LAWS. 533 



and though this doctrine survives through subsequent stages 

 (as it does still in our own religious world), yet belief in it 

 becomes nominal rather than real. Where there has been 

 established an absolute human authority, embodied in a 

 single individual, or, as occasionally, in a few, there comes 

 the theory that law has no other source than the will of this 

 authority: acts are conceived as proper or improper accord 

 ing as they do or do not conform to its dictates. With 

 progress towards a popular form of government, this theory 

 becomes modified to the extent that though the obligation to 

 do this arid refrain from that is held to arise from State- 

 enactment ; yet the authority which gives this enactment its 

 force is the public desire. Still it is observable that along 

 with a tacit implication that the consensus of individual 

 interests affords the warrant for law, there goes the overt 

 assertion that this warrant is derived from the formulated 

 will of the majority : no question being raised whether this 

 formulated will is or is not congruous with the consensus of 

 individual interests. In this current theory there obviously 

 survives the old idea that there is no other sanction for law 

 than the command of embodied authority ; though the autho 

 rity is now a widely different one. 



But this theory, much in favour with &quot; philosophical 

 politicians,&quot; is a transitional theory. The ultimate theory, 

 which it foreshadows, is that the source of legal obligation is 

 the consensus of individual interests itself, and not the will of 

 a majority determined by their opinion concerning it ; which 

 may or may not be right. Already, even in legal theory, 

 especially as expounded by French jurists, natural law or 

 law of nature, is recognized as a source of formulated law : 

 the admission being thereby made that, primarily certain in 

 dividual claims, and secondarily the social welfare furthered 

 by enforcing such claims, furnish a warrant for law, ante- 

 ceding political authority and its enactments. Already in 

 the qualification of Common Law by Equity, which avowedly 

 proceeds upon the law of &quot; honesty and reason and of nations,&quot; 



