THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 SCHOOL OF LAW
 
 / / ■ 
 
 -^-in 
 
 /) 
 
 LEGAL ETHICS. 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 "THERE IS ONE LAWGIVER." 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES, INTRODUCTORY TO ONE ON LEGAL ETHICS, 
 DELIVERED TO THE FIRST LAW CLASS, 1878-9. 
 
 W. H. PLATT, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 Professor of Legal Ethics zn the Hastings College of Law, 
 University of California. 
 
 CLASS EDITION. 
 
 LAW COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
 
 r
 
 ^ 
 
 b 
 
 HONORABLE S. C. HASTINGS, 
 
 FOUNDER OF THIS COLLEGE AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY, 
 THESE LECTURES 
 
 ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. 
 
 The students graduated from this college are prepared, through 
 your munificence, to become representative men on this coast, and 
 as long as this State endures your civilizing work goes on. Most 
 important is your desire and effort to develop Legal Ethics as a 
 distinct department of instruction. Though this special field is 
 new, yet through your encouragement and support I entered upon 
 its duties, and these lectures are the first, though immature fruits. 
 While you will fully value whatever merits they may have, 
 there is no one more sensible of their deficiencies than I am 
 myself. 
 
 W. H. PLAT1\ 
 
 Hasting's College of Law. 
 University of California, 1879. 
 
 671293
 
 To THE Class: 
 
 These are merely introductory lectures to a course 
 upon legal ethics yet to be given, and they are printed 
 for your convenience. I have no time, at present, to 
 revise them for publication. They aim to find an axc- 
 Oiority in ethics, rather than to construct a system of 
 ethics. If all laws are one will, then the lawgiver is 
 one, and parallel to the science of theistic matter is 
 the science of theistic morality. To command that 
 which is universally right is the sole prerogative of 
 One universally supreme. The law of gravitation 
 among the spheres is the same will as the law of har- 
 mony among men. The consequences of disobedience 
 are alike inexorable in each. This will is revealed 
 in Nature, and is essential to all that was before and 
 is above nature. Science tells all it can of the former, 
 and the religious books of the world tell us all we need 
 to know of the latter. Morality is Avhat ought to be 
 done, and that ought to be done which the Supreme 
 One commands. His will is wiitten everywhere, and 
 on everything; not to find it is to misread the universe. 
 
 W. H. PLATT.
 
 ANALYSIS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 I. THE UNITY OF MATERIAL AND MORAL EVOLUTIONS. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 II. THE UNITY OF MATERIAL AND MORAL CORRELA- 
 
 TIONS. 
 
 1. FlKST COIIKELATION — 
 
 (a) The religious basis of morality to be displaced. 
 
 (b) The political basis of morality to be correlative- 
 ly substituted. 
 
 2. Second Coekelation — 
 f (a) The religious basis of morality to be displaced. 
 
 -i (6) The philosophical basis of morality to be cor- 
 ^ relatively substituted. 
 
 3. Third Cokeelation — 
 
 f (a) The philosophical basis of morality to be dis- 
 j placed. 
 
 (6) The religious (Christian) basis of morality to 
 L be correlatively substituted. 
 
 4. FouETH Coeeelation — 
 
 r (a) The political basis of morality to be displaced. • 
 -j (6) The religious (Christian or Jewish) basis of 
 *- morality to be correlatively substituted. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 III. THE UNITIES OF SYSTEMS: 
 
 1. The unity of the solar system. 
 
 2. The unity of the system of impersonal nature. 
 
 3. The unity of the system of personal nature. 
 
 4. The unity of social forces. 
 
 5. The unity of the system of causation. 
 
 6. The imify of moral systems. 
 
 7. The unity of the system of intelligence.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 26, 6th and 7th lines from the 'bottom, read "from the 
 
 heterogeneous to the homogeneous." 
 
 Page 32, Gth line from bottom, read "beast" for "boast." 
 Page 85, 8th line from bottom, read "The Patrician's religious 
 
 family was constituted." 
 
 Page 87, 10th line from top, read "in its strongest moments." 
 Page 91, 7th line from top, read "and not from ancestors." 
 Page 95, 9th line from top, read "right" instead of "which." 
 Page 103, 5th line from bottom, read " consuUa'^ instead of "co)}- 
 
 siilata.'' 
 
 Page 105, 4th line from the bottom, read "gods" instead of 
 
 "faiths." 
 Page 111, 10th line from top, reads "as is" instead of "as was." 
 Page 145, 4th line from top, omit the M'ord "that." 
 Page 168, 3d line from top, read "the fact" instead of "part." 
 Page 194, 3d line from top, read "into" instead of "in." 
 Page 195, 12th line [from bottom, read "his mitre" instead of 
 
 "their mitres." 
 Page 198, 4th line from top, read "him" instead of "it." 
 Page 232, 3d line from top, read "its" instead of "his." 
 
 Page 237, 5th Hue from top, read "as the scale of intelligence 
 rises from nescient plurality, the number of individuals possess- 
 ing it decreases to onniiscieut unity." 
 
 Pago 239, omit Ist line, and read "In form, tliere is the one 
 lawo°f gradation," etc.; Gth line from top, read "harmonies of 
 analogy or of contrast.
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF MATTER AND MORALITY. 
 
 I. The Abstract Unity of all Laws: 
 
 1. The Unity of Essence; 
 
 2. The Unity of Vindicatory Sanctions — 
 
 (a) In matter; 
 
 (b) In morality; 
 
 (c) The point of unity. 
 
 II. The Unity of Law in the Evolution of Matter and 
 
 Morality: 
 
 1. Integration — 
 
 (a) Integration of matter; 
 
 (b) Integration of morality; 
 
 (c) Point of unitj'. 
 
 2. All Causes multiply their Effects — 
 
 (a) Material causes; 
 
 (b) Moral causes; 
 
 (c) Point of unity. 
 
 3. The Fact and Law of Segregation — 
 
 (a) Material segregation; 
 (h) Moral segregation; 
 ((•) Point of unity.
 
 10 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 4. Evolution of the Ethics of Legal Character — 
 (a) Laws of condition; 
 i. Law of heredity; 
 ii. Law of environment; 
 (h) Laws of direction; 
 
 i. Lines of least resistance; 
 ii. Lines of greatest attraction. 
 
 Gentlemen : As you are to give yourselves to the 
 management of the varied and supreme concerns 
 of society, the importance of your professional 
 preparation can not be exaggerated. The bench, 
 assisted by the bar, announces the rules of all 
 civil relations, the civil responsibility of all ac- 
 tions, and the boundaries of all civil liberty. 
 While other moral agencies can only persuade, 
 the municipal law decides and enforces. How- 
 ever the moral principle of action may come, the 
 municipal law gives the imperative rule. As min- 
 isters of the law, you are to participate in those 
 august functions which are most like God's. Peo- 
 ple may believe religion, but they imist obey knu. 
 As the law, right or wrong (wrong law is no law), 
 is sovereign, the earthly hopes of mankind hang 
 upon juristic enlightenment. Revolutions claim 
 to justify tliemsclves in bad laws, but wise laws 
 content a people. Nothing but the law-giver can
 
 LAW BESTS ON MORALITY. 11 
 
 be higher than the law. It is only in the presence 
 of law, guarding with its sublime authority the 
 portals of civilization, that we can adequately 
 appreciate the great benefaction of our distin- 
 guished fellow-citizen in establishing this college. 
 When we think of the entangled and conflicting 
 claims between man and man, the passionate 
 dramas ever arising in society, the perturbed rela- 
 tions of political power and individual liberty, all 
 of which are so directly in the hands of lawyers, 
 we see that your moral convictions, as candidates 
 for this duty, are of the first public importance. 
 To this end the wisdom of the founder is the more 
 conspicuous in securing for the institution, which 
 is to transmit his name with eminent honor to 
 future generations, the first professorship for a 
 systematic instruction in legal ethics ever estab- 
 lished. This is the more important on this coast 
 as the University of the State has no chair of 
 moral philosophy. 
 
 As written laws do not rise above the moral ideas 
 of lawyers, so you, gentlemen, do not begin to be 
 prepared for your legal privileges and duties until 
 your consciences have been instructed alike with
 
 12 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 your intellects; for, while logic gives the form, 
 morality is the principle of all law. 
 
 As the life of the race continues, and new rela- 
 tions and interests of society present • new and 
 conflicting claims of right for decision, so law, 
 drawing upon its reserved fund of unadjudicated 
 moral principles, multiplies its rules and perfects 
 its system. But, as instability is a fact in all 
 things, so municipal law is unstable, because it is 
 progressive, and progressive because it is unstable. 
 The ignorance of the passing hour is corrected in 
 the outcoming omniscience of the ages. Law is 
 the accumulated expression of the moral experi- 
 ence of all the past. Moses, Solon, and Justinian 
 were long in coming, but they came Avlien the race 
 was ready to hear them. Evolution dates nothing, 
 but calls out its phenomena when ready for phe- 
 nomena. The law commits no anachronisms by 
 anticipating its occasion. Eternal justice has pre- 
 arranged the times of its coming. Or, rather, 
 justice, or right, is to each human relation and 
 act what space is to each emerging world. When 
 the world comes, space is around it, wherever it 
 may be.
 
 THE UNITY OF TKUTH. 13 
 
 The professor of legal ethics and the rules of 
 morality in this college is furnished with his sub- 
 ject and its restrictions in the very title by which 
 his chair is designated. "Ethics is the science of 
 the laws of our actions, looked at with regard to 
 their morality and immorality, and pre-supposes 
 a knowledge of man as a moral agent. "'^ Well 
 knowing that this is not a churcJi in which to 
 teach sectarian religion, but a college of law, I shall 
 sincerely, and I hoj^e successfully, confine such in- 
 struction as may be my privilege to give, strictly to 
 legal ethics, and, if possible, reduce them to the 
 form of a science. Religion will be discussed, like 
 any other factor of civilization, only in the light of 
 history and philosophy. 
 
