RUGHT is the sum total of the principles which govern society.

Justice, in man, is the respect and observation of those principles.

To practise justice is to obey the social instinct; to do an act of justice is to do a social act.

If, then, we watch the conduct of men towards each other under different circumstances, it will be easy for us to distinguish between the presence and absence of society; from the result we may inductively infer the law.
Let us commence with the simplest and least doubtful cases.
The mother, who protects her son at the peril of her life, and sacrifices every thing to his support, is in society with him--she is a good mother.

She, on the contrary, who abandons her child, is unfaithful to the social instinct,--maternal love being one of its many features; she is an unnatural mother.
If I plunge into the water to rescue a drowning man, I am his brother, his associate; if, instead of aiding him, I sink him, I am his enemy, his murderer.
Whoever bestows alms treats the poor man as his associate; not thoroughly, it is true, but only in respect to the amount which he shares with him.