these apparently contradictory routes is the principle
of balance. In a world whose inner dimensions are ordered by divine
decree and whose outer forms seem to obey only natural and human laws,
Islam demands an effort to accommodate both, inside a unified field of
understanding. Meaning and form; essence and attribute; contemplation
and action. Thus, justice based on an entirely human construct renders the
idea barren of a sacred component and disconnects it from the wellsprings
of faith. Alternatively, justice devoid of a connection with the realm of
time and space, denies the possibility of manifestation and self-disclosure
of the One, making it, in effect, impossible to understand and relate to.
The outer language of the Qur’an is expressed in a highly particular
form of Arabic. It is designed not only to be understood by the Arabs of
seventh-century Arabia but also to act as the springboard to its easy adop-
tion by other linguistic and ethnic groups. Its inner linguistic form, how-
ever, is a universal spiritual language, meant to transcend cultures and
societies and ethnicities. The word justice in the Qur’anic Arabic is ren-
dered as ‘Adl. The word itself has a multiplicity of meaning. In its com-
mon usage, it can mean “even,” “to determine with evenness,” “to be
equal to,” “ to attribute value.” It is also the opposite of inequity and
unfairness. In the Qur’an, however, the word is used with further shades of
meanings. There are five basic usages of the word in the Qur’an. The first
 FOREWORD ix

implies an offering or recompense.2 The second implies expiation or

amend.3 The third implies fairness, the opposite of inequity.4 The fourth
implies to set aright.5 Lastly, it implies equalizing.6
Relating all these different usages to their origin in the One, it appears
most appropriate to use the term ‘Adl as implying to make even; or in
other words to tilt toward making whole or manifesting it. In this sense,
‘Adl is a form of predisposition by the Absolute toward bringing being
into existence. From immutable essences in the mind of the Creator exis-
tence is titled into manifestation. The tilting toward making whole is
therefore a divine attribute of the first order of creation. Justice in the
world is a form of making things whole, which in turn is the core of
uprightness (istiqama). Both of these are mechanisms by which we can
recognize and acknowledge the power of the Absolute in times when we
as individuals or societies or nations are called upon to judge matters.
However, before we are called upon to act justly, we also must under-
stand the cascade of the attributes of the Divine that impinge directly on
the manner and outcome of the decision. These are arranged hierarchi-
cally in an appropriate mixing and interlocking of attributes. Thus
Knowledge leads to Wisdom; Will leads to Power which leads to its appli-
cation as Force. All of these co-mingle to produce ‘Adl, justice and its
enforcement through Power. In the universe of symbols and meanings,
the scale of Islam is the Scale of the Law, aligned with Reason, the example
of the Prophet and the illumined ones, and the Text. Each one elaborates,
modifies, amplifies and moderates the others. In the knowledge of God,
all is equal. But as the immutable essence is manifested into existence, then
existence is ordered by rankings, each one partakes in differing degrees in
God’s bounty or fadhl. Inequality in means and provision, at one level is
only a reflection of the differing quanta of fadhl or mercy that God dis-
penses to existence, including human beings. At another level though, the
text admonishes the hoarding of riches and the massive discrepancies in
material wealth between individuals and nations. We all share in God’s
bounty of being tilted into existence; but the discrepancies in living cir-
cumstances is a product of zulm, the opposite of justice; or in effect the
absence of justice. Tolerating oppressive inequalities, or zulm, on account
of tafdhil, or being awarded a higher measure by God, is not an acceptable
outcome for the just person.
The establishment of justice also requires a scale or mizan. The scale of
the Law is the weighting of the two pans, and the presence of an indicator
and a lever. In the Qur’an, God had given humankind the power of the
x FOREWORD

scale and with it an admonishment to weigh justly. The scale of the Sharia
is one measure of the scale but not the only one. The scale as a whole is a
scale of qist, or the Just Scale. So justice is not the outcome of weighing of
fact and judgments, nor is it the following of precedent nor the automatic
outcome of transgressing the boundaries of the Sharia. It is an inherent
quality of the scale itself. Justice is achieved by humankind holding up the
scale at all times. Everything is put in its appropriate place. Justice in turn
is enhanced by Wisdom, which is to act in ways that are appropriate.
Wisdom that takes precedence over rankings and hierarchy. Anyone who
acts wisely and is driven by the Just Scale exhibits the correct courtesy or
“adab” toward the Creator. In regular steps, the just person progresses to
the rank of Wali or Friend of God.
The inner dimension of the idea of justice in Islam echoes throughout
the new work of Askari and Mirakhor. It infuses their profound dissection
of the notion of justice as an element of just governance. They set out to
demonstrate how Islam’s concept of justice underlies any serious debate
on inequalities, poverty reduction, fair governance and institutional
arrangements. Critically, they establish that justice within an Islamic
worldview is best served in the context of autonomous units that are basi-
cally self-governing. In this regard, they depart radically from the conven-
tional discourse that sets justice within the framework of the large,
centralized state. For example, Rawls’s theory of distributive justice
requires essentially the intrusive and controlling power of the state to
effect the outcome in the direction that is sought. A corollary therefore of
the just state in Islam is in fact the just community and the just individual,
self-correcting and bound by internally consistent sets of rules, principles
and values. The role of the state becomes one of referee and supervisor,
rather than initiator and executor. Needless to say this is a far cry from the
modern state in the Islamic lands, which combine the worst aspects of the
domineering state with dysfunction and abysmal governance. What they
also imply is that the idea of the state in Islam has to be radically rethought
if it is to be able to reflect the imperative of providing a canopy of just rule
for, rather than over, society. This is an altogether admirable work of syn-
thesis as well as an exploration into an area of immense significance that
has exercised Muslim minds over the centuries.

Baghdad, Iraq Ali Allawi

March 7, 2019
 Foreword  xi

Notes
1. The Qur’an: Sura 41, Aya 53.
2. Qur’an 2:48 (“…Nor shall any compensation be taken from it, nor shall they
be helped”).
3. Qur’an 5:95 (“…Or the expiation is the feeding of the poor or the equiva-
lent of it in fasting”).
4. Qur’an 4:58 (“…And when you judge between people judge with justice”).
5. Qur’an 82:7 (“…Who created you, then made you complete, then made
you even”).
6. Qur’an 6:1 (“…Yet those who disbelieve set up equals with their Lord”).
 Preface

During a span of about 45 years, we have individually and collectively

written a number of modest articles and books on various aspects of
Islamic teachings—economics, finance, development and governance—
but all along we were looking forward to providing the bedrock for all that
we have tried to explain. That bedrock is justice. Justice is the essence of
Islam, and the principal mission of all prophets has been to bring justice to
their communities. Yet, today we see little justice in the landscape of
Muslim countries. In our two volumes on justice, we hope to shed a little
light on the conception of justice in Islam and offer some thoughts on
how injustice came to prevail in Muslim communities. To provide perspec-
tive to the conception of justice in Islam, we thought it would be helpful
to briefly survey the conception of justice through the ages, from earliest
history to the present. In this our first book, we examine conceptions of
justice from the times of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) to Islam; and in the sec-
ond book we continue from Islam to the present.