 Under these circumstances let us seek for some 
 common but sure grounds of our sludy whereon we 
 all may stand in light and strength. Though the 
 law is no Atheist, I shall for the present restrict 
 myself to admitted and demonstrated principles of 
 the science of Nature, to exhibit the method of 
 legal ethics, rather than appeal to supernatural au- 
 thority as their basis. The truths of one depart- 
 ment of nature are only the obverse of the truths 
 (a) J. H. Balfour Browne's Medical Juiis. of Insanity, 105-6.
 
 14 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 of GA'erj other department. As tnitli is eternal 
 and universal {semper, iihique, omnibus), let us 
 kneel in its presence, wherever found, and be 
 thankful for it, in whatever race, creed, code, or 
 age of the world it may have utterance. 
 
 I seek, in the authority for the admitted laws of 
 matter, an authority for tlie laws of morals. What 
 and where is that authority? Is it in the personal 
 nature of man, in the order of impersonal nature, 
 or in the will of supernatural Being? Some stand- 
 ard must be fixed upon at the outset. Let us fol- 
 low the light of reason, wherever it may lead us. 
 In these introductory lectures we propose to keep 
 our minds upon the uniform movements of nature, 
 as exhibiting the unity of law. 
 
 I. THE ABSTEACT UNITY OF ALL LAWS. 
 
 As law is like a royal coin, precious and current, 
 with moral supremacy superscribed on one side, 
 and matter, as a sacred symbol, on the other, so 
 the material and moral systems are one, but not 
 the same. To understand the highest generaliza- 
 tions of either system, we must understand the 
 highest generalizations of both; and exactly as wo
 
 THE ABSTRACT UNITY OF ALL LAWS. 15 
 
 iinderstat'id one we shall understand the other. 
 Therefore, as in the last lecture, keeping our eyes 
 still fixed upon the uniform manifestations of the 
 laws of matter, as admitted in recent thought, let 
 us study in the revelations of the material and vis- 
 ible, the nature of the moral and the invisible. 
 Leaving theories to shape themselves, let us go 
 directly to the facts of the universe. If nature is 
 one, law must be one; and what is found authori- 
 tative in the material will not be contradicted in 
 the moral. As the radii of a circle have the same 
 centre, and as the two equal angles at the base of 
 an isosceles triangle have the same vertex, so we 
 may expect the laws of matter and morality to 
 focalizd" in the same will, and manifest their pres- 
 ence by the same operative method. If the laws 
 of matter multiply effects and segregate phenom- 
 ena, so the laws of morality multiply results. As 
 harmony is the result of compulsory obedience in 
 matter, so it is of voluntary obedience in morality. 
 The evolutionary laws of integration, environment, 
 propagation, growth and correlation are the same 
 in both. The unity of material and moral law is 
 seen in the unity of essence, the unity of sanctions, 
 and the unity of manifestations.
 
 16 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 1. THE UNITY OF ESSENCE. 
 
 Blackstone says that "law depends uot upon our 
 approhcdioiis, but upon the maimer s ivlll." If Black- 
 stone be correct, law is neither a cause nor an 
 effect, but, as a volition, is sid generis. Statute 
 law is the will of the legislature. International 
 law is the will of the nations. The law for the 
 servant is the will of the master. In ultimate gen- 
 eralization, we may say that all law is will. The 
 supreme will is the supreme law. This will is one 
 as the sun; law, many as the rays. As every ray 
 is all sun, so every law is all will. Laws may be 
 distinct as the waves, but they are one as the sea. 
 Law is the universal nature of things, relations, 
 and actions. It is not made, but it exists. There 
 is as much law at one time as another. There was 
 no more or other law at the time of Justinian than at 
 the time of the XII Tables. There were more pro- 
 hibitions, but not more law; for universal reason 
 neither increases nor diminishes. When man is com- 
 manded uot to steal, no new law is made. Honesty 
 is tlio law — dishonesty its violation. Law is in 
 doing or being; not in uot doing or not being. Pro-
 
 ALL LAW IS DECLARATORY. 17 
 
 liibitions may indicate or reveal law, but they are 
 not laws. Tliey only forbid the breaking of law. 
 Prohibition implies the law. As society grows 
 older, it gains, through religion or mere human 
 reason, what the law of universal reason is, and de- 
 clares prohibitions against its violation. So the 
 enlightenment of the world'' enables it to discover 
 what the nature of things requires or necessitates, 
 and also to prohibit its disregard. The affirmation 
 of law implies a prohibition of its violation, and 
 the prohibition of an act implies the law threatened 
 to be broken. Thou shalt not steal implies the 
 right of property and possession of a thing. The 
 correlative of every affirmation of law is the nega- 
 tion of its violation, and the reverse. As the con- 
 vex side of every curved line has, on the obverse, 
 a side of correlative concavity, so every law has a 
 correlative warning or prohibition not to violate it. 
 The law of gravitation is in the falling tower, not 
 in the notice to keep from under it. Law is in the 
 ownership of land, not in the posted warnings 
 not to trespass on it. Law is executory, not pro- 
 hibitory. The multiplicity of prohibitions do not 
 (o) Mill's Comte, p. 103.
 
 18 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 multiply laws: Tliej at most suggest what the law 
 is whose violation is forbidden. 
 
 For this reason, tlie growth of codes, as that of 
 Justinian, does not indicate the growth of law, but 
 the growth of its violations to be prevented. So 
 the maximum of law, as it is called, is the maxi- 
 mum of its violation. The multiplicity of rules of 
 morality indicates a multiplicity of immoral cus- 
 toms. Kules of morality multiply as principles of 
 morality are broken. We must distinguish be- 
 tween the principle of legal rules which is logic, 
 and the principle of legal principles which is nat- 
 ural or universal reason. The law of right conduct 
 is the same as the law of gravitation; for both are 
 will. Gravitation holds matter to centres and sys- 
 tems of centres, producing the harmou}^ of circular 
 motion; so the laws of moral conduct hold men, 
 races, and nations to social centres and systems of 
 centres, producing domestic, municipal, and inter- 
 national order and harmony. 
 
 2. THE UNITY OF VINDICATORY SANCTIONS. 
 
 This is seen — («). In the consequences of the dis- 
 ohcdience oj inaltcr. "If,"sa3's Hooker, "nature
 
 hooker's definition. 19 
 
 should intermit her course, and leave altogether, 
 though it were but for awhile, the observation of 
 her own laws; if those principal and mother ele- 
 ments of the world, whereof all things in this lower 
 world are made, should lose the qualities which 
 now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch 
 erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve 
 itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted 
 motions, and by irregular volubility turn them- 
 selves any Avay as it might happen ; if the prince of 
 the lights of heaven, which as a giant doth run his 
 universal course, should, as it were, through a 
 languishing faintness, begin to stand and rest him- 
 self; if the moon should wander from her beaten 
 way, the times and seasons of the year blend them- 
 selves by disordered and confused mixtures, and 
 the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds 
 yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly 
 influence, the fruits of the earth pine away, as 
 children at the withered breast of their mother, no 
 longer able to yield them relief, what would be- 
 come of man himself, whom these things now do 
 all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of 
 creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the 
 whole world?"
 
 20 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 (b) The consequences of dlsohedience are not 
 different in morality, but infinitely more dreadful. 
 If in moral life every man should disregard every 
 right of his fellow-man; and if every husband and 
 Avife shpuld violate every law of tlieir relation, 
 and every parent and child be unnatural to each 
 other; if every master should oppress and not pay 
 the wages of the servant, and every servant dis- 
 obey and rob his master; if every government 
 should seek to crush its citizens, and all the citi- 
 zens constantly war upon the government; if every 
 man were to treat every contract as a baseless 
 promise; if no man had an admitted right to live, 
 to own lands and chattels — in a w^ord, if there 
 were no obedience, and every man were a law 
 unto himself, would not social chaos and recon- 
 struction come as certainly from disobedience in 
 moralit}^ as chaos and reconstruction would come 
 from disobedience in matter? The same will is 
 behind all. The threads of all laws are gathered 
 into the same hand. Nature rejoices in such 
 principal things as the ocean and the sun, where 
 tlio many look to the one. Centripetalism is the 
 law for both atoms and men.
 
 ALL LAWS PUNISH DISOBEDIENCE. 21 
 
 (c) The point of unity of sanctions. The imi- 
 formity of effects shows unity of cause. The 
 uniformity of phenomena is the exponent of the 
 unity of law. This unity is in the analogy that 
 moral laws are as self-assertive as those we call 
 inorganic or material, and can no more be broken 
 with impunity than they. All wrong is indelible; 
 and, in a system of mere law, disobedience is neither 
 forgotten nor forgiven. Eesponsibility transcends 
 knowledge. Its limitations wander through a 
 moral economy of the ages, untraceable to finite 
 intelligence. A cause is an immortal thing. A 
 wrong is an ever parturient womb, like that of 
 Milton's hag at the gates of hell, from which a 
 life-repeating progeny comes, to curse and die. A 
 felony is social suicide. Every act has its equiva- 
 lence in either compensations for suffering virtue 
 and acts of kindness, in reparations for moral 
 injuries, or retributions for injustice. But we 
 have no telescope with which to look on to the 
 hidden end. Be sure your wrong- doing will find 
 you out and drive you into a corner. " 'Tis the 
 eternal law that where guilt is, sorrow shall 
 answer it."
 
 22 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Nature neither sleeps nor dies. For every in- 
 jury she returns a blow. As you twist the twig, 
 so must run the sap of the tree. All beginnings 
 are solemn, but bad ones "cast their shadows 
 before." Punishment may seem to be postponed; 
 but, as in the constitution of man, matter and 
 morality are each the avenging Nemesis of the 
 wrongs of the other — punishment is sure to come. 
 
