Law 93 



either to the principle of competition or to the ideal 

 of family love. Even Roman law — in which paternal 

 power over children seems to have been well-nigh abso- 

 lute ; in some of whose modern descendants, on the other 

 hand, a father is forbidden to absolutely disinherit a 

 wayward, degenerate child; which looked at property 

 in land as coming from the state, as opposed to our 

 feudal idea that the owner of land is the conqueror of 

 the land, and hence holds the rights of a conqueror 

 — even Roman law would hardly go so far as to 

 attempt to enforce the positive side of the ideal; far 

 less our Anglo-Saxon law with its broader spirit of 

 liberty, its tendency to refrain from all unwarrantable 

 interference with the rights of the individual. Let 

 us beware lest we are led into the fatal mistake of 

 attempting to demand from individual members of the 

 state a higher standard of community morality than we 

 are willing to live up to ourselves as individual mem- 

 bers of the family. The ideal of love must prevail 

 equally on both sides, the community's, the majority's 

 side, as well as the individual's side. Mob tyranny is 

 not one whit better than individual tyranny; if anything, 

 it is worse. Extend the ideal of the family standard as 

 far as you please until you have included the entire 

 race. But do not try too soon to raise that standard to 

 an impossible height, by law, before the ideal has first 

 preceded it and become generally accepted. Other- 

 wise, I cannot help thinking that by using force pre- 

 maturely, you will only succeed in arousing men's 

 antagonism to the ideal, and so defeat your own ends. 