Leesburg, VA Hossein Askari

Berkeley, CA  Dariush Zahedi

xiii
 Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Dr. Ali Allawi, a renowned scholar, author and a most
astute observer of the Muslim predicament, for contributing the Foreword
to our modest contribution. In addition to enhancing our understanding
of Islamic civilization through the ages, Dr. Allawi has designed and imple-
mented policies of reform at the highest level of government in Iraq. We
are grateful for the hard work of the editors at Palgrave Macmillan for
improving our modest manuscript. As always, we thank our families for
their love and support.

xv
 Recent Publications

• Mirakhor, Abbas and Hossein Askari, 2010, Islam and the Path to
Human and Economic Development, Foreword by Ali Allawi
• Askari, Hossein, Zamir Iqbal, Noureddine Krichene and Abbas
Mirakhor, 2010, The Stability of Islamic Finance: Creating a Resilient
Financial Environment for a Secure Future, Foreword by Sir
Andrew Crockett
• Askari, Hossein, Zamir Iqbal, Noureddine Krichene and Abbas
Mirakhor, 2011, Risk Sharing in Finance: The Islamic Finance
Alternative
• Askari, Hossein, Zamir Iqbal and Abbas Mirakhor, 2014, Challenges
in Economic and Financial Policy Formulation: An Islamic Perspective
• Askari, Hossein, Zamir Iqbal and Abbas Mirakhor, 2015, Introduction
to Islamic Economics: Theory and Application
• Askari, Hossein and Abbas Mirakhor, 2015, The Next Financial
Crisis and How to Save Capitalism, Foreword by Vittorio Corbo

xvii
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Conception of Justice: Pre-Axial Age 17

3 Conception of Justice: Pre-Axial India 49

4 Conception of Justice: Pre-Axial Mesopotamia 63

5 Conception of Justice: Pre-Axial—Noah, Abraham and

Moses 97

6 Conception of Justice: Axial Age—India, China and

Greece115

7 Conception of Justice: Post-Axial Age Christianity165

8 Islam and the Conception of Justice181

xix
xx Contents

9 Earlier Muslim Scholars and Philosophers on Justice215

10 Conclusion241

Bibliography257

Index291
 List of Boxes

Box 2.1 The Timeline of Ancient Egypt 31

Box 2.2 The 42 Principles of Maat 32
Box 2.3 Selections from the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant 33
Box 8.1 Imam ‘Ali’s (as) Letter to Malik al-Ashtar 199

xxi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

What is justice? What are its dimensions and facets? Whose justice is it? Is
justice an individual or a communal pursuit? Is it a virtue? If so, is it a natu-
ral, artificial or conventional virtue? Where can justice be found? Is it in
the fabric of the cosmos? Does it even exist and has it ever existed? Is it in
plain sight or is it embedded in the inner psyche of humans and a virtue
closely linked to the natural law, as Cicero claimed in his De Officiis? Is it
a moral flame that burns in the heart of all humans or is it simply a human
creation? Is it timeless or does it evolve and change with the passage of
time? Is justice defined as a state of affairs, set of principles, a practice or a
system? Is justice a contract for mutual advantage between individuals in a
society or in a country? Is justice simply the way humans want to assess
important facets of life—fair or unfair? Why do most humans yearn for
justice but never find it? Why do people want to be seen as just? Why has
justice, something not easily defined, mattered so much throughout
human existence on this planet?
Can there be true justice without simultaneously considering the inter-
ests of all of humanity and that of all generations to come? Can there ever
be justice without a sea change in individual morality, ethics and values?
No matter differing human capabilities, are humans of equal worth and
thus deserve equal justice? While some posit that justice means equality, or
at least a measure of equality, but equality in what? Equality before the
law? Equality of freedom? Equality of opportunities? Equality of wealth or
income? Is a theoretical, abstract or philosophical perception of justice

© The Author(s) 2019 1

A. Mirakhor, H. Askari, Conceptions of Justice from Earliest History
to Islam, Political Economy of Islam,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54303-5_1
2 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

sufficient or does humanity need an idea of justice that can be put into
practice? Is the practice of justice defined by only a set of institutions or do
social conventions and customs matter too? Are the institutions of justice
and supporting social conventions and customs all or nothing, or are they
targets to be reached over time?
We hope to address how philosophers and other thinkers have addressed
some of these questions and issues from the dawn of time, with special
reference to Islamic teachings, which as we will see is a system that emerges
in a society whose members internalize and follow a set of rules extracted
from the Qur’an and interpreted by the Prophet Mohammad (sawa).
The evolution of the conception of justice has been shaped by religion,
philosophy and economics. While the role of religion and philosophy is
readily recognized, the role of economics ideology in the conception of
justice may be less so. But religion, philosophy and economics have
shaped, and will continue to shape, economic and social rights and thus
our conception of justice. In our modest contribution, all three play a
central role, and as for religion our principle focus in this contribution is
on Islam.
However we define or perceive justice, for centuries it has perhaps been
seen as the greatest of virtues, the virtue of all virtues. Where justice pre-
vails, humans have hope; they know that with perseverance they can suc-
ceed; the disabled among them would be provided for; peace and harmony
are more likely to prevail; and societies are more likely to thrive. In the
absence of justice, humans are likely to be set against one another; instead
of productive competition, aggression and destruction, turmoil is likely to
become the order of the day; and societies are unlikely to thrive. If there
is any truth to these assertions, then justice may be at the foundation of a
harmonious and thriving society, country and world. Throughout recorded
history, many societies have deemed justice a virtue independent of reli-
gious belief and one that all governments should uphold. A just person is
defined, in the Oxford English Dictionary, as one who “does what is mor-
ally right” and is inclined to “giving everyone his or her due”; but what is
“morally right” and “his or her due” have been interpreted and practiced
very differently throughout history. The word “just” is also not immune
from abuse, as it is married to actions to cover acts that may be egregious
and unjust—just wars, just conflicts, just revenge, just retribution, just
taxes and the like.
Today, what we commonly refer to as justice may be broadly divided
into two, “commutative” (or “corrective”) and “distributive” (or “social”)
 INTRODUCTION 3

justice. The origin of the division and the term “distributive justice” is
attributed to Aristotle.1 The conception of commutative justice (crime and
punishment)—the effective prevention of harm to members of society and
to their property by others—has remained more or less intact through
time, and it is generally agreed that governments have a critical role to
support and enforce commutative justice. On the other hand, the concep-
tion of distributive social justice has been anything but intact. While the
origin of the term social justice has been traced to the Jesuit Priest Luigi
Taparelli D’Azeglio, who apparently coined the expression in the 1840s,2
it was an outgrowth of the writings of a number of philosophers in the
nineteenth century—including the giants of moral philosophy Hobbes,
Hume, Kant, Rousseau and Smith—who portrayed the landscape of jus-
tice a human creation as opposed the handmaiden of nature and all human
beings having the same worth and also being equals on this earth. Thus,
the idea of social justice, a result of human actions, began to take shape.
The latter considered social justice as demand for equality among humans
because their Creator has created them equal even though they may differ
with respect to characteristics of their individuality. Until the turn of the
twentieth century, it appears that the idea of social justice was little differ-
ent from the Aristotelian concept of distributive justice, via Saint Thomas
Aquinas, that justice regulated human relations for the common good.
The two terms—social and distributive—are used by some interchange-
ably (notably Hayek), while some (notably Rawls) see “social” as applying
to all institutions whereas distributive being more restricted in its institu-
tional coverage to the distribution of goods and resources. Others split
social justice into two parts—“procedural” justice and “distributive” jus-
tice, procedural justice being concerned with the procedure used for
reaching decisions—transparency, consistency, representation, impartiality
and distributive justice—the “just” division of the economic pie (produc-
tion and wealth) among the members of society that includes owners of
capital, workers, those who cannot provide for themselves and the animal
species. To avoid confusion as to which definition of social justice is
implied, we use the two terms (distributive and social) interchangeably in
order to preserve the original references to authors who use one or the
other or use them interchangeably, but for our purposes in this book,
when we use “social justice,” we are referring to distributive justice unless
otherwise indicated.
Distributive justice has been and continues to be a prime concern of polit-
ical and religious philosophers, economists, clerics, societies, g
­ overnments
4 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