 If, at this moment, I do not venture to announce 
 to you any special ground of essential right, simply 
 speaking of it as eternally omnipresent, let us see 
 what method, if any, material science furnishes to 
 ascertain the fact of law. Can we use, in reason- 
 ing about morals, the principles used in reason- 
 ing about matter; and, by induction in morals as 
 well as in matter, discover any one principle upon 
 which all j)henomena rest? Does not the uni- 
 versality of law necessitate the unity of law? If it 
 can be seen that a tree and a system of morals are 
 made upon the same principles, we can well be- 
 lieve in a one Law-giver, and in the unity of His 
 laws. Similarity will be lost in identity, and par- 
 allels will meet in infinity. This identity of prin- 
 ciple of all phenomena, material and moral, is
 
 UNITY OF ALL EVOLUTION. 23 
 
 seen iu universal organizations, universal develop- 
 ment, universal individualization. This is evolu- 
 tion, and pertains to the method, not the cause 
 of manifestations. The cause lies out of sight. 
 Herbert Spencer calls it "The Unknowable." 
 We can know lohat law is, but not ivliy. 
 
 II. THE UNITY OF LAW IS SEEN IN THE 
 UNITY OF ALL EVOLUTION. 
 
 The necessities of my search for abstract unity 
 of law compel me to venture upon most abstract 
 generalizations. But we shall be more than re- 
 paid for such dry investigations and discussions 
 if we find the unity we seek. Unity is a necessity. 
 Circumferences must have centres. From the one 
 all lines converge, and from the other all lines 
 diverge. There can be no diversity without a cor- 
 relative unity. Plato says that all unity tends to 
 plurality, and all plurality ends in unity. As the 
 engineer must know the unity of his machine, as 
 well as the diversity of the several parts, iu order 
 to manage its tremendous power, so the lawyer 
 must know law in the unity of its principles, as
 
 24 THE UNITY OP LAW. 
 
 well as the plurality of its i*ules, in order to know 
 his ground. 
 
 Laws are not made, but they appear as there is 
 need. Like the " ever-becoming " of Heraclitus, 
 law is. "Mankind's notions of right are gener- 
 ally founded upon prescription."'^ "Koman law 
 grew out of the varied experience and the prac- 
 ticed forethought of a great people, and which 
 provided naturally and easily for the numberless 
 questions of human life and intercourse."*^ "The 
 study of a great variety of natioDS shows that 
 none of the conditions essential to the existence 
 of men in a social order can be said to have been 
 at any time artificially made for them by any 
 prophet or law-giver. The utmost that legislators 
 can effect is to modify, to improve, to purify ex- 
 isting systems and institutions. To none of them, 
 that we know of in history, was it given to find a 
 void which he could fill with a theory of his own 
 invention. Laws are not made, but grow. Even 
 now, in our time of restless and over-prolific par- 
 liamentary law-making, new laws mark only the 
 endeavors of legislators to find the forms in Avhich 
 (a) Kalian's Mid. Ages, 337. {b) Church's Mid. Ages, 53.
 
 EVOLUTION REVEALS LAW. 25 
 
 tlie general feeling of justice is to be expressed, 
 or in which new Avants, felt by the community, are 
 to be satisfied under public authority."" And in 
 order not to conflict or fail, they must come from 
 one will. Law, to be law, is infallibly wise. 
 
 For civil purposes, it has an ethical sense which 
 is not of man, and a logical form which is from 
 man only. To be a true lawyer is to know both. 
 To instruct you exclusively in the logical form of 
 law, you have the assistance of your eminent Pro- 
 fessor of Law, while it is permitted to this chair 
 to invite you into more general ethical fields. 
 
 The evolution of matter, the evolution of morals, 
 or rather the evolution of the knowledge of morals, 
 or law, and the evolution of character, show that 
 the most general laws of all phenomena, both ma- 
 terial and social, are the same. Though evolution, 
 as a theory, has received the assent, qualified or 
 unqualified, of many, if not a majority, of the 
 thoughtful minds of the age, yet, before we can 
 use it in the study of ethics or of character, we 
 must ascertain more definitely what it means. 
 
 The word evolution expresses for science what 
 
 (a) Ihiie's Early Home, ch. IV.
 
 26 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 the word progress formerly did for metapbysics. 
 Both words cover the idea of traceable derivation 
 or development, not of causation. To evolve is 
 not to cause. As a philosophy of the beginning 
 of things, like other schemes, evolution is useless. 
 In the language of Herbert Spencer, its great 
 teacher: "Evolution, under its simplest and most 
 general aspect, is the integration of matter, and 
 the concomitant dissipation of motion." What is 
 meant by "integration of matter," and how does 
 that principle in material phenomena help us to 
 understand the nature of ethical principles ? As 
 nature can not obey contradictory commands, the 
 unity of law is a necessity. Accordingly we see all 
 phenomena have the same method of manifestation 
 from the many to the few, from the incoherent to 
 the coherent, and from the homogeneous to the 
 heterogeneous. 
 
 1. INIEGRATION. 
 
 (a) Integration of Blatler. — The law here is either 
 that of chemical affinity or of mechanical attrac- 
 tion. ATlieu the cream gathers on the surface of 
 the milk; when straws and litter in the current be- 
 come collected in an eddy; when boiling syrup
 
 UNIFICATION IS INTEGRATION. 27 
 
 crystallizes into sugar; when a crowd gathers in the 
 street; when various religious opinions cease dis- 
 cussion, and assent to a creed; when political 
 parties stop agitation, and agree upon a platform; 
 when many things in action become one in repose; 
 all division of labor, all committee work in legis- 
 lative bodies, all specialties in skill, all variant 
 moral notions formed into rules of conduct — all 
 this is integvatlon, or the first step in evolnl'ion. 
 The exploring star-gazer, who, in imagination, sees 
 the worlds come out of the initial mist envelop- 
 ing the beginning of all things, beholds integra- 
 tion upon integration— the mist, the sphere, the 
 system of spheres, and system of systems. The 
 great law is exemplified in the rose-bush of your 
 garden. It is an organization of separate elements, 
 developing into structure, beauty, and sweetness. 
 For further illustration, take a given volume of 
 oxygen and twice that volume of hydrogen. Bring 
 these together and you have water, which is dis- 
 tinctly neither gas, yet chemically both. The 
 hydrogen in it will no longer burn, nor will its 
 oxygen any longer promote combustion. Neither 
 gas can then obey its own distinctive laws. When
 
 28 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 water was produced it brought its owu law with it. 
 Indeed, as the laws of a thing are in the thing 
 itself, so a drop of water bears in its sphere a 
 M'hole code of the laws of matter. 
 
 (b) ItdegraUon of 31orals and Law. — Ethical law 
 observes the same method. Moral thoughts inte- 
 grate into moral convictions, and convictions into 
 laws, and laws into systems, and systems into 
 codes. New laws are in new relations. The law 
 does not anticipate the relation, but the relation 
 exhibits the law. The hiAv of evolution takes hold 
 of the life tvithin iiuture itself, and correlation man- 
 ifests the movement of that life in its rehUions 
 without. 
 
 Suppose that only two men existed in the whole 
 world, and each dwelt in a separate island. What- 
 ever may be said of their rights when apart, bring 
 them together and each becomes to the other a 
 possible wrong-doer; and, as to the other, each 
 has rights. Chrysippus said, "Men exist for each 
 other. "'^ As the hydrogen and the oxygen to- 
 gether make something that neither is by itself, 
 so these two persons, when associated, develop a 
 
 (a) fZeller on Stoicism, 312.] Protagoras said, " llelations are 
 fur .ill."
 
 NO UNITY WITHOUT LAW. 29 
 
 law of property and of person that neither needed 
 by liiraself. The two coming together make a re- 
 lation, and the relation is its own law.*^ 
 
 If there were but one person in all the world, 
 the law of that one would be absolute selfishness. 
 His ownership and possession would be exclnsive 
 —at least undisputed. All the sunlight Avould be 
 his, all the hills and valleys, all the springs and 
 rivers, all the gold and silver, the cattle upon the 
 thousand hills, all the trees and fruits, would be 
 his. But the appearance of a second person Avould 
 be another unit of selfishness, and if there was of 
 any one thing only enough for one, and both 
 sought it, there would be a conflict, in Avliich the 
 stronger would prevail. Each would be supreme 
 to himself, but not to the other. But harmony 
 requires law that shall be supreme over both. 
 
 One law ties many different things together, and 
 one method of law is the same as to matter and 
 mind. If one thing could exist by itself, it would 
 be powerless. One atom without another rftom 
 amounts to nothing.^ The end of essential mo- 
 la) Paulus, Digest, Lib. 1, Tit. 1-3; 1 Lecky E. M. 313. 
 (b) "Nothing in this world is single, 
 All things by a law divine 
 In one another's being mingle."
 
 30 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 ralitj is one of self-preservation, the survival of tlie 
 fittest, or the perpetuation of that which has been 
 begun. For illustration, when the second man ap- 
 peared, the producing power cannot be supposed 
 to have worked in the dark, or in vain. The pro- 
 ducing power is also the preserving or continuing 
 power. Therefore, that is right to be done by 
 either or both of the two which Avill best preserve 
 the two. This is not the ancient doctrine of Snm- 
 imnn Bonum, because that looked to results that 
 could not be estimated alike by all. The scope 
 was too wide and remote for any one. But the 
 law of harmony, discoverable by each one, was a 
 law practicable to each one. But essential law is 
 not more a law of harmony than a law of preserva- 
 tion; and the question is, what exists to be pre- 
 served. For instance, Avhen two men looked each 
 other in the face for the first time, what were they 
 to each other? Both had a right to live. Were 
 they strangers, enemies, or brothers? Or, when 
 man and Moman met for the first time, did they 
 meet with permanent or transient interest in each 
 other? Did they meet as merely loAver animals, or 
 were they social beings of a progressive destiny?
 
 ALL THINGS CREATED EY LAW. 31 
 
 The law is according to the answer to these ques- 
 tions. That only is done which is well done, and 
 what is done is to be preserved. 
 
