534 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



there is involved the pre-supposition that, as similarly-con 

 stituted beings, men have certain rights in common, main 

 tenance of which, while directly advantageous to them in 

 dividually, indirectly benefits the community ; and that thus 

 the decisions of equity have a sanction independent alike of 

 customary law and parliamentary votes. Already in respect 

 of religious opinions there is practically conceded the right of 

 the individual to disobey the law, even though it expresses 

 the will of a majority. Whatever disapproval there may be 

 of him as a law-breaker, is over-ridden by sympathy with his 

 assertion of freedom of judgment. There is a tacit recog 

 nition of a warrant higher than that of State-enactments, 

 whether regal or popular in origin. These ideas and feelings 

 are all significant of progress towards the view, proper to the 

 developed industrial state, that the justification for a law is 

 that it enforces one or other of the conditions to harmonious 

 social cooperation ; and that it is unjustified (enacted by no 

 matter how high an authority or how general an opinion) if 

 it traverses these conditions. 



And this is tantamount to saying that the impersonally- 

 derived law which revives as personally-derived law declines, 

 and which gives expression to the consensus of individual 

 interests, becomes, in its final form, simply an applied system 

 of ethics or rather, of that part of ethics which concerns 

 men s just relations with one another and with the community. 



535. Eeturning from this somewhat parenthetical dis 

 cussion, we might here enter on the development of laws, not 

 generally but specially ; exhibiting them as accumulating in 

 mass, as dividing and sub-dividing in their kinds, as becom 

 ing increasingly definite, as growing into coherent and com 

 plex systems, as undergoing adaptations to new conditions. 

 But besides occupying too much space, such an exposition 

 would fall outside the lines of our subject. Present require 

 ments are satisfied by the results above set forth, which may 

 be summarized as follows. 