and indeed of those striving for world order, and has evolved, is evolving and
is far from settled, and while some see a role for governments in its enforce-
ment, others do not. Distributive justice shapes a society and its political
system and determines the material wellbeing of groups and individuals; and
the political and social system, in turn, affects distributive justice (a veritable
loop). Justice shapes our attitude toward members of society and society at
large and what we conceive as “fair”—hard work resulting in commensurate
rewards and fair chance of getting ahead. It affects our willingness to invest
in our self through formal and informal education to increase our productiv-
ity. It is an important factor in social harmony and can lead to division or
cohesion among the members of a community.
Distributive justice impacts poverty, which in turn heavily influences
the mental and physical health, lifespan, productivity and outlook on life
of the poorer members of society. Poverty could lead the poor to commit
crimes, to steal and to even kill and impinge on the rights of others in
order to survive. All of these influence human state of mind, trust in soci-
ety, work habits, human productivity, economic output, perception of the
political system and in turn participation, and ultimately the overall human
fulfillment on this plain of existence. More broadly, it could be claimed
that justice brings harmony, peace and health to societies and countries,
whereas injustice brings conflict and turmoil; and a society or a nation at
peace may be also more likely to be at peace with its neighbors. Justice
may be simply the glue that holds societies and humanity together and
prevents a state of continuous conflict.
The search for justice can be divided into two broad approaches—
defining a goal for justice (and then deriving the principles and institutions
required for achieving it) or alternatively laying down rules that must be
strictly followed to achieve justice; the two approaches could also be
coined as exogenous and endogenous theories of justice, respectively.
Looking at the evolution of distributive justice through history, some have
been concerned with the justness or fairness of the process of individual
journeys through life, while others have focused on the final outcome;
some accept humans as they are, while others explicitly or implicitly advo-
cate changing human behavior (such as from hoarding to sharing, or from
selfishness to altruism); some are interested in the principles of justice (an
exogenous system), while others are focused on a just social and economic
system that would emerge if certain rules were followed (an endogenous
system); some theories have religious roots, while others are of a human
construct; and some theories are abstract, impractical and near impossible
 INTRODUCTION 5

to implement, while others could be more easily put into practice. The
perennial quest for justice is a continuing concern across time and space.
Our goal in this modest endeavor is to provide a brief history of the
evolution of thinking on justice, from earliest history to the birth of Islam.
How Islam’s perception of justice departed from these earlier conceptions
and why the Islamic vision was practiced for only a brief period during the
life of the Prophet (sawa). In a follow-up volume, we discuss the concep-
tions of justice after Islam to the times of Rawls and Sen, including the
contributions of contemporaneous Muslim thinkers and an assessment of
the state of justice in Muslim countries.

Markers in the Theories of Justice

Given the perennial quest for justice throughout history, justice has been
a preoccupation of philosophers, clerics and religions. The list of names,
religions and movements associated with the quest for justice is too long
to list and even more difficult to examine in this brief survey, but even a
short list would include:

King Hammurabi of Babylon (1792–1750 BC), Zarathustra or Zoroaster

(8500–500 BC), Homer (800–700 BC), Thales of Miletus (624–546
BC), Buddha (563–544 BC), Confucius (551–479 BC), Xenophanes
(570–475 BC), Pythagoras (570–495 BC), Heraclitus (535–475 BC),
Sophocles (497–406 BC), Socrates (470–399 BC), Plato (428–348
BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), Epicurus (341–270 BC), Marcus Tullius
Cicero (106–43 BC), Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), Hebrew Bible, Christian
Gospels, St. Augustine (354–430 AD), Qur’anic Revelations and Islam
(609–632), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Desiderius Erasmus
(1466–1536), Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564),
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John
Locke (1632–1704), Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694), Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Frances Hutcheson (1694–1746),
Joseph Butler (1692–1752), David Hume (1711–1776), Jean Jacques
Rousseau (1712–1788), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Adam Smith
(1723–1790), Saint Simon (1760–1825), Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788–1860), Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770–1831), Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873), Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), Henry Sidgwick
(1838–1900), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895),
6 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Friedrich

Nietzsche (1844–1900), Henry George (1839–1897), Alfred Marshall
(1842–1924), John Bates Clark (1847–1938), Friedrich Hayek
(1899–1992), John Rawls (1921–2002), Ronald Dworkin (1931–2013),
Amartya Sen (1933–), Robert Nozick (1938–2002), Gerald Cohen
(1941–2009), Martha Nussbaum (1947–) and Thomas Pogge
(1953–).

Zarathustra (Zoroaster), a prophet born in, or around, what is modern-­

day Iran, is reputed by some scholars to have expressed the first theory of
justice in the earliest version of the Golden Rule. Other surveys of the
written history of justice begin with the Code of King Hammurabi of
Babylon. The code contains a long list of grievous acts and the associated
and appropriate punishment. The punishments are harsh and hierarchical.
Namely, the punishment among equals for a crime is different than
between two who are unequal; if a person at the lower end of the hierarchy
inflicts harm on a person at the higher end, the punishment is much more
severe than the punishment for a higher person who inflicts the same harm
on a lower person. From the Babylonian system of justice to the time of
the Greek philosophers, the preoccupation of justice was with revenge and
balanced versus unbalanced reciprocity as conveyed in the Homeric epic
The Iliad. The emphasis on reciprocity and retribution in the conception
of justice and the incorporation of hierarchy (or elitism in consideration of
punishment), though scaled down somewhat overtime, continued to the
Greek philosophers, with changes coming in the writings of Plato. For
Plato, “The objective is to help construct a just terrain and ultimately to
improve the characters of persons by whatever means are best suited to
achieve this objective.”3 Be this as it may, the motivation of justice was still
seen to protect the weaker members of society from abuse: “The aim of
‘social justice’ in the ancient world was to protect the weak and the vulner-
able, not to bring about social equality.”4
The Christian philosopher and Platonist, St. Augustine, argued “…
nobody can be truly just without being a faithful Christian. ‘Justice is that
virtue which gives to each his due,’ he says, but ‘what kind of justice is it,
then, that takes a man away from the true God and subjects him to impure
demons? Is this giving to each what is due?’”5 But mainstream Western
thinking about justice is, and has been, that it is a secular virtue, a virtue
that a person can attain without belief in deity. Aristotle was the first to
differentiate between natural law and divine law. The law that all humans
 INTRODUCTION 7

share, or natural law, “…suggests that people can transcend differences in

religion, culture and philosophy for the purpose of public order…Faith is
necessary to accept the divine law, say Aquinas and his followers, but all
human beings, whether Christian or not, can and should grasp the natural
law.”6 The delineation of natural and divine law passed on through the
ages and was adopted by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Hutcheson, who had a
profound influence on Adam Smith, distinguished between “perfect”
rights (commutative) and imperfect rights (distributive), a delineation
that Adam Smith adopted. But importantly, justice did not mean equality
and was not seen as enforceable by the state.
The unequal perception of justice was built on the notion that human
beings were born with vastly different capabilities and were thus meant to
be unequal throughout their life, and in turn should receive unequal con-
sideration when it came to the dispensation of justice. This “unequal”
perception of justice throughout Western history lasted to about the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries. Importantly, what we include under
distributive justice today, namely, the distribution of output and wealth,
was not seen as a matter for justice but was instead a consideration for
beneficence.
The dramatic change in thinking came about in the writings of Thomas
Hobbes, followed by David Hume, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel
Kant and Adam Smith during the period of the Enlightenment. For
Hobbes, inequalities of all kinds were a result of human conventions—
laws, institutions and shared beliefs. But in nature, all human beings are
equal. Thus, every human must have an equal say in the principles estab-
lished by society. While Hobbes did not advocate equality, he did indeed
help establish the notion that all humans had equal rights by the force of
nature. Hobbes provided the platform for Rousseau, Kant and Smith to
argue that it was not so much differences in talent that resulted in inequal-
ity but was instead differences in available opportunities.
As a result of Hobbes’ contribution (Leviathan) and the writings of
Hume, Rousseau, Kant and Smith, two major principles became part and
parcel of the evolution of Western ideas about justice. First, differences in
capabilities that earlier thinkers had attributed to natural talent were
largely a result of political and social arrangements. Second, no matter dif-
fering capabilities, all humans are of equal worth and thus deserve equal
justice. This changed the way all great philosophers had essentially referred
to distributive justice since Aristotle. Namely, distributive justice a private
virtue (and part of a broader set of social virtues) that relied on private
8 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