 As everything in the universe seeks its own per- 
 fection, so groups of things seek to create some- 
 thing that each is not, and which shall be higher 
 than all. For instance, a tree is a compound. 
 From the earth comes one agent, from the air an- 
 other, and from the water another, and these all 
 work together for the good of every other thing, 
 and for their own glory. The one tree integrated, 
 or evolved, out of these several crude elements, 
 becomes a marvel of order and beauty. It is what 
 none of the elements could be by itself, and only 
 appeared when they combined. Thus, integration, 
 or initial evolution, is a way of creation. Antag- 
 onism, or what Herbert Spencer calls "dissipation 
 of motion," subsides, discussion between individ- 
 uals ceases, agreement is reached. The solidifica- 
 tion of the diffuse, the fixedness of the elastic, the 
 unification of the many, the repose of the disturbed, 
 the equilibrium of the unstable, is the method 
 of law — of development, Avhether in matter or 
 society. Compensation is universal. What is lost
 
 32 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 in one direction is gained in another. Hydrogen, 
 in becoming a constituent of water, surrenders its 
 Yolatility, and becomes a standard of Aveigbt. 
 Oxygen, to become water, ceases to promote com- 
 bustion, but becomes active in extinguishing it. 
 The will of the one state becomes the will of the 
 many individuals. In a word, all things that come 
 together must leave something of themselves in 
 abeyance. All building, whether of worlds, of 
 law, or of character, is on the same principle by 
 which motion becomes organic rest; incoherence 
 becomes coherence, and the transient becomes the 
 permanent. This integrating principle has been 
 active from the beginning. As the gaseous form 
 of the earth lost its heat, it lost some of its motion. 
 Particles cohered or solidified; the crust thick- 
 ened, and effects multiplied upon effects, until 
 chaos evolved into order, and light came from sun 
 and star, and vegetal chemistry prepared food for 
 thinking boast and conscious man. 
 
 What is law, and what are the ethics of law? All 
 so-called law-making is the correlation and integra- 
 tion of ethical ideas. Law is both an ethical princi- 
 ple and a logical rule. And yet the principle and the 
 rule arc not two distinc-t things, Ijut only diHcrcnt
 
 • ETHICS IS LAW. 33 
 
 sides of the same tiling. Legislatures prescribe, 
 and courts announce the rule, and moralists ascer- 
 tain and define the principle — in other words, there 
 is statutory morality, adjudicated morality, and 
 speculative morality. The principle is to the rule 
 Avhat the soul is to the body, and without Mhich 
 the body cannot be. Cessanle rat lone, lex cessat. 
 Neither the conscience nor the relations of society 
 could long tolerate an immoral law. Indeed, an 
 immoral law is not law, though it may be acqui- 
 esced in as law. The law emphatically forbids 
 anything contra bonos mores. Take the ethics out 
 of law, and Avhat have you left? Law and its max- 
 ims are adjudicated ethics, or abstract ethics con- 
 verted into an authoritative rule of action. For 
 the purpose of getting at this ethical principle or 
 rightness in claims triable before the courts, are 
 all the rules of evidence and all the forms of pro- 
 cedure. Ethics, or rightness, then, is the essence 
 of law. In other words, law is only applied ethics. 
 In the law, moral principles, like sunlight on a 
 rolling planet, rest upon and glorify whichever side 
 comes up. The sun is ever the same, but the side 
 of the planet next to it is ever changing. Eather, 
 morality is to the law what sun is to the wheat;
 
 34 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 without the sun there is no Avheat, and without 
 morality there is no law. New events evolve new 
 relations, and new relations bring their own moral 
 principles, or laws, with them. Law is an optimist, 
 and bj dropping the obsolete and applying the 
 new, ever seeks its own perfection. Rules of con- 
 duct scattered through the moral sentiments of 
 mankind attract each other, and become a code. 
 This is legal integration. Uncertainty, discussion, 
 and conflicting opinion agree upon some formula 
 to which applies the arbitrary doctrine of Slave 
 Decisis — let the decisions stand; let something be 
 settled. Society seeks to know the universal 
 truths concerning itself, and to announce them as 
 authoritative rules of conduct. The special is ever 
 transmuting itself into the universal, and the uni- 
 versal into the special, and the temporal is ever 
 moving on into the eternal. The law of this uni- 
 verse is improvement, not cliange for the sake of 
 change. 
 
 The Jewish conscience, social habits, and theo- 
 cratic i)olity integrated in the Ten Command- 
 ments or code of Moses. Greek wisdom, senti- 
 ment, and conviction integrated in the code of
 
 MATERIAL AND MOIIAL CAUSES ONE. 35 
 
 Solon. Komau law was first a family discipline; 
 afterwards it integrated in the laws of the Twelve 
 Tables, in the annual Edict of the Praetor, in the 
 Responses of the Jurisconsults, in the codes of 
 Gregory, Hermogenes, and Justinian. All codifi- 
 cations are integrations; and so universal is liti- 
 gation, that codification upon codification is con- 
 stantly made; nearly ever}' dispute between man 
 and man being now brought into court. 
 
 (c) The Pohit of Unilij. Here, as at all times, the 
 complexity of material causes and the complexity 
 of moral causes are the same in some principle 
 common to both. What is that principle? The 
 integration of hydrogen and oxygen produce water, 
 a substance that is neither, but chemically both. 
 So in moral law. Two individuals, in associating, 
 mingle their rights and form a third, including the 
 individual rights of both, but exclusively the right 
 of neither. The right of the two, when associ- 
 ated, is as much a new right as a drop of water is 
 a new substance. The moral and the material 
 chemistry is the same. But notice that I do not 
 say that moral law is created by moral relations, 
 only that it then appears. The unity of material
 
 36 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 and moral law is in the nnity of plan, or, rather, 
 the nnit}^ of all law is in the unity of the idea of 
 all law. Matter integrates and makes the world 
 of matter. Moral principles integrate and make 
 the laws of conduct. The integration of one is 
 one with the integration of the other. 
 
 But supplemental to this we see the unity of 
 law in the further fact that 
 
 2. ALL CAUSES MULTIPLY THEIR EFFECTS. 
 
 («) llaferlal Causes. Universally, the effect is 
 more complex than the cause. Light a candle, 
 and you have heat, light, carbonic acid, water, 
 and divers colors. Throw a pebble in the ocean, 
 and you move every drop in its awful fullness. 
 Kaise your hand or whisper a word, and you stir 
 all the atmosphere that surrounds our globe. If 
 law be a cause, we see the law of gravitation pro- 
 duce many eflfects in the water gathered in the 
 mountain-tops. As it gravitates down through 
 the gorges, it gathers the materials for the ma- 
 sonry of its channel in the })lains below. It 
 abrades from the hillsides fragments of stone, 
 picks up the sand and washes out the earth, carry-
 
 CAUSES MULTIPLY EFFECTS. 37 
 
 ing all in solution, until a less precipitous flow 
 weakens its momentum. Then begins, from tiie 
 one law of gravitation, a multiplicity of efi'ects, 
 calling out other laws. Gravitation pulls down its 
 heaviest material along the margin, where the 
 current begins to weaken. The masonry here is 
 wonderfully perfect. Every pebble is laid exactly 
 where the strength of the future bank of the river 
 will most need it. Pebble is laid on pebble for 
 years, it may be for centuries — for nature keeps 
 no chronology — until the waters have walled them- 
 selves in, leaving the plains on either side as a 
 home for man. 
 
 The second effect of gravitation, as it pulls the 
 waters down the mountain-side, after it has sur- 
 rendered the pebble to form the wall of the bank, 
 is to carry the lighter sand a little more to the side, 
 and drop it behind the pebbles, as a parallel and 
 supporting buttress. 
 
 The third effect is to carry the lighter soil still 
 further back, and form a bank of earth behind 
 both the former; thus building for itself its own 
 pathway to the receiving sea. Here are different, 
 but consistent, effects from the same law.
 
 38 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Again, tlie sun shines on a field where both 
 tares and wheat are sown. The same cause pro- 
 duces efiects specifically difierent. It quickens 
 both the tare and the wheat. 
 
 Again, one grain of wheat will produce mani- 
 fold other grains. This Avlieat becomes food; this 
 food nourishes brain, this brain sustains the song 
 of the poet, the eloquence of the orator, and the 
 thought of the statesman. One case of infectious 
 disease flies from man to man, until a dreadful 
 epidemic lays towns, cities, and states in the 
 grave. How trivial often the cause of disasters, 
 and yet how multiplied the effects. From one 
 little cell, life is said to continue itself through all 
 living forms. From the monotony of the inor- 
 ganic mineral arose the innumerable vegetable 
 life, with its marvelous functions of inhalation and 
 exhalation, the chemistry of its assimilative powers, 
 its beautiful forms, and tlie utilities of its fibrous 
 substance. With it man builds the palace and 
 the ship, tiie temple of worship and tlio don of 
 despair, the forum of the law and the throne of 
 authority. Indeed, to s^^ocif}' the manifold effects 
 of a cause would bo to i2;ive a catalo<>;ue of tlie
 
 MORAL CAUSES MULTIPLY EFFECTS. 39 
 
 number and spleiulor of all phenomena — of heat, 
 light, electricity; and of all forms, colors, sound, 
 and motion. 
 
 (&) Moral Causes. As in matter, so in morals. 
 Moral effects from moral causes are prodigiously 
 multiplied. Mackintosh and Buckle would have us 
 believe the contrary; but they lose sight of the fact 
 that, while the theoretical morality of each man is 
 left to self-culture and the teachings of religion 
 and the philosophers, his practical morality, as it 
 applies to his relations to his fellow-man, is taught 
 him by municipal law and the courts; and there is 
 nothing stationary in the teachings of these. 
 
