There is without question a properly rational or intellectual element in the judgment of impartiality, namely, analysis of the situation and comparison of the units. But what we shall set up as our units--whether we shall treat the gentile or the barbarian or negro as a person, as end and not merely means, or not, depends on something quite other than reason. And this other factor is not covered by the term "practical reason." In fact no ethical principle shows better the subtle blending of the emotional and social factors with the rational. For the student of the history of justice is aware that only an extraordinarily ingenious exegesis could regard justice as having ever been governed by a mathematical logic. The logic of justice has been the logic of a we-group gradually expanding its area. Or it has been the logic of a Magna Charta--a document of special privileges wrested from a superior by a strong group, and gradually widening its benefits with the admission of others into the favored class. Or it has been the logic of class, in which those of the same level are treated alike but those of different levels of birth or wealth are treated proportionately. Yet it would seem far-fetched to maintain that the countrymen of Euclid and Aristotle were deficient in the ability to perform so simple a reasoning process as the judgment one equals one, or that men who developed the Roman Law, or built the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, were similarly lacking in elementary analysis. Inequality rather than equality has been the rule in the world's justice. It has not only been the practice but the approved principle. It still is in regard to great areas of life. In the United States there is no general disapproval of the great inequalities in opportunity for children, to say nothing of inequalities in distribution of wealth. In England higher education is for the classes rather than for the masses. In Prussia the inequality in voting strength of different groups and the practical immunity of the military class from the constraints of civil law seem to an American unfair. The western states of the Union think it unfair to restrict the suffrage to males and give women no voice in the determination of matters of such vital interest to them as the law of divorce, the guardianship of children, the regulation of women's labor, the sale of alcoholic liquors, the protection of milk and food supply. Are all these differences of practice and conviction due to the fact that some people use reason while others do not? Of course in every case excellent reasons can be given for the inequality. The gentile should not be treated as a Jew because he is not a Jew. The slave should not be treated as a free citizen because he is not a free citizen. The churl should not have the same wergeld as the thane because he is lowborn. The more able should possess more goods. The woman should not vote because she is not a man. The reasoning is clear and unimpeachable if you accept the premises, but what gives the premises? In every case cited the premise is determined largely if not exclusively by social or emotional factors. If reason can then prescribe equally well that the slave should be given rights because he is a man of similar traits or denied rights because he has different traits from his master, if the Jew may either be given his place of equality because he hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, or denied equality because he differs in descent, if a woman is equal as regards taxpaying but unequal as regards voting, it is at least evident that reason is no unambiguous source of morality. The devil can quote Scripture and it is a very poor reasoner who cannot find a reason for anything that he wishes to do. A partiality that is more or less consistently partial to certain sets or classes is perhaps as near impartiality as man has yet come, whether by a rational faculty or any other.