1 84 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



shippers, protect their haunts and homes, punish their 

 enemies. They are not impartial, supreme authorities, but 

 simply unseen allies to be invoked, or enemies to be 

 dreaded and repelled. We do not, then, in the lowest 

 stages of religion find an explicit expression of the ethical 

 consciousness, but rather a reflection of precisely those 

 defects which we discovered in primitive law. 



Upon the whole, then, if the ethical judgment be defined 

 as one impartially upholding rights or imposing duties on 

 responsible persons, it appears true to say that such a judg- 

 ment is never wholly absent in any known society, but in 

 many rude societies is in large measure unformed and 

 imperfect. It issues in customs which in large measure 

 are neither fully developed morality nor fully de- 

 veloped law. 



(2) Law and Morality. 



Early society emancipates itself from the anarchy of the 

 blood feud principally through the growth of a central 

 authority, which by slow degrees takes to itself the function 

 of maintaining order, repressing aggression and retaliation 

 with the equal firmness of the strong hand. Custom at 

 this stage becomes definite law in the sense that it is formu- 

 lated and enounced by authority and enforced by the 

 executive power. It becomes 'the command of a 

 Superior,' and at least in ideal it is impartially applied. 

 It may be conceived that the development of an organ of 

 impartial administration will forward the evolution of a 

 corresponding sentiment. But whether political circum- 

 stances or improved ethical sentiment take the lead in 

 bringing about the advance there is no difficulty in recog- 

 nising the ethical equivalent of impartially administered 

 law. It is simply the stage of the common moral sense 

 which maintains a miscellaneous set of rules as binding on 

 all persons concerned, which recognises in various men and 

 women various rights, and enjoins on all a number of 

 duties. Into the why and wherefore of these rights and 

 duties it does not enquire. There they are. They con- 

 stitute morality, and the breach of them is as such immoral. 

 There is nothing here of the hypothetical character of the 