 Society, as it grows older, and as new relations 
 and questions arise, more and more prescribes and 
 enforces moral conduct. In nothing does civiliza- 
 tion show less stagnation and more advance, than 
 in the growing perfection of its law; absorbing and 
 adjudicating, from age to age, the moral senti- 
 ments of mankind. Rome is still potential through 
 her system of civil morality as thought out by her 
 jurisconsults and adjudicated by her pmetors. 
 Law being law only as it is morality, no one can 
 say, in the presence of its voluminous bod}', that
 
 40 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 moral ideas are stationary. Account for it as you 
 may, wiietlier by the influence of great religious or 
 general intellectual culture, thousands and tens of 
 thousands of great lawyers are so many great mor- 
 alists, and show that moral science is the true and 
 ever enlarging basis of law and of a true civiliza- 
 tion. The highest happiness of mankind lives 
 along moral lines; and, as everything seeks its own 
 perfection, so moral ideas must grow more and more 
 enlightened and more universal. 
 
 To show how moral causes multiply moral effects, 
 take any one act of life. On the making of a prom- 
 issory note, the drawing of a bill of exchange, 
 there arises, with and in the act, a whole volume of 
 moral rules called laws. The principle of right- 
 ness at once regulates its parties, their compe- 
 tency, rights, duties, and obligations. The con- 
 science of the law looks well to the value of i^s 
 consideration. Then there is the moral obligation 
 of its acceptance, or its protest for uou-acceptance, 
 if a bill of exchange. There is punishment for its 
 forgery, and help in the event of its loss. If one 
 receive a little package to carry for hire, instantly 
 that act is covered by many laws looking to the
 
 EVENTS BRING THEIR OWN LAWS. 41 
 
 rights of owners and tlie responsibility of the car- 
 rier. If you speak of another's fair fame, hiw 
 warns you to guard, your lips. If you build a 
 house, the law makes it your castle, giving you 
 certain rights of defense. Laws forbidding burg- 
 lary and arson at once come to protect it. 
 
 (c) The Point of Utiity. The intention to go on 
 and out of itself, is seen in an atom of matter and 
 in a principle of morals. Each is instinct with the 
 desire, so to speak, and is distinguished by the act, 
 of imparting or giving itself away to something 
 else. An atom is not an orphan or friendless, or 
 without the sympathy of other atoms. As the 
 acorn produces many oaks, the fountain produces 
 many, streams, the sun giv-es out many rays, and 
 from ancestors descend many heirs, so no right is 
 solitary or barren; but rights beget rights, and 
 duties beget duties. The law of ownership begets 
 the law against trespass and against larceny. As 
 no atom can be an outlaw, so law is multiplied as 
 relations are multiplied. Indeed, the law of a 
 thing is inseparably in the thing itself. As the 
 universe is filled with things, so is it filled with 
 law. Are not all these laws one, if their idea be 
 one ?
 
 42 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 But still more do the principles of material sci- 
 ence show their identity with moral principles in 
 
 3. THE FACT AND LAW OF SEGREGATION. 
 
 («) JJaterial Segregation.. — We mean by segrega- 
 tion, not the importance of any one thing abstractly 
 by itself, but the concrete importance of one thing 
 as related to every other thing. In the material 
 world every atom is a help to every other atom. 
 Things are different; but they are dependent. 
 Concord needs discords. There must be contrasts, 
 as well as analogies. In colors, the mind could 
 not endure monotony. Suppose there were but 
 one color — everything were bkie, yellow, or red — 
 the universe would be intolerable. So in forms, 
 the more varieties, the more individualities, the 
 more pleasure we derive therefrom. 
 
 This is not a movement of antipathy, but of 
 sympathy; not of aristocracy, but of fraternity; 
 not of ajffinity, but of association. In integration, 
 things are not related, but combined and assimi- 
 lated. In segregation there is relation and mutual 
 help. In material segregation, like things go to 
 like. Shuilis shuili gaudel. The law here is sym-
 
 EACH LAW IMPOKTANT. 43 
 
 patliy, not, affinity. The resnlt is association, not 
 a compound. Things are together, not one. It 
 is not integration, but segregation; not oneness, 
 but unity. Antipatliy forbids like things to be- 
 come one with unlilce. The dove flies from the 
 hawk; men and vipers cannot sleep in the same 
 bed. The wind lifts the chaff into a cloud by 
 itself, and leaves the wheat in a mass by itself. 
 Species stay witli species, and genus with genus. 
 When unlike things attract each other, as oxygen 
 and hydrogen, by the creative or integrating law 
 of chemical affinity, they drop their individuality 
 and become something else. In segregation, every 
 individual is distinct and separate in character, 
 but joined in purpose with something else. 
 
 (h) Bloral Segregation. The importance of any 
 one law is seen in the confusion that would result 
 if other laws did not exist. If laws arise, they 
 must be interpreted and executed. Each depart- 
 ment is dependent on the other. The executive is 
 useless without the legislative, and the legislative 
 without the executive. It is useless to declare a 
 right unless it be protected and enforced. The 
 law of property necessitates the law of penalties.
 
 44 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 The declaratory and the vindicatory are mutually 
 dependent on each other. 
 
 (c) Ihe Point of Unity between material and 
 moral segregation is in the fact of universal de- 
 pendence and the law of universal help. Every- 
 thing, as we have said, depends upon every other 
 thing, atom upon atom, principle on principle, 
 and all on something beyond them. Each link of 
 the chain that hangs must hang from the same 
 thing. If everything is under any one thing, in 
 that one thing is unit3\ Helpfulness is omnipres- 
 ent in matter, and helpfulness is omnipresent in 
 mind and morals, and in the omnipresence of help- 
 fulness is the unity of material and moral laws. 
 
 i. EVOLUTION OF THE ETHICS OF LEGAL CHARACTEK. 
 
 After applying all these principles to the study 
 of the ethics of law itself, you will observe that 
 legal character is formed under: 
 
 (a) livo laics of condition. 
 
 i. The first law of condition is one of heredity; 
 or what we are from our ancestors, as gifts, or the 
 Avant of gifts, moral bias or immoral bias, harmo-
 
 LAWS OF CONDITION AND DIRECTION. 45 
 
 nizing or antagonizing elements of nature. As a 
 rule, gifts are a personal trust, and die with their 
 possessor.^ 
 
 ii. The second law of conditions is one of environ- 
 ment or assimilation, pertaining to what you absorb 
 from your circumstances and education. You are 
 maturing under influences that assist or retard your 
 best development. It is not sufficient that you be 
 educated only on your intellectual side. The great 
 criminals of the day are not intellectually defi- 
 cient. You will need to drink deep of the fountain 
 of eternal and essential right whence come all laws, 
 written and unwritten, material and moral, in 
 order to possess the key to unlock all legal prob- 
 lems submitted for your solution. A lawj'er with 
 a knowledge only of rules is like a pauper on a 
 crutch; but he who is enlightened by the highest 
 principles is like a prince on a throne. 
 
 (6) Two laws or lines of direction, (i.) One law of 
 direction, for the will, like that of all. force, is in 
 the line of the least resistance. Two classes are 
 in this direction — those indolent candidates who 
 could, but will not, attempt the best thiugs, and 
 (a) See Lect. IV.
 
 46 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 those incapable candidates who woukl, but cannot, 
 force results. Both of these shun the difficult, , 
 the troublesome, the voluminous. They float with 
 the current, or drift with the wind. The}^ are the 
 creatures of mere circumstances, and generally of 
 the worst. They hang upon. all professions, look- 
 ing wistfully toward success, but taking no step of 
 their own accord toward it — a sort of professional 
 sponges and parasites. 
 
 if. Another law of direction is in the line of the 
 greatest attraction. Some are resolute men, for the 
 most part of the best motives, having high aims for 
 the sake of high ends. They possess natures with in- 
 tellectual and moral aptitudes, growing under high 
 moral influences, seeking the right in all purposes, 
 and learning the right from all experiences. These 
 are the men most trusted and most potential. 
 Scum that boils to the surface, is soon skimmed 
 off. In the end, it may be a distant one, the right 
 man gets into the right place. The class of men 
 drifting in the line of the least resistance mag- 
 nifies the obstacles of life more than the end; but 
 the other class, acting under the force of the 
 greatest attraction, magnifies the einf, the reward,
 
 A lawyer's moral convictions. 47 
 
 the compensatious of life, more than the inter- 
 vening obstacles. One is easily discouraged, and 
 gives up; the other is brave and struggles on. 
 One class yields to circumstances; the other makes 
 circumstances yield to it. One lives only for the 
 present; the other for the future as well. One is 
 fickle of purpose and irregular in application; the 
 other is persistent in both intention and effort. 
 The resolute will accomplish something; the irres- 
 olute will fail in all. At the fiftieth parallel of 
 north latitude are said to be two springs of water. 
 One flows westerly to the Pacific; the other east- 
 erly to the Gulf. The one you take at the start 
 determines your end. 
 
 A bad beginning no more promises a good end- 
 ing than the sowing of tares promises a harvest of 
 wheat. A man of base convictions may be a stu- 
 dent, but he cannot be a lawyer. His success, if any, 
 will rest upon his use, as his own, of the average 
 moral sentiments of society. His conscience will 
 be a professional, not a personal one. You will 
 certainly know law the best when, by the moral 
 quality of your feelings, the breadth of j^our en- 
 lightenment, and the clearness of your mental
 
 48 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 perceptions, you know most of moral principles. 
 Cold logic will help the mind into sharpness, but 
 courts, juries and the public soon distrust a man 
 morally deficient. The disadvantage of such defi- 
 ciency is so soon discovered by a candidate for 
 legal success, that he early learns to assume a con- 
 science, if he have it not. Without an average 
 honesty, continued success would be anomalous — 
 indeed, impossible. Nothing unconscionable is 
 lawful. Some competitors Avill surpass others. 
 Some individual trees are tall and stately; others 
 dwarfed and shapeless. So in the profession of 
 the law. Some morally and intellectually well- 
 furnished men will master both legal rules and 
 principles, and make the law an honorable pro- 
 fession; others, less able, less diligent, and with 
 motives less excellent, will content themselves 
 with a knowledge of tlie mere rules, and make 
 themselves mere practitioners, and the law only a 
 respectable trade; while others, fortunately few in 
 number, will pervert whatever they may know of 
 cither rule or principle, and sink to the contempt 
 of the pettifogger, and degrade law to a cheat. As 
 lawyers have practically shaped all civilization from
 
 THE UNITY OF MENTAL TOWER. 49 
 
 the promulgation of the code of Solon to the age 
 of the jurisconsults^ so they will and must here- 
 after. The world honors the true lawyer, because 
 the true lawyer honors the world. 
 
