532 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Sumatra, there is no such supernaturally-derived injunction, 

 and no consequent reprobation of disobedience to it, the loss 

 entailed on the family of the victim is the injury recognized ; 

 and, consequently, murder is not distinguished from man 

 slaughter. Again, in Japan and in Peru, unqualified abso 

 luteness of the living ruler is, or was, accompanied by the 

 belief that the criminality of murder consisted primarily in 

 transgression of his commands ; though doubtless the establish 

 ment of such commands implied, both in ruler and people, 

 some recognition of evil, individual or general, caused by 

 breach of them. In ancient Rome, the consciousness of 

 injury done to the community by murder was decided ; and 

 the feeling enlisted on behalf of public order was that which 

 mainly enforced the punishment. And then among ourselves 

 when a murder is committed, the listener to an account of it 

 shudders not mainly because the alleged command of God 

 has been broken, nor mainly because there has been a breach 

 of &quot; the Queen s peace ;&quot; but his strongest feeling of repro 

 bation is that excited by the thought of a life taken away, 

 with which is joined a secondary feeling due to the diminution 

 of social safety which every such act implies. In these 



different emotions which give to these several sanctions 

 their respective powers, we see the normal concomitants of 

 the social states to which such sanctions are appropriate. 

 More especially we see how that weakening of the sentiments 

 offended by breaches of authority, divine or human, which 

 accompanies growth of the sentiments offended by injuries 

 to individuals and the community, is naturally joined with 

 revival of that kind of law which originates in the consensus 

 of individual interests the law which was dominant before 

 personal authority grew up, and which again becomes domi 

 nant as personal authority declines. 



At the same time there goes on a parallel change of theory. 

 Along with a rule predominantly theocratic, there is current 

 a tacit or avowed doctrine, that the acts prescribed or for 

 bidden are made right or wrong solely by divine command; 