beneficence and had little or nothing to do with the state, the distribution
of goods or property and state enforcement to achieve justice.
Adam Smith (including some of his contemporaries and disciples)
believed that the most disadvantaged person in the market-based system
was better off than the same in any other system and possibly even better
off than the more fortunate in any other system, and equality in distribu-
tion was not a matter for justice. This vision of justice, in essence, for
Smith and others before him was what in the Aristotelian system is
regarded as commutative justice. Distributive justice has no role in Smith’s
system. He had no commitment to egalitarian principles. Whatever con-
cern he had for distribution was summarized in his view that there was
nothing wrong either with income or wealth inequality, so long as the
poor had a chance to better themselves. Otherwise, his view was pretty
well the same as the contemporary slogan that “the rising water raises
all boats.”
Between 1820 and 1840, a number of continental European thinkers
had theorized that capitalist development would unfold into a struggle
between capitalists and the working classes. Engels presented a moral
argument that market capitalism was built on selfishness and greed, and
thrived on competition. Collaboration between Marx and Engels during
the 1844–1848 produced The Communist Manifesto (1848), which
described a process for the emergence of a new social-political-economic
system that preserved the human-liberating character of capitalism but
without private property and competition. Under capitalism, there would
be a new form of slavery where individuals had little control over their
own labor and lives resulting in a life of emptiness with physical and eco-
nomic deprivation along with spiritual poverty. Schumpeter was a voice in
defense of capitalism, argued in his book, The Theory of Economic
Development (1911), that capitalism was the most powerful instrument
for the generation of improvements in material wellbeing. The path of
evolution may be toward socialism, Schumpeter argued, not because of
the inherent shortcomings of capitalism but because of its unintended
adverse effects.
Unlike philosophers, prophets were given the Divine Law containing
the scriptures with the rules and the criteria to achieve balance and were
charged with the mission of teaching them and urging humans to follow
the rules to achieve justice. In such a setting, morality, therefore, is a result
of just behavior. In contrast, non-theocentric thought considers justice on
the basis of morality. These systems must find ways in which a consensual
 INTRODUCTION 9

agreement is reached on the concept of justice and fairness according to

which goods and services produced can be distributed. To do so, they
must first devise moral theories that provide reason to justify a particular
distributional system. One such theory is utilitarianism, which champions
a distributional criterion. It avoids concerns with justice, but bases itself on
morality. An action is considered justified if it increases aggregate utility,
with utility defined as happiness. Accordingly, there is only one moral issue
involved in a course of action or social policy: does it achieve the greatest
total happiness for all? This is a criterion by which not only individual and
social actions are judged, but one according to which various societies are
compared.
There is much criticism of utilitarianism. Two stand out. First, it pro-
motes the sacrifice of innocent individuals and their interests if it means
increasing the happiness of the whole and serves totalitarian objectives.
Second, it weighs the happiness of all individuals equally without regard to
differences in their contribution to society. The founder of utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham defined utility as the sum of all pleasures minus all pains,
and advocated a system to maximize utility, referred to as the happiness
principle. Utilitarianism found much popular support.
Unhappy with utilitarianism, John Rawls searched for an alternative
principle of distribution relying on the concept of the social contract—a
procedural approach that assumes some key features of what is fair and
impartial in order to arrive at what would be considered a just outcome.
After considering the main characteristics of justice as fairness and the
theoretical superiority of this approach to utilitarianism, Rawls settles on
two principles of justice, where members of society, with different con-
cepts of good and just, can all agree to cooperate with each other and form
a social compact because of mutual advantage and not because of love or
pursuit of justice. Rawls argues that the unknowing chooser (as to whether
she or he would happen to end up in the least desirable position) would
choose that allocation that maximizes the opportunities for the group of
citizens with minimum advantage. This conclusion then allows compari-
sons between societies with respect to their distributive justice. A society is
just if the least advantaged in the society are at least as well off as the least
advantaged would be in any other alternative. Rawls’ theory of justice
touched off debates, which continues today after more than four decades.
Arguably, most scholarly output on justice since the publication of Rawls’
A Theory of Justice has directly or indirectly referenced this seminal contri-
bution to the field of justice.
10 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

There are those who agree with Rawls’ basic idea that justice means
equality in the allocation of “primary goods” to all people, but who differ
about how to compensate those who are disadvantaged; among these are
Dworkin, Roemer, Gomberg and Sen. To Sen, equality and justice are
something different. Capabilities represent the true and important oppor-
tunities individuals have to lead or achieve a certain type of life.
Functionings, on the other hand, represent the actual life they lead. In this
framework, freedom is “the real opportunity we have to accomplish what
we value.” Consequently, progress is assessed primarily in terms of whether
the freedoms that people have are enhanced. Equality and justice for Sen
mean equalizing the “capability set,” the set of functionings from which a
person chooses. Others, such as Giri, argue that Sen neglects the develop-
ment of the “self,” maintaining that self-development is a crucial aspect of
societal development without which Sen’s approach would not succeed.
Cameron criticizes Sen for focusing only on the poor and lower levels of
income while ignoring or neglecting the upper levels of income and the
impact of income inequality on the development of capabilities. Thomas
Pogge presents a strong case that affluent functionings damage human
wellbeing and that the behavior of the affluent is a direct cause of the
underdevelopment of poor countries. Gerald Cohen takes issue with
Rawls who takes markets and self-interested motives of participants as a
given, and, on the other, he requires that the citizens of a just society
“willingly submit to the standard of just society embodied in the differ-
ence principle.” Cohen’s position is that inequality can only be overcome
if there is a sea change in human outlook and motivation.
As we hope to show in a follow-up volume, the Rawlsian prescription
that inequality can be tolerated as long as it is to the benefit of the most
disadvantaged members of society does not reflect justice in Islam. For
how can a system be classified as just when a few could demand and receive
obscene wealth in order to contribute their talents, while many may have
to struggle to make ends meet? Rawls would answer that if the talented
did not get what they demanded for their contribution, then the disadvan-
taged would be even worse off. How can a humanitarian demand such
rewards while others struggle? The Rawlsian prescription may be sensible
but it cannot be called just. In fact, while most Western conceptions of
justice share some common elements with the Islamic conceptions, none
of them come close to it. There has to be a sea change in human values,
ethics and beliefs before any of the Western theories of justice could be
called “just.”
 INTRODUCTION 11