 Under this law of professional segregation, by 
 which the best comes to the front, labor of all 
 kinds tends to specialty. The many combine. 
 Every man concentrates his powers. Everything 
 is in a rythmic or wavy flow from confusion to 
 system. Nature re-arranges to improve, and di- 
 vides to perfect. All things came from one; and 
 the Buddhists say that all things will be absorbed 
 back into one. The distinction of many things 
 combined is strength — of one thing by itself, is 
 perfection. We see this principle exemplified in 
 the divisions of the trades and professions. The 
 shoemaker, the hatter, the tailor, the wagon-maker 
 — these are all segregations for the sake of excep- 
 tional skill. As every cause is selective, and every 
 efitect is particular, so in medicine we have physi- 
 cians, surgeons, and minor surgeons; in law we 
 have special application to constitutional law, to 
 criminal law, to probate law, to commercial law. 
 Concentration is power, and power is success.
 
 50 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 The lawyer's individuality is active in building 
 up the lawyer's character. The lawyer is like a 
 city that is set on a hill. He cannot be hid. His 
 individuality is pronounced. No man is more 
 exactly measured. He is individualized by his 
 attainments. In the thousand and one arguments 
 before the courts and juries, he will reveal himself. 
 The wealth and the strength of a well-furnished 
 mind will appear, and nothing can conceal the 
 poverty and the weakness of a mind unfurnished. 
 But tiie lawyer must have far more than mere 
 mental culture. Without this it is useless for him 
 to begin; but without the moral, it would be better 
 for him and for society, that he should not go on. 
 There is nothing more sacred than justice which he 
 is to promote or pervert. From false moral ideas, 
 Avhat wrong, public or private, is not self-persuaded 
 of its justice? With a cadence of emphasis, from 
 the legal forum to the conscience of the traitor and 
 of the petty criminal, wrong justifies itself. For 
 this reason, Socrates placed all wrong in ignorance; 
 claiming that all men would do right, if they knew 
 Avhat it is. The revolutionary effort to ascertain 
 and uliectuate public justice, is at the bottom of
 
 WHAT IS A LEGAL KIGHT. 61 
 
 all public disturbance. Thirty-six billions of lives 
 have been sacriticecl to buiid up some sort of right. 
 The Plebeian seceded to Mons Sacer for justice. 
 In the name of right, Brutus slew Caesar in the 
 capitol. In the name of justice, the mass seeks 
 to divide the property of the few. It is for right 
 or justice that society aggregates and governments 
 are formed. Confronting armies each- claim the 
 right; and millions are in all grades of struggle, 
 and die for wrong, devoutly persuaded of the right. 
 It is of first importance, then, that instruction 
 upon the rightness of things — justice, moralit}-, 
 ethics, or by whatever name you designate that 
 which ought to he — should be given to successive 
 generations; that, if possible, in the course of 
 years, an induction of right conditions may furnish 
 the world with a science of moral truth for prac- 
 tical life.-'' The background of all law is essential 
 rightness, or ethics. There is, therefore, no men- 
 tal preparation of the lawyer paramount to that of 
 his moral convictions. A wicked priest at his altar 
 is not more false to his place and profession than 
 is a lawyer of an immoral conscience in society and 
 before the courts. A. lawyer must claim the sup- 
 
 (a) Cicero's Laws, Bk. II. V.
 
 52 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 port of some accepted theory of morals for the law 
 of his case. No court would listen to an argument 
 to sustain a contract made contra honos mores. 
 Shylock had a fierce sense of the obligation of law. 
 He fancied that before the law a contract was a 
 contract; and if he could but get the forfeiture 
 of a pound of flesh nominated in the bond of his 
 debtor, the law would put in his hands the life of 
 the one he hated. But he misunderstood that the 
 ethical basis of law was humanity — as man's high- 
 est right and duty. The law never offers its serv- 
 ice to the revengeful. The law is true when all 
 else is false; it is strong when all else is weak; it 
 is sacred when all else is vile. The immoral is 
 never legal. It is not supposable that the legisla- 
 ture would require, or the courts enforce, any 
 agreement for an act mala in se. Wagers, gam- 
 bling debts, have noplace before the law; and you 
 may be sure that nothing is lawful that offends the 
 moral sense of an enlightened and disinterested 
 mind. He who is not sure of a good conscience is 
 out of place at the bar. Better not learn the law 
 tlian learn to [)orvcrt it. A great lawyer is a great 
 priest to civilization, and the corrupt arc its ex- 
 ecrable curse.
 
 LECTUEE 11. 
 CORRELATION IN MATTER AND IN MORALITY. 
 
 I. Correlation as a Method. 
 II. Correlation as a State. 
 III. Correlation as a Movement: 
 
 1. Direct Correlation — - 
 
 (a) Matter force; 
 
 (b) Moral force. 
 
 2. Inverse Correlation — 
 
 (a) Matter force; 
 {h) Moral force. 
 
 The evolution of matter and morality discussed 
 in the last lecture, which held things and princi- 
 ples to have the same inscrutable origin, considered 
 what phenomena of all kinds are or become in 
 themselves from inside energies; but, in correla- 
 tion now to be mentioned, we look at what things 
 and events are, or become, in their relations to 
 others. Everything is related, but everything is 
 not correlated. Without mutuality or recipro- 
 cality_there is a mere relation in time and space
 
 54 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 between a stone and a chair or between a mount- 
 ain and a star; but there is correhition when, by a 
 fixed hiw, things follow as consequence in cause 
 and eflect, or co-exist in pairs, as husband and 
 wife, or as uniform sequence in light and dark- 
 ness. In other words, correlation is either a 
 method, a slate, ov a. movement. 
 
 I. COEEELATION AS A METHOD. 
 
 The most terrible certainty in all the economy 
 of nature is the law of equivalence. Correlation 
 is its method, which we are to consider to-day. 
 The light of science that reveals the behavior of 
 forces in matter also unveils and emphasizes the 
 awful law of moral exchanges. For so much wrong, 
 we get an equivalence of suffering. But if we 
 measure the moral magnitude of the cause by the 
 multiplicity of its effects, and their undying con- 
 tinuance, we shall see that though a cause is one 
 thing, it is vast. In physics, we can see so much 
 of one force given for another; but in moral move- 
 ments the equivalence of a wrong is never full. 
 Men reap one huntlrod grains for the one they sow. 
 That which we measure to others, they measure to 
 us again ; good measure, pressed down, and running 
 over, is surely returned to us.
 
 PUNISHMENT CERTAIN. 55 
 
 The nature of things, as seen in correhition, 
 admits of no escape. Nature may heal the wound 
 you make, but she Avill mark its place with a scar. 
 If you injure moral character, like footprints in 
 the snow, it can never be smooth again. The one 
 sin of woman has its equivalence in an outcast's 
 life. The law of heredity perpetuates ancestral 
 disease to remote generations. The dishonest 
 tricks of a lawyer equivalate themselves in uni- 
 versal and irreversible distrust. Men erect for 
 themselves moral tombs or moral thrones, and 
 each act is a block in the structure built without 
 hands. Consequences are remorseless demons; 
 and, as has been so beautifully said, are as much 
 beyond our control as are a handful of feathers 
 which 3'ou scatter to the winds. 
 
 II. CORKELATION AS A STATE. 
 
 Things are related as unconnected parts of a 
 connected whole, such as is the relation of sea, 
 house, tree; or they are correlated, as we have said, 
 into co-existing and inseparable pairs. Heraclitus 
 taught that nothing exists without its contrary, 
 and that to speak of one is to suggest its opposite.
 
 56 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Pythagoras and Aristotle mention ten of these 
 pairs : 
 
 Finite and Infinite, Kest and Motion, 
 
 Odd and Even, Straight and Crooked, 
 
 Unity and Plurality, Light and Darkness, 
 
 Male and Female, Good and Bad, 
 
 Eight and Left, Square and Oblong. 
 
 These co-existing pairs are sometimes of persons, 
 as husband and wife, parent and chikl, guardian 
 and ward, master and servant, vendor and vendee, 
 buyer and seller, and mortgagor and mortgagee; 
 sometimes in pairs of co-existing forms, as con- 
 cavity and convexity; or of quantity, as much and 
 little, plus and minus; or of attributes, as straight 
 and crooked; or of direction, as up and down. 
 Thus we see that, in correlative states, pairs of 
 dissimilar things must co-exist, and that the men- 
 tion of one of the pair suggests the existence of 
 the other. The husband ceases to be husband 
 when the wife dies. Without a child there can be 
 no parent, without a servant no master. Take 
 away one of the two parallel lines, and the other 
 is no longer a parallel, as a line cannot be parallel 
 to itself. As the describing of a curved line 
 makes one side concave and the other convex, so 
 tlio obliteration of that curved lino obliterates 
 both the concavity and the convexity.
 
 DIRECT CORRELATION. 
 
 57 
 
 III. IN CORRELATION AS A MOVEMENT, 
 
 One thing is as another is, like hibor and wages; 
 or one thing is as another is not, like right and 
 wrong; in other words, correlation as a movement 
 is direct or inverse. 
 
