2^0 The Morality of Nature 



tration of justice, inherited from the ancient authority. An 

 exclusive caste devoted to old forms, which yields most re- 

 luctantly to the demand for change, is tolerated under the 

 influence of the conservative instinct. But this fostering in 

 reverence, in any field of effort, of an established usage after 

 it becomes obsolete, permits temporarily a very imperfect 

 realization of the new purposes; for the sake of sureness in 

 the advance. In the civil law courts of modern life this is 

 seen abundantly. The actual administration of justice is not 

 in its methods properly representative of civilized wisdom. 

 It is slow and expensive and wasteful of the citizens' time. 

 The visible progress in it, however, tends to correct errors of 

 omission, and continually improves the quality of justice, and 

 the degree in which it is accessible to daily life; and tends 

 also toward a further assurance of liberty in morality with- 

 out state control. The democratic law naturally moves in the 

 same direction as the sense of the people, omitting religion 

 from the things it may control ; and does so knowingly upon 

 principle and not out of inability to do otherwise. 



We thus see not only the executive and the legislative but 

 the judicial departments of government relinquishing all con- 

 tact with religious matters ; and we see the educational cul- 

 ture of morality, abandoned by government, devolving upon 

 institutions whose machinery was created under a system 

 becoming obsolete; and whose authority is discredited by 

 the loss of temporal power formerly enjoyed, as well as by a 

 too obvious obsolescence. And it seems that this transition, 

 like many others, involves difficulties not proper to either 

 the new or the old conditions. 



It does not appear that the exclusion of morality and re- 