Justice in Islam
While Western thinking on distributive justice has evolved from ancient
history—Zarathustra—the time of the early Greek philosophers, Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle, to the present and is still evolving, the Islamic frame-
work and conception of a just society has not changed with time because
it is derived from the Qur’an and Muslims believe that the Qur’an repre-
sents Allah’s (swt) divine words and is thus time immutable. The founda-
tion of the Islamic political, social and economic system was laid down
centuries ago in the Qur’an and interpreted and briefly practiced by the
Prophet Mohammad (sawa) in Medina with the Constitution of Medina
standing as its written foundation and proof of its practice. The achieve-
ment of just societies is one of the most important, possibly the most
important, goals of a Muslim community. In Islam, perhaps the important
mission of the prophets has been to bring justice to human communities
without which a community cannot be called Islamic. Both the Prophet
(sawa) and the Imams (as) have emphasized that the “spirit” and the very
“life” of the rules prescribed by Allah (swt) in the Qur’an are justice.
The Qur’an’s basis for justice is that societies do not need a separate
theory of justice, but that compliance with rules of behavior handed down
in the Qur’an and interpreted by the Prophet assures the emergence of a
system of justice as a natural outcome of the practice of a rule-compliant
society. Justice and a just social and political system are thus an essential
outcome of the Islamic system if Muslims comply with divine rules. As a
result, justice is endogenous in Islam, whereas in most Western theories it
is separate and is superimposed from the outside or is exogenous. Simply
said, a society will be just if the rulers and the people are rule compliant.
Justice or ‘adl literally means placing things in their rightful place and also
affording equal treatment to others. In other words, Islam has two simple
propositions for a just society: (1) place things in their rightful position
and (2) give everyone their rightful due. The first can be merged into the
second. The rightful place and right dues are guaranteed by compliance
with the rules. According to the Qur’an and Hadeeth, existence of poverty
in a society is evidence that it is an unjust society and that poverty is caused
by violation of rules by the rich.
To appreciate the context of justice in Islam, it may be helpful to
emphasize an evident fact observed by David Hume in Enquiry and dis-
cussed by Martha Nussbaum, namely, when distributive justice is an issue or
a binding constraint.7 Hume identifies four cases where either there is no
need for justice or where justice is ineffective:
12 A. MIRAKHOR AND H. ASKARI

Case 1: no scarcity, no work, no competition, no need for justice

Case 2: scarcity, unlimited human benevolence and generosity, no need
for justice
Case 3: the opposites of 1 above where human condition is so bad that
cooperation cannot achieve anything, justice cannot take hold
Case 4: the opposite of 2 above where humans are utterly wicked and can-
not conform, justice is ineffective

In other words, as noted by Nussbaum, “…justice has a point only

when there is a moderate but not desperate scarcity of possessions and
when human beings are selfish and competitive, with bounded generosity,
but also capable of limiting their conduct. That Hume believes to be our
actual situation… “…Thus, [quoting Hume] the rules of equity or justice
depend entirely on the particular state and condition in which men are
placed, and owe their origin and existence to that utility, which results to
the public from their strict and regular observance.” … Justice, then, is a
convention whose utility is directly related to the circumstances, physical
and psychological, in which we are placed. And Hume further stresses that
among those circumstances is a rough equality of power among human
beings.”8 Hume’s observations are important but are also relevant when
we examine Islamic teachings and the Islamic vision of justice and dis-
tributive justice, in part because Muslims are to believe that the Creator
gave humankind sufficient resources to thrive on this earth as long as they
shared His gifts. Hume’s observations about the conditions where justice
is an issue—conditions of scarcity and the nature of the human condition—
provide the perfect background for assessing the Islamic framework and
vision for humanity.
In Islam, justice thrives and proliferates when everything is placed in
its rightful place and is achieved by simply following the divine rules. In
order to generate genuine debate inside Muslim societies and thus be
effective in bringing about needed change, the criticisms of their policies
and practices must be framed around the contradictions and inconsisten-
cies of the behavior of these regimes against the framework they are espous-
ing. In this way, first establishing the Islamic framework for a just society
and then proceeding to compare policies and practices to this framework,
any errors or failures can be readily identified and attributed. It is the
institutional structure of society and its policies that allow a pattern of
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strong on him during a period of manly piety through which he had passed
in the nursery. So I kept Mr. Vickery to myself, hugging him in secret, and I
was content to ask no questions about those eagle-feathered picnics of the
past. It is much for us if we can catch but a reflection of the light of the
great days; it is enough, even though their depth is screened from us by fifty
commoner years. Mr. Vickery shall not be exposed to the daunting chill of
Deering’s irony if I can help it.
Such was my feeling; for it seemed clear to me that Mr. Vickery had
lived on incautiously till he faced a critical age, knowing nothing of its
deadly arts, needing protection. And thereupon I noticed that he was now
conducting the Marchesa and the well-fed man on a tour round the studio,
pausing at one after another of the pictures; and I began to perceive,
following and listening, how much he required my kindly care while he was
flanked by the great ones of the earth. The well-fed man was Lord
Veneering (or something to that effect), and he explained to the Marchesa
that he was “forming a gallery” at a little place he had bought in the
country, and that Mr. Vickery had very obligingly “aided him with expert
advice”; and the Marchesa said pleasantly that one couldn’t do better than
follow Mr. Vickery’s taste, because he possessed, what is nowadays so rare,
the spirit of the great masters. “This,” said Mr. Vickery, indicating one of
the canvases, “is a little smudge of paint that pleases me as well as anything
I ever did—which may seem odd to a layman, for it’s purely a painter’s
picture. Very bad policy, in these days, to spend time over work like that;
but we paint for each other, we of the trade—we understand.” The velvet
breeches and the sheepskin seemed to me to occupy their usual places in
this picture, but his lordship was particularly struck by their “high relief.”
Mr. Vickery didn’t hear, he was lost for a moment in contemplation. “Yes,”
he said, “a painter would understand what I’ve tried to say there.” Our
carping age, represented by the Marchesa and Lord Veneering, reverently
gazed. Mrs. Vickery, still over her papers at the table, glanced up at her
husband with a look that understood more, I incline to think, than many
painters. Certainly he was well muffled against our chilling and doubting
day; but I wonder how he would have shielded his complacency if his wife
had spoken her mind. However she was much too deep in her entries and
reckonings for a wild idea like that.
 XV. VIA DELLE BOTTEGHE OSCURE