 1. Direct or Mataal correlation takes place when 
 any two quantities, qualities, or forces increase or 
 decrease together in the same ratio. Thus time 
 varies directly as Avages; that is, the greater time 
 the greater wages, and the less time the less wages. '"^ 
 
 (a) lu tliis law of direct correlation the minimum of one thin<T 
 is the minimum of its companion force, and the maximum of one 
 is the maximum of tlie other; botli increasing or decreasincr ia 
 the same ratio. 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 Minimum. 
 
 Minimum.
 
 58 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 («) hi Matter force it is a demonstrated principle 
 that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Ex- 
 actly as your finger presses the table, the table 
 presses your finger. That which you strike, strikes 
 3'ou back. If you disappoint the moral sense of 
 society, the moral sense of society will disappoint 
 you. As your hand warms the maible, so the 
 marble cools your hand. The gun with which you 
 kill the bird before it, recoils and bruises you be- 
 hind it. We cannot electrize a substance without 
 magnetizing it, nor magnetize a substance without 
 electrizing it. Before the laws of matter everything 
 is equal. Nature enforces obedience. Every 
 atom protects itself, instantly arresting, judging, 
 and punishing each offender against its rights. 
 Man cannot lie to Nature, nor extort upon her, nor 
 rob her. Her motto is, semper fidelis, semper 
 paratiis. 
 
 (h) In 31oral forces this direct correlation is no 
 less evident. These antitheses and syntheses of 
 forces are seen iu the movement of demand and 
 supply; in credit and debit; and in cause and effect. 
 Some things arc inverse as to one movement and 
 direct as to another. For instance, religion is in- 
 verse as to immorality, and direct as to morality. 
 Labor is inversely as to povorly, but directly as to
 
 INVERSE. CORRELATION. 59 
 
 wages. Velocity is directly as to force, and in- 
 versely as to time. Law is inversely as to mor- 
 ality, but directly as to crime. Civilization, 
 generally, is directly as to worship and knowledge, 
 and inversely as to ignorance and irreligion. Pas- 
 sion correlates itself in a corresponding expression. 
 Anger is violent, grief weeps, pleasure smiles, and 
 liope rejoices. Persecution and oY)pression beget 
 resistance, and injury correlates itself in revenge. 
 The more alcohol the more is tlie intoxication. 
 Food correlates itself in strength. The rose pays 
 its debt to the sun, in its perfume and color. Vice 
 lias its exact equivalent in loss of character, and 
 known fraud, in loss of credit and business. 
 
 2. Correlation as a movement is inverse where 
 dissimilar qualities or forces are so related that 
 when one is increased by any law of change, the 
 other shall equivalently decrease by the same law." 
 
 In the former lecture on the unity of law, it was 
 intended to show, through the law of segregation, 
 how one thing is not another, bnt, like gravitation, 
 remains apart unchanged, so the jDurpose of this 
 lecture is to show, through the laws of inverse cor- 
 
 (a) In this law of inverse correlation, the maximiun of one 
 thing is the minimum of its opposite. The horizontal lines cross- 
 ing tlic diagonal, in the figure below, illustrate the initial and
 
 60 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 relation or conversion, liow one force seems to be- 
 come or be converted into another. The process 
 is rather disphicement and substitution than con- 
 version. It is transposition as distinguished from 
 transmutation, but it is substitution rather than 
 either. It is one thing for another. But as nei- 
 ther of the co-existing pairs we have mentioned 
 can be absent at the same time, so now, in inverse 
 correlative movement, both reciprocal energies 
 cannot be present at the same moment. 
 
 final quantity of forces inversely correlative, lengthening on one 
 side as they shorten on the other. 
 
 Fiti. 2. 
 Maximum. 
 
 Minimum. 
 
 Resistance. 
 
 Heat. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 Velocity. 
 
 > 
 a 
 
 Hi Electricity. 
 
 o 
 1 
 o 
 
 Ininiorality. 
 Minimum. 
 
 Maximum.
 
 SHAKESrEARE's CORRELATION. 61 
 
 Herbert Spencer says that "one force, in giving 
 origin to the next, is itself expended or ceases to 
 exist as such." We must be careful to remember 
 that the force which expires may be a cause or 
 only an antecedent to the one that survives or 
 takes its place. We cannot say that heat causes 
 electricity, but only that so much of one goes as so 
 much of the other comes. When a virtuous man 
 is perverted into a vicious man, his virtues are not 
 a cause of his vices; or when a vicious man is con- 
 verted into virtue, his vices are not a cause of his 
 virtues. When day precedes the night, the day is 
 not the cause of the night, nor night an effect of 
 the day because it follows the day. The horse is 
 not a cause of the cart because it is before it, nor 
 
 Shakespeare expresses this correhxtion, in the play of ' ' Corio- 
 lanus," when Autidias says: 
 
 " One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; 
 Eights by rights foiled, strengths by strengths do fail." 
 Benvolio tells Tlomeo: 
 
 " One fire burns out another's burning; 
 
 One pain is lessened Ijy another's anguish; 
 Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; 
 One desperate grief cures with another's languish. 
 Take thou some new infection to thine eye, 
 And the rank poison of the old will die. " 
 Lear tells Kent: 
 
 " Where the greater malady is fixed, 
 The lesser is scarce felt." 
 And so Virgil, when he says, " l/no avuho non dejicit alter: 
 Where one thing is absent, another takes its place. "
 
 G2 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 the cart an effect of the horse because it follows 
 the liorse. Substitution is not causation. Se- 
 quences are not consequences. But there is a cor- 
 relative movement in the dropping of the sand in 
 the hour-glass, from the upper chamber to the 
 lower; unless one be emptied, the othej- cannot 
 be filled. The chain that pulls up a full bucket 
 lets down an empty one. The rod dropped from 
 the hand of Moses became a serpent on earth. 
 Exactly as one, so was the other. The unknown, 
 quantity of the equation is ever transferring or 
 correlating itself into the known. Ignorance 
 shrinks as knowledge expands. Both iu the ma- 
 terial and moral world, when one thing is more, 
 something else is exactly that much less. The 
 force is the same, the manifestation only is difier- 
 ent. 
 
 («) In malk'T force this inverse correlation takes 
 place Avhen one unconscious force exchanges itself 
 for another, and acts inversely as the other ceases. 
 Herbert Spencer says, that "when a given force 
 ceases to exist under one form, an equal quantity 
 must come into existence under some other form 
 or forms." You cannot both expend and keep a 
 force. The butterfly begins to live as the mother- 
 worm dies. In the revolutions of the wheel, one
 
 LIGHT CORRELATES WITH SHADOWS. 03 
 
 part cannot come np except as the other parts go 
 down. The grain of wheat is quickened as it dies. 
 "Water leveling itself from one vessel to another 
 decreases its qnantitj' in one exactly as it increases 
 it in the other. Increasing light contracts but in- 
 tensifies the shadows. In other words, the max- 
 imum of one manifestation of force coincides with 
 the minimum of its correlative force. If you gain 
 motion you lose heat, and as you gain heat you 
 lose motion. Though nature is always in debt, 
 yet she keeps a careful balance-sheet with exact 
 and scrupulous honesty, returning what she bor- 
 rows, and paving for what she consumes. In 
 agriculture, you must restore to the soil an equiv- 
 alent for that which you take from it. If nature 
 uses heat, she pays in electricity or some other 
 force; if she dissipates motion, she compensates 
 by integrating matter. In all action she pa^'s by 
 equal and opposite reaction. Nothing is fruitless. 
 When the unheated rifle-ball strikes the iron plate, 
 the plate stops the ball, flattened and heated. The 
 break on the wheel takes motion from the wheel, 
 but gives it heat instead. Both the ball and the 
 wheel lose one energy, but gain another that is a 
 fair equivalent. But a force and its equivalent in 
 reciprocal or inverse correlation are not both
 
 64 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 present at the same moment. As an electrical rod 
 cannot liave both positive and negative electricity 
 on the same end; and as, generally, two opposite 
 energies cannot both be present at the same time 
 and place, yet, if one be absent the other will 
 be present. Nature is vigilant but economical. 
 When she uses one force, she rests some other. 
 Like a relief of sentinels, when one is off duty, 
 another is on. Correlation shows, as we have 
 seen, how one "matter force," in giving origin to 
 the next, is itself expended or ceases to exist as 
 sii.ch;" and how much one mode of force is the 
 equivalent of so much of another mode. It has 
 been likened to a mart where we barter or ex- 
 change one kind of force for its equivalent in 
 another. It is rather a bank from which we do 
 not draw the identical coin we deposit, but only 
 its equivalent in other coin. But as no credit is 
 given, we must first deposit before we can draw at 
 all. Every force, as it has been said, is preceded 
 by some other force. The law of compensation 
 that adjusts the exchange in this correlation gives 
 one force after another. In brief, nature keeps 
 things exactly where she wants them, and in 
 pcifect liarmony, looking and moving in tlio di- 
 rection of ultimate ])orl'ectibility.
 
 WHY IS CORRELATION. 65 
 
 Correlative movements in matter are necessi- 
 tated by three universal and omnipotent principles 
 in nature: First — All physicists, from Aristotle 
 down, say, that nature abhors a vacuum. Every- 
 where must be something, solid or fluid, and but 
 one. A moral vacuum is as impossible as any 
 other. If man has not virtues he will have vices. 
 Second — Though there can be no vacuum, and 
 nature fills every place with something, she only 
 puts one thing in any one place at the same time. 
 In things that run in successive pairs, such as day 
 and night, virtue and vice, you will have exactly 
 as much of one as you do not have of the other. 
 Just as morality goes immorality comes. They 
 are not companions. Two kings cannot sit on the 
 same part of the throne at the same moment. 
 Nature never attempts the impossible. The laws 
 of impenetrability forbid space to have too much 
 of anything. The driven wedge or nail, or the 
 stone in the water, each displaces its own bulk, 
 and no more. Shadows increase with the depart- 
 ing sun. The roots of the tree displace their own 
 bulk of earth in Avhicli they are fastened. Two 
 opposite trains cannot pass each other on the 
 same track. 
 
