LAWS. 525 



and tliis mode of obtaining redress was so supported by public opinion, 

 that the latter, though it might be the stronger party, dare not offer 

 resistance.&quot; 



By which facts we are reminded that where central authority 

 and administrative machinery are feeble, the laws thus inform 

 ally established by aggregate feeling are enforced by making 

 revenge for wrongs a socially-imposed duty ; while failure to 

 revenge is made a disgrace, and a consequent danger. In 

 ancient Scandinavia, &quot; a man s relations and friends who had 

 not revenged his death, would instantly have lost that repu 

 tation which constituted their principal security.&quot; So that, 

 obscured as this source of law becomes when the popular ele 

 ment in the triune political structure is entirely subordinated, 

 yet it was originally conspicuous, and never ceases to exist. 

 And now having noted the presence of this, along with the 

 other mingled sources of law, let us observe how the several 

 sources, along with their derived laws, gradually become 

 distinguished. 



O 



Recalling the proofs above given that where there has 

 been established a definite political authority, inherited from 

 apotheosized chiefs and made strong by divine sanction, laws 

 of all kinds have a religious character ; we have first to note 

 that a differentiation takes place between those regarded as 

 sacred and those recognized as secular. An illustration of 

 this advance is furnished us by the Greeks. Describing the 

 state of things exhibited in the Homeric poems, Grote re 

 marks that &quot; there is no sense of obligation then existing, 

 between man and man as such and very little between 

 each man and the entire community of which he is a member;&quot; 

 while, at the same time, &quot; the tie which binds a man to his 

 father, his kinsman, his guest, or any special promisee 

 towards whom he has taken the engagement of an oath, is 

 conceived in conjunction with the idea of Zeus, as witness 

 and guarantee:&quot; allegiance to a divinity is the source of 

 obligation. But in historical Athens, &quot; the great impersonal 

 authority called The Laws stood out separately, both as 