I DON’T pledge myself to the actual street, twisting into the dark heart of
Rome, that led me to the great solemn palace of the Marchesa; but it
might have been the street of the Dark Shops, and I am apt to think it
may. It rambled vaguely into the gloom of all the ages and brought me to a
stand before an immense portone, the doorway of a family whose classic
name was inscribed in monumental lettering upon the lintel. What a name!
—it strode away across the long centuries, it wore the purple and the tiara,
it raised its shout in the bloody brawls of its faction, it disappeared into the
barbaric night; and again it emerged, plain to see, clear in the classic day,
the pride and the renown of the young republic. It seems, as you read it over
the doorway, to speak casually of Scipio, of Cincinnatus, friends of
yesterday, vanished so lately that there has barely been time to miss them;
and there may be a touch of parade in this, but who shall prove it?—and
anyhow it is a great and glorious name, nobly time-worn from its
immemorial journey, and it is written over the dark archway of the palace
for its only and sufficient decoration. You enter accordingly under the sign
of all the Roman history that you ever read, you cross the cloistered court
and mount the broad sweep of the staircase; and you find yourself in the
presence of a shy kind elderly Englishwoman, who appears to be still
wondering a little, after many years, how she came there.
The great old family, though it still held up its head with high dignity,
seemed to have outlived its fortune in the world. The Marchesa sat in the
midst of tattered and shredded relics of splendour, mildly boiling her kettle
over a spirit-lamp; and I don’t know how she came there, but in many years
she had never succeeded in wearing her faded state with confidence, and
she looked forlorn and patient, quietly accepting as a duty a condition of
things that she didn’t understand. She was too lady-like in her gentle
manners for the worldly pride of her majestic drawing-room; and whereas
its majesty held aloof more proudly than ever in impoverishment, she
herself was too humble to reject the little comfort and kindness of a hissing
kettle and a few sociable friends to tea. She tried to keep one hand upon
their homely support without losing touch at the same time with the palatial
scorn that watched her; and yet there was a disconnexion somehow, and she
hadn’t the power, the impudence, the adaptability, whatever it might be, to
make herself the link between the two. It may have been easier in the
Marchese’s lifetime (he was long departed); but now she had to carry her
prodigious name by herself, and the weight of the responsibility, and her
earnest sense of her duty, and her simple unassuming inefficiency—what
with it all there was much to make her look anxious and bewildered while
we sat, she and I, waiting for the kettle to boil. She was conscious of having
too much history on her hands; and yet she couldn’t in loyalty disown it and
settle comfortably down upon the style and culture of a plain quiet
Englishwoman.
The good Marchesa, she had somehow been left all alone in her august
establishment by deaths, accidents, dispositions that are obscure to me; but
the result of them was that she sat by herself in a corner of her mighty
palace, watched and terrorized from a distance by a crowd of her kindred,
offshoots in many degrees of her husband’s race—a needy Roman throng
possessing complicated claims on her, rights to bully her, chances to
torment her with conscientious scruples; and no doubt she had found that
her integrity and her perfect manners were a very poor match for the guile
of twenty centuries of Rome. “I’m expecting two English nephews of mine
this afternoon,” she said—“such dear boys”; and again, “My sister writes to
me from Devonshire to ask me if I can introduce them to a few nice
friends”: that was the tone of the Marchesa, and it wouldn’t seem that she
could offer much resistance to a band of hungry wily Romans. It was more,
however, than might be thought, for her back was straight and firm in her
duty at any cost to herself; only it all made a puzzling task, and there was
no one and nothing around to support her, to stand by her side with
encouragement and explanation, unless it was the companionable English
tea-cup in a corner of her huge old drawing-room. It will presently appear
how it is that I can read such a tale in her shy plainness, but much of it
would be legible even without what I afterwards learned. She was an
exceedingly simple soul.
The Principessa was simple too in her way, but it was not the same way.
“Why, Gertrude,” she cried, rustling down the long room from the doorway,
“don’t you look lovely to-day!” (It was the voice of New York.) “But that’s
nothing new—I don’t tell you what you don’t very well know—only it
strikes me fresh every time I see you!” And indeed the slight flush and
smile that began to spread upon the Marchesa’s brownish pallor did become
her, as she rose to greet her guest. “Every time I see you,” repeated the
Principessa, brightly glancing. “There’s something about you that’s
perfection, and I shall never know just what it is. Don’t you want to tell me
what it is? You needn’t be afraid—I shan’t ever be able to copy it. I watch
my little girl every day to see if she won’t catch a look of it somehow. ‘My
blessed child,’ I say to her, ‘for mercy’s sake try to look real—like the
Marchesa.’ But she doesn’t, she looks like her father—and you know the
sort of old Greek plaster-cast that he is, and all his family. I tell them they
can’t impose on me with their grand pretences; I’ve seen the real thing. I
never meant to marry Filippo, I meant to marry a man out of an English
novel—yes, the same novel that you come out of, Gertrude, whichever it is;
if I happen to find it I shall throw over Filippo and bolt—he’s well aware of
it. Don’t you want to tell me his name, Gertrude—the name of the hero in
your novel? Maltravers, Sir John Mauleverer, something like that; you
know I come here in the hope of meeting him. Some day he’ll turn up and I
shall fly into his arms; he’ll quite understand.”
The Principessa was perfect too in her way, but it was not the way of the
Marchesa. They sat side by side on a broad couch; and if the most eloquent
aspect of their contrast was on their lips and in their speech, there was
another almost as vivid that was plainly displayed at this moment on the
floor. The Marchesa’s long flat foot, with its well-worn shoe and the hole in
her grey stocking, rested on the floor beside the Principessa’s smart little
arch, with its dolphin-like plunge from heel to toe and its exquisite casing
of down-soft leather and filigree silk; it was a lucid contrast, the two of
them side by side. The Principessa was altogether small, compact, and
neater than I should have thought it possible for any one to be neat on our
rolling globe; but small and trim as she was she managed to rustle (to
rustle!—I revive the forgotten word in an age that no longer knows the
liquefaction of her clothes whenas she goes!)—she rustled in a manner that
the Marchesa, though with so much more height to sweep from, had never
dreamed of emulating. Rustling, it may be, depended more on depth of
purse than height of person; and indeed you couldn’t notice the tip of the
Principessa’s little finger, let alone the brilliant arch of her foot, without
observing that it cost more at every breath she drew than the whole angular
person of the Marchesa through the long quiet day. The Principessa was
consummately expensive—though with a finely pointed extremity of taste
that again the Marchesa had never caught a glimpse of; from the tilt of her
big hat the little Principessa was the spirit of expense to the click of her neat
heel. And yet, yet—what is it that she sees in the good incompetent
Marchesa, sees and admires and owns to be beyond imitation? Let me ask
—why yes, most appropriately, let me ask Miss Gilpin.
Miss Gilpin, however, is not so ready with information as Miss Gadge;
for Miss Gilpin in the palace of the Marchesa is considerably more pre-
occupied, less communicative, than she is in the lodging of the Clarksons.
Several other people had arrived or were arriving, and a side-glance of her
attention in passing was all she could spare for her awkward young friend.
She was very agile and easy herself, slipping among the company like a
bird of pretty plumage, moving so lightly that you would never suppose
such a fresh young thing to be a woman of professional learning and
experience. She lifts her wide clear gaze to the face of the person whom she
addresses, and it might be almost embarrassing in its frank admiration, but
her gay little well-worded remarks relieve it; and she never lingers, never
clings, she is drawn away to somebody else and flits on with a shining look
behind her; and so she weaves her dance-figure through the company, and it
brings her gradually to the side of the Principessa—at sight of whom she
gives a tiny jump, as the unexpected pleasure beams out in her childlike
eyes. The Principessa seemed to be less surprised, and Miss Gilpin got
rather a cool return for her sparkle of delight. The dance was arrested with
some abruptness; but there is this about Miss Gilpin, that she always has her
wits about her and can adapt herself to a sudden change of plan. Her eye
darted quickly forward to the Marchesa—and it was to the Marchesa after
all that she had a particular word to say, if the other lady would forgive her
for hastening on. One can safely count on the excellent Marchesa; yet it
must be confessed that life is complicated, and Miss Gilpin sank a little
wearily into an absorbing conversation with our hostess.
But what was the pretty plumage of Miss Gilpin, even at its most
unruffled, compared with the rich hues of the creature that now swooped
upon the modest gathering? Half flower and half bird—half peony and half
