sense is a highly general uniformity which has been observed to occur among phenomena; e.g., the law of gravitation. The only link of meaning between such laws and political laws lies (1) in their generalitythey apply to everything of the same kind—and (2) in the implicit assumption that they are given as commands by the Creator. This latter suggestion is obviously extremely inaccurate; since matter is not intelligent and self-directive and cannot in any exact sense be said to obey, or even to receive commands. The relation between God and the created universe can only by the roughest figurative language be likened to the relation between a sovereign law-giver and his subjects.

The Stoics, whose teaching approached more nearly that of the early church than did the teaching of any other philosophical sect then existing, taught a sort of pantheism. The energy which lies behind phenomena is God; in a very real sense the world is a manifestation of God. Each of us is a part of this ordered universe, and to live according to nature meant to live in agreement with the nature of God as exhibited in the external universe and in the mind of man. The Roman moralists were nearly all Stoics, and Stoical elements were worked into the tissue of the new Roman law.1 The magistrates who had been forming a working code for intercourse between Roman citizens and foreigners by selecting the rules of law common to Rome and to Maine, "Ancient Law," chap. iii. See below, chap. v., § 8.

the different Italian communities, called it the jus ġentium. "The jus naturale is simply the jus gentium seen in the light of a particular theory," viz., the Stoic theory of the divine origin of nature and of law. "After Nature had become a household word in the mouths of the Romans, the belief gradually prevailed among the Roman lawyers that the old Jus Gentium was in fact the lost code of Nature, and that the Prætor in framing an edictal jurisprudence on the principles of the Jus Gentium was gradually restoring a type from which law had only departed to deteriorate." This conception of an ideal law, antecedent and superior to the positive law, universally valid and binding on everybody even when free from the restrictions of positive law, has given us the great system of Roman Law, the modern codes built on it, and the system of International Law; and it is the basis of the ethical intuitionism of Butler and Kant, and of the revolutionary morality of Rousseau. To Rousseau, again, may be traced the crude political theories of modern democracy. The doctrine of the "rights of man" given and guaranteed by Nature is the central dogma of Liberalism.

§ 5. Obligation.

The idea of obligation involves the subjection of our wills to a law. It further suggests that there is some possible conflict between our motives, though this is no necessary part of the meaning.

The jurisprudential school of utilitarians, such as

Bentham and Austin, have resolved obligation into a purely positive idea; according to them it expresses the fact that we are liable to some penalty if we disobey the command of another. This penalty they call the "sanction." 1

The word obligation thus primarily expresses the positive relation of the subject to the law of his sovereign it is a strictly legal term. But by extension of meaning it may be applied to the analogous relation of the individual to the code of rules which society enforces, positive morality. The sanction here is no longer a penalty formally inflicted by a special officer; but the more indefinite punishment due to the bad opinion of others, together with the reproaches of those who have any recognized right to interfere with us (e.g., relatives, spiritual superiors, schoolmasters). This is the "social sanction," or, as Bentham calls it, "moral sanction."

By a further extension of the meaning of the word obligation, it is made to cover the relation of the indi

1 "The pain or pleasure which is attached to a law, forms what is called its sanction" (Bentham). On the other hand, Austin restricts the term to mean the "evil (i.e. pain) which will probably be incurred in case a command be disobeyed." Bentham distinguishes four kinds of Sanctions:

(1) Physical-due to nature, acting without human inter

vention.

(2) Moral—or social-due to the spontaneous disposition of our fellow-men, their friendship, hatred, esteem, etc. (3) Political or legal-due to the action of the magistrate in virtue of the laws.

(4) Religious.

vidual to the ideal moral code conceived as God's law, whether enforced by society or not. The sanction in

this case will be God's rewards and punishments in this life and the next. Thus even if society will not frown on some secret sin, the obligation to abstain from it exists. Besides the ab extra rewards and punishments which God is supposed to affix to the commission of offences against the ideal moral law, there are the pleasures and pains of conscience; the inner moral sanction (which Bentham characteristically overlooks). My reason recognizes the law and recognizes that it applies to me; my moral feelings thereupon urge me to act in accordance with it. The pain which will arise if these feelings are injured, the pleasure which will arise if they are gratified, are a powerful sanction.

But it would seem that the moral obligation itself does not arise from the pain or pleasure. I recognize that I am bound, and the feeling follows. The analysis of Bentham and Austin which makes the notion of obligation involve that of sanction, is untenable. The obligation expresses the relation of my will to the law; when I know that my particular case is included under the law, that the law applies to me, I know that I am bound, and all that the notion of obligation involves is present. Alongside of this judgment spring up the moral feelings, the desire to do right as such, and other emotions; but the existence of these feelings does not constitute the fact of obligation.

What reason recognizes as moral truth is also moral law. The ideal reason recognizes this course as the proper course for me. This course, then, is incumbent on me. Moral obligation is constituted not by the fact of pains and pleasures naturally or artificially attached to my conduct; but by the fact that I am a rational being and capable of directing my acts in accordance with reason. I may not yet recognize the law, but o opóvuos will recognize it; and I may by education at any time be brought to recognize it.

This is what Kant calls the Categorical imperative. Other imperatives are more or less conditional. If in any art we wish to produce a certain effect, say a good picture or a savoury dish, we are obliged to adopt certain necessary means; our obligation is strictly relative, since the end itself is not necessarily desired. This is called a technical imperative, for such are the rules of the various arts. Another kind of hypothetical imperative is (perhaps unnecessarily) distinguished by Kant. If we recognize that a certain action is necessary to secure something on which our happiness depends, our obligation to perform it is still a conditional one, since we perform the action only as a means to the end of happiness; but as, according to Kant, we necessarily and inevitably desire our own happiness, this imperative is no longer merely problematic but assertorial. The end (unlike the production of the picture or the dish) is not one which we may wish to realize, but one which we always do and indeed must wish to realize. The counsels of pru