macaw—Madame de Baltasar was in our midst; and so much so that
nothing else for a while was in our midst—the central object was Madame
de Baltasar. Peony in face, macaw in voice and raiment, she embraced and
enveloped the Marchesa—who closed her eyes, evidently in prayer, as she
nerved herself for the assault. The poor pale lady bore it unflinchingly, but
that was all; she was cowed, she was numbed, by the mere voice of the
visitor, equally penetrating in any language. The visitor, however, had no
further need for the Marchesa; what she needed was a slim and very
beautiful young man who happened to be talking to the Principessa—she
plucked and removed him without delay. Even as she did so another young
man, also very well in his fashion, appeared accidentally in her path; he too
was annexed; and Madame de Baltasar, doing what she could to lend them a
conquering rather than a consenting air, established them in a corner with
herself between them. The Marchesa, reviving, gave a sudden gasp at the
sight; for the second victim, who was a very British and candid-looking
youth in naval uniform, was one of the dear boys, her nephews, and a
glimpse of the peony-face beside him brought the letter from Devonshire
very sharply to her mind. “A few nice friends—!” The Principessa looked
up with humour. “I feel for you, dear Gertrude,” she said, “but what do you
expect? Why ever do you let that woman into your house?” “I don’t let
her,” wailed the Marchesa, very helpless. “Well, she’s grabbed Don Mario
from me and your nephew from you,” said the Principessa comically; “at
any rate they’ll keep her quiet for a time.” A peal of liberal shrieks rang out
from the lady in the corner, and the Marchesa closed her eyes again in a
mute petition.
It was a pleasantly expressive picture all the same, that of the group in
the corner. The parti-coloured lady, who was by no means young, had so
settled herself that she appeared imprisoned, penned in her place by two
masterful men; and it would be natural to suppose that the two men were
disputing for possession of her, but this effect was less easily contrived—
since one of the men was English, of an odd unchivalrous tribe whose ways
are beyond calculation. I don’t know what race had produced Madame de
Baltasar—the united effort of them all, may be, for all their tongues were
mingled in her shrieks; but there was no doubt concerning Don Mario—he
was the last perfection of Latinity and he played his part. He was peerlessly
beautiful, and he sat with his long fingers entwined about his knee, his eyes
attentively upon the peony, his cold profile turned with utter correctness to
his rival. He was far too mannerly, of course, to be jealous, to be hostile in
any open movement; even when his rival failed to notice the lady’s glove on
the floor it was only by the barest implication of a gesture that Don Mario
rebuked and triumphed over him. A lady in a corner may rely on Don
Mario; however hard she begins to find it to tighten that horrid loose fold
under her chin, however mauve the powder on her cheek now shows upon
the underlying crimson, Don Mario’s eyes are still fixed on her in deep
unwavering attention. And Madame de Baltasar, I dare say, had by this time
schooled herself to be blind to something that she might easily have seen, if
she had chosen, in his steady regard—in that knightly “belgarde” which she
accepted without scrutinizing it too closely; for he wasn’t troubled to hide
the serene amused impudence with which he played his part. The crazy old
ruin, with her cautious neckband and her ruddled wrinkles—he lent himself
politely to her ancient game, remarking that she had grown careless in the
handling of the orange lights in her hair, which were certainly fitful and
obscured towards the roots. But a lady needn’t concern herself with the
finer shades in Don Mario’s eloquent looks; he can be thoroughly trusted, at
any rate in a public corner of a drawing-room.
An Englishman on the other hand, a candid young Briton, is a queer
untutored thing of which you can never be really sure. The Marchesa’s
nephew was pink and pleasant, and his undisguised interest in Madame de
Baltasar might please her, you would think, for any one could see that it
was much more genuine than Don Mario’s. It did please her, no doubt, and
she liberally challenged and rallied him; she gave him more than his share,
it was he who had the full blaze of her charms. He luminously faced them
in return with the frankest interest and wonder; never, never had he seen
such a wildly remarkable object. “Well, of all the queer old picture-cards
—!” he said to himself; and he laughed with a volleying explosion at the
freedom of her humour. He liked her too, the quaint old freak and spark that
she was; you couldn’t help liking her loud familiar cackle, her point-blank
coquetries discharged with such brass and bounce; she brisked you up and
rattled you on in a style you don’t expect in the Marchesa’s solemn saloon.
To Madame de Baltasar, no doubt, the pink British face was an open book,
and in his barbaric fashion the young man was well enough, and she
enjoyed herself. But then his barbarism was declared in a manner of
simplicity which proved to her, yes, that these island-seamen are not to be
trusted as one may trust Don Mario. The open young sailor, instead of
turning his own more faulty profile to his rival and ousting him in triumph
—what must he do but burst out pleasantly to the knightly Latin, appeal to
him with mirthful eyes, join hands with him hilariously to watch the sport!
It was so, there was no mistaking it; the young British monster had drawn
the other man, his antagonist, into a partnership of youth, irreverent,
unchivalrous, to watch the raree-show of this marvellous old bird and
stimulate her to wilder efforts. And so naturally too, so ingenuously, like the
great silly oaf that he really was, with his long legs and huge hands! It
hadn’t so much as crossed his mind that a woman, still a fine woman in her
ripeness, was signally honouring a man; he only saw a crazy jolly absurd
old sport who made him laugh so heartily that he had to share the fun with
his neighbour. One can’t be surprised if Madame de Baltasar asked herself
what, in heaven’s name, they teach these young monsters in their barbaric
wild.
I find it impossible to tear my eyes from the group. What, I wonder, does
Don Mario think of the young Englishman? They were evidently much of
an age; but Don Mario could regard himself, no doubt, as a highly
experienced gentleman compared with this bubbling school-boy. He knew
the world, he knew himself, he very well knew the lady; and I fear it must
be inferred that he thought the Englishman a negligible simpleton. The
school-boy’s familiarity could hardly please him, but he took it with his
accomplished amenity, transformed it into a quiet and neutral kindness and
handed it back; and the Englishman—ah, this is where the simple youth
enjoys such an advantage, where he is unassailable—he saw no difference
at all between what he gave and what he received again, he supposed they
were the same. The same—his own thoughtless guffaw of companionship,
Don Mario’s civilized and discriminating smile!—well might Don Mario
feel that the barbarian took much for granted. Communication upon such
terms is out of the question, with the Englishman ready to fall on your neck
—in fact the islander’s arm was affectionately round Don Mario’s at this
moment—if you decently mask your irony in a fine thin smile. But let it not
be imagined that the Roman civiltà, heritage of the centuries, will exhibit
any signal of discomfort, even with the hand of the savage patting it
sociably and encouragingly on the back. Don Mario talked easily and with
all his charm; he told a story, some experience of his own, for the
entertainment of the lady. The details escape me, but it was a story in which
the Englishman, listening closely, seemed to detect a drift and purpose, an
approach to a point; and he listened still more carefully, gazing at the
speaker, working it out in his mind; and his brow contracted, he was lost—
but aha! he suddenly saw the light and he seized the point. “You mean
you’re in love with somebody,” he jovially exclaimed. The words fell with a
strange clatter on the polished surface of the tale, but Don Mario had caught
them up in a wink. “Why certainly,” he said—“I’m in love with Madame de
Baltasar.” Lord!—for the moment it was too quick for the blank and simple
youth; but relief came with the lady’s scream of delighted amusement, and
he broke into the humour of the jest with resounding appreciation. A good
fellow, this Don Whatever-he-is, and a sound old sport, Madame de What’s-
her-name—and altogether a cheerier time than one would look for at Aunt
Gertrude’s rather alarming tea-fight.
The Marchesa herself was finding it less enlivening; one of the dear boys
had got into the wrong corner, the other was still missing, poor Nora Gilpin
would try to waylay the Principessa; and though the Marchesa was used to
the sense that nothing in the world goes ever easily, she betrayed in her look
the weight of all she was carrying. But she was grateful to the Principessa,
and with cause; for so long as Miss Gilpin was kept at a distance the little
American was indeed a treasure to an anxious hostess. Nothing gayer,
nothing more ornamental and affable could be desired for a festival that
threatened to languish. She sat on a round stool or tuffet, her small person
erect, her knee tilted and her toe pointed like a porcelain shepherdess—a
wonder of art, an exquisite toy of the eighteenth century; and one could
infer how precious and rare the little figure must be from the fact that it was
entirely perfect, not a finger broken, not a rose damaged on her decorative
hat—which showed with what scrupulous care she had been packed and
kept. One could almost have sworn that the tint of clear colour in her cheek
was alert and alive, that it came and went with a living pulse; she was a
triumph of the hand of the craftsman who produced her. And to think that
she came, not from the cabinet of the Pompadour, but from the roaring
market of democracy—how have they learnt such perfection of delicate
workmanship over there? She seemed as manifestly the result of ages of
inherited skill as Don Mario himself; at least I should say so, perhaps, but
for the chance that again places them side by side before me. For Don
Mario, the party in the corner having at last broken up, had returned to the
Principessa; and he stood by her side, charmingly inclined, with glances
more burning, less scorching, than those he had levelled at the orange-
clouded fringe. And I now remark that with all Don Mario’s beautiful finish
he doesn’t set one gaping at the price he must have cost; one sees in a
moment than an object of that sort is not to be bought with money. “Not to
be bought?”—I can imagine the tone of the Principessa, if she chose to
speak: “He looks as though he weren’t to be bought? Why, it’s exactly that
that will fetch his price, and well he knows it. Not to be bought indeed!—I
could tell you a little about that. Now there behind you—there’s where
money fails, if you like!”
She meant of course the Marchesa; and with the unspoken word of the
china shepherdess in my ear I swing round towards the spectacle she faces.
The sudden movement surprises the effect to which the Principessa no
doubt alluded; I catch the Marchesa from the right point of view and I
understand. The harassed soul was easier now, for the tropical intruder had
departed and the simple seaman was re-established in more temperate
company; the letter from Devonshire was no longer a reproach. The
Marchesa breathed more freely; she stood for a moment unoccupied, resting
upon her relief, almost persuaded that the world was leaving her in peace.
She was no worldling, the good lady; neither she nor her forefathers had
taken thought to be prepared for the world, to study the arts with which it
may be repulsed, attracted, trodden under or turned to account. The
Marchesa had no manners, no glances, no speeches—no raiment even, you
might say—but those of her kindly nature, the well-meaning right-intending
soul that she happened to be. She was not a work of art; and therein is the
effect that she makes in her Roman palace, the effect you may surprise if
you follow the word of the Principessa and look suddenly round. There
clings about her, and she seems to diffuse it upon the company, a pallor of
simple daylight, a grey uncertain glimmer from a morning in Devonshire;
and it gives her a friendly gentle air, for it is the light to which she was born
and it is natural to her; but to the Principessa, to Don Mario, even to the
Roman palace, it is not a trifle disastrous. The pretty little work of art upon
the tuffet was aware of it, and I could fancy that she bids me look, look
again at her, to see how ghastly her china-tints have become in the dimness
of a rainy English morning. I won’t say that—the Principessa exaggerated,
perhaps defiantly; but it certainly was plain that she wasn’t intended to face
the open weather. Good Aunt Gertrude, troubled and incompetent in facing
the world, could be left out in rain and storm at any time, and none the
worse. The fibre that is by this betokened is not, we understand, to be
bought for money. The Principessa may be right, but I doubt whether she
honestly wishes her child to acquire it. After all the Marchesa is about as
ornamental as the waterproof in which as a girl she braved the weather of
an uncertain climate.
And now there arrived, there crossed the room with a quick step, there
shook hands ceremoniously with the Marchesa, a personage whose
appearance in that company I hadn’t at all expected. Deering!—who could
have supposed that Deering would present himself here, and that too at the
very hour which is consecrated to the plush and marble of the real Rome in
the Via Nazionale? He caught my eye as he crossed the room, and he
smiled, as I thought, self-consciously; it put him slightly to the blush that I
should see him attending the mild tea-pot of the Marchesa. She greeted him
with pleased effusion and drew him aside; I wasn’t near enough to hear
their talk, but the Marchesa had evidently much to say, and Deering listened
with his well-known gleam of sarcastic observation. He was quite
becomingly at his ease, and his flower-droop was markedly successful—it
was clearly one of his more slender days; but I noticed that in the patched
and tattered saloon, which had struck me as the topmost height of all the
Romanism I had met with, the careful composition of his Roman clothing
looked alien and singular. He may have been dressed in the taste of the real
Rome, but the result was to make him appear as much of a stranger in the
palace of the Dark Shops as the forlorn Marchesa herself. That good lady
presently released him, and he made his way towards me—but with a signal
to me to wait as he did so, for he stopped momentarily in passing beside the
Marchesa’s nephew and laid a light finger on his shoulder. The young
seaman looked round, nodded familiarly and went on with his talk. I shall
never get to the end of Deering, and I told him so when he joined me; for I
didn’t see how or where these excellent people should fit into the circle of
his associations, those with which he had dazzled me when we met last
month by the Tortoises. I had been supposing that my way, though it was he
who had smarted me on it, was steadily leading me further from the world
he had sketched so brilliantly as his own. Yes, said Deering, I might well be
surprised; but he could assure me it was much more surprising to himself.
He had no intention, however, of lingering—he proposed that I should
come away with him at once. Could he fly so soon?—it seemed abrupt, but
he waved off my scruple and led me immediately to the Marchesa to take
our leave. “Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude,” he said—“I fear I must be going.”
“Good-bye, dear boy,” returned the Marchesa; “come very soon and see me
again.”
He was the missing nephew!—the stroke of his revelation of the fact was
thoroughly successful, for it took me absurdly by surprise. My thought
travelled back to the poor flimsy mountebanks of the Via Nazionale, and I
perceived that they had divined my detached and scornful Deering, him
with the gypsy in his blood, even more shrewdly than I had supposed—or
rather, no doubt, they had had fuller information than mine. He had told
them nothing, but they knew all about him, trust them—they knew how
firmly his other foot was planted upon a solider world than theirs. When
Deering and I now issued from the portal of the classic name I stopped him,
I pointed to the name and the vast grey palace-front, and I asked him how
he had had the face to talk to me in my innocence about his “real Rome” of
the tram-lines and the plate-glass windows—with all this within a few yards
of us at the very moment. Had he been ashamed of me, unwilling to present
me to Aunt Gertrude and the monument of history up his sleeve?—no
indeed, and I didn’t even put the question, for Deering’s motives are much
loftier than this. Rather it was magnificent of him, I confessed, to drop the
palace, disregard the grandiose name, neglect it as unworthy of mention
compared with the company of the mountebanks at the marble-topped table.
But how he had deceived me—I now trusted his word no more, and I began
to see trickery of some sort even in that chance encounter with him the
other day by the English tea-room; he was probably then on his way to join
the Marchesa in her afternoon drive on the Pincio. And it was he, perverse
and double-lived, who had for a brother that soul of open candour I had just
been studying. “I have never consented,” said Deering rather primly, “to be
judged in the light of my relations. I take my way, and I gave you the
opportunity of taking it too. You have bungled it so shockingly that it has
brought you to this.”
It had brought us in fact to the neighbouring Square of the Tortoises;
there were the four boys crouched beneath the bowl of the fountain,
clutching the tails of the tortoises in the ripple of the water, the dapple of
the sunlight. Where would Deering’s line have brought me if I had clung to
him throughout? In the end, it would seem, to the palace of the Marchesa,
which I had reached on my own account; what I may have missed on the
way to it I shall never know. I could declare to him, none the less, that I had
seen many things of singular mark, things that I should never have
discovered in the state of romantic innocence which he had been the first to
corrupt; and for this I thanked him, though on the matter of Rome’s reality I
was even now in confusion as deep as ever. My authorities wouldn’t agree;
and on the whole I maintained to Deering that my own romance, when now
and then I had caught a glimpse of it between the heads of the crowd, had to
my eye a more substantial look than most of the realities that had been
offered me in the place of it. What had he to say to that? Well then he had to
say, regretfully but distinctly, that I was incurable; and one of the Botticelli
hands was laid upon my arm in a gesture that resigned me, with tenderness,
with compassion, with finality, to the sad ravages of my illusion. “Go back
to your books,” he sighed; “I have done my best—good-bye!” It was
touchingly felt and spoken; the attitude was striking. But his farewell, I am
glad to say, was only rhetorical. We shuffled for a long while to and fro
across the sunny little square, discussing my month of blunders.
LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS),
LTD.
CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN
PICTURES ***

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