 In addition to this abhorrence of a vacuum and
 
 66 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 tliis law of impenetrability of matter, there is, 
 ildrdly, the fact of universal unrest. Nothing is 
 stationary. Plato says that even all unity tends 
 to plurality, and all plurality ends in unity. 
 Forces are ever in unstable equilibrium, aud char- 
 acter is ever oscillating to an average. As, if you 
 mix a pint of the seed of tares with a bushel of 
 Avheat, you will average upward in value, so you 
 will average downward if you mix a bushel of 
 tares with a pint of Avheat. The moral average of 
 character and conduct will depend on the propor- 
 tion of its virtues to its vices. In colors, you will 
 have a shade or a tint, as the light or the dark 
 predominates in the hue. 
 
 (h) la moral force there is also an inverse corre- 
 lation. Systems do not conflict, but agree. As in 
 matter, force is any power that does work, such as 
 gravitation, heat, and electricity; so, sacred or 
 moral force is any ])ower or influence that affects 
 conduct or shapes civilization, such as love, adora- 
 tion, and awe in worship, the sacredness of domes- 
 tic relations, and the highest mental and moral 
 education of man. Secular force includes the 
 seeking of power for the sake of power, the love of 
 money, war for personal or territorial aggrandize- 
 ment, and tlu! separation of the state from religion.
 
 MOllAL COllRELATIONS. 07 
 
 Tilings tliat have tbeir opposite, not in ci^se, but 
 ill posse, such as morality and imraoralit}^, aiid that 
 do not co-exist at the same moment in the same 
 subject, can be correlated into that opposite: as 
 heat into electricity, or virtue into vice, and the 
 reverse. If things will change, it is important to 
 know the law of that change as it affects conduct 
 and society. 
 
 Looking at the past through the perspective of 
 history, it will be seen that the increment of sec- 
 ular forces is exactly equivalent to the shrinkage 
 in the sacred forces, and the reverse; and that the 
 correlation of sacred and secular forces is as rig- 
 idly dem.onstrable and measurable as that of any 
 and all other forces. This correlation is seen in 
 the fact that the maximum of sacred forces coin- 
 cides with the minimum of the secular, and the 
 maximum of the secular force is the minimum 
 of the sacred. In other Avords, a given quantity 
 of one has been displaced and an exact equivalent 
 of the other has been substituted — the one coming 
 as the other goes. High civilization is in the sup- 
 pression of disorganizing force, and the substitu- 
 tion of its equivalent in one of liarmon}-; a result 
 ever coming and ever to come. The tendency in 
 the ebb and flow of events is from extreme sacred-
 
 68 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 iiess to extreme secnlarity, and the reverse. Take 
 the case of one addicted to vice, say to drunken- 
 ness, and the power of vice will strengthen exactly 
 as the power of the will weakens. Discipline is 
 correlated into indulgence. Lawlessness increases 
 as restraints are removed. Immorality increases 
 as spiritual or religious power decreases. 
 
 Do we not in this transmutation or manifestation 
 of physical force — the increment of the one corres- 
 ponding to the decrement of another, or the incre- 
 ment of one corresponding to the increment of 
 another, and the reverse — grasp a principle Avhicli 
 imderlies the action and reaction of all changes, 
 whether physical, moral, or political ? Fraud, def- 
 amation, falsehood, impurity, malicious violence, 
 and theft, have their place in the universal chain of 
 cause and effect, of integration and disintegration, 
 of propagation and growth, of evolution and devo- 
 lution, of conservation and correlation. Can the 
 perpetrator of wrong escape all consequences of 
 his act? Is wrong the only thing in all the 
 universe released from responsibility, or that 
 does not propagate itself, or from which the doer 
 instantly disconnects himself, and leaves his wrong 
 to its solitary effects? Can a man separate himself 
 lioiii his shadow ? Let no one, especially the
 
 WRONG IS IMMORTAL. 69 
 
 young, deceive liimself us to the inexorable laws of 
 all tliiugs. The character of actions becomes the 
 character of the actors. The bed of mineral satu- 
 rates the stream that passes over it. Wrong-doing 
 poisons all subsequent life. Evils change, but 
 never die. Philosophize about it as Ave may, Ave 
 cannot be blind to the universal fact that somehow, 
 in the end, right gets even Avith each Avrong. As 
 said before, the hiAv of equivalence, or compensa- 
 tion, is the most terrible of certainties to all Avho 
 'do wrong. Deferred payments only accumulate 
 the debt. Money loaned must come back Avith in- 
 terest. Time becomes an awful and an avenging 
 factor. It neither conceals nor forgets; but as 
 seconds added to seconds make up the ages, so 
 does a retribution to come enlarge and intensify 
 itself. Wrong is immortal. Moral equilibriums 
 are inevitable. Let every man who has broken a 
 moral law know that, whether asleep or awake, in 
 Avhatever continent or zone he may be, the re- 
 morseless hxAv of correlation, of equivalence, of 
 compensation, of equilibration, is ever in pursuit, 
 and knoAvs exactly Avhere and when to find him for 
 reparation or for punishment. The police of the 
 universe is ubiquitous, its justice infallible, and its 
 punishments complete and resistless.
 
 70 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 The diagram on next page is intended to illus- 
 trate the change of the basis of morality, by in- 
 verse correlation, from Polytheism to the State, 
 on the one side, as in Rome, and to Philosophy on 
 the other side, as in Greece; and then, by the 
 same iuvei-se correlation, the change, everywhere, 
 to Monotheism, from the State and from Philos- 
 ophy. Tlie movement to Ccosar is from the divine 
 to the human, and thence from the human to the 
 divine. 
 
 The next four lectures will discuss the inverse 
 correlations, illustrated by the four adjacent angles 
 of the following diagram. It will be observed that 
 the correlation was not between the two religions, 
 Polytheism and Monotheism, which were succes- 
 sive, not contemporary; but between either of 
 these, the civil basis of morality on the one side, 
 and the speculative one of philosophy on the 
 other. Speaking of this conUict, Bagehot says: 
 "Those kinds of morals and that kind of religion 
 which tend to make the foremost and most ett'ect- 
 ual character are sure to prevail, all else being the 
 same; and creeds or systems that conduce to a 
 soft, limp mind tend to perish, except some hard 
 extrinsic force keep alive. Thus E[)icurianism 
 never iirospered at Home (tliough C;esar, Lucre-
 
 CORRELATIONS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 71 
 
 Mn\iniiim of llcligion. ~| 
 Miixiiimmof Moniliiy. J- 
 Wiuiiuumor Stale VowerJ 
 
 The Slate riisrlaces Polytheisi 
 and (liMiiiUus c-ivil aud rcli' 
 iutis laws. 
 
 The basis of moralitv and law 
 changes fnim the will nf the 
 guds to ihe collective will of 
 men, ae a State. 
 
 Minimum of Relision. "1 
 Xliixinium of Stale Power. )■ 
 Maxiuium of Immorality. J 
 
 The hnsis of morality and law 
 ehan.!;cs Iron, the will of the 
 State to the V\ill of the one 
 God. 
 
 Europe Christiauized. 
 
 Out <.r 17S Ld. ChancellorB, 123 
 have been Bishops. 
 
 Civil and Moral law uuiled. 
 
 Minimum of Slate Power") 
 
 in Moralitv. i 
 
 Ma.vinium of Religion. | 
 
 Ma\iniuni of Moralilv, J 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 Ancestral Wokship. 
 
 Mytlu.louy. 
 
 n^W.loB.VB.I 
 
 fjlM>wjK'«»M^a»iiM»«»»ia«< 
 
 Judaism. 
 Christianity. 
 
 fMaximum of Religion. 
 ' Maximum of .Moralilv. 
 LMiuimum of Philosoi'diy. 
 
 2. Impersonal nature bas 
 
 (-Minimum of Reli;;ion. 
 .; Maxilnum of Philosophv. 
 I^Maxinium of Inimoralitv. 
 
 Monotheism displaces Philoso- 
 phy. 
 
 The Schoolmen change Philoso- 
 phy into 'f heology. 
 
 Supernatural hasis for Morality. 
 
 C.Minininm of Philosophy 
 j such. 
 
 > Maximum of Kel'EioD. 
 l_Maxllnuni of Molality.
 
 72 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 tins and Horace were Epicureans), but Stoicism 
 did; the stiff, serious character of the great pre- 
 vailing nation was attracted by what seemed a 
 confirming creed, and deterred by what looked 
 like a relaxing creed. The inspiriting doctrines 
 fell upon the ardent character, and so confirmed 
 its energy. Strong beliefs win strong men, and 
 make them stronger. Such is, no doubt, one 
 cause why Monotheism tends to prevail over Poly- 
 theism; it produces a higher, steadier character, 
 calmed and concentrated by a great single object; 
 it is not confused by competing rites, or distracted 
 by miscelhmeous deities. Polytheism is religion 
 i)i commission, and it is weak accordingly. But it 
 will be said the Jews, who were Monotheists, were 
 conquered by the Bomans, who were Polytheists. 
 Yes, it must be answered; because the Romans 
 had other gifts; they had a capacity for politics, 
 a habit of discipline, and of these the Jews had 
 not the least. The religious advantage was an 
 advantage, but it was counter-weighed."'^ 
 
 {a) Physics aud Politics, 7(57.
 
 LECTUKE II.— Continued. 
 THE FIRST CORRELATION. 
 
 In which the Religious (Polytheistic) Basis op Mobality is Dis- 
 placed AND THE Political (Roman) Basis of the State is Coeeela- 
 TivELY Substituted. (See Figure 4, next page.) 
 
 I. Thk Ancient Family. 
 
 1. The Religious Basis of Morality in the Patrician's Fam- 
 
 ily to be Displaced. 
 
 (a) The constitution by sacred marriage. 
 
 (b) The iDower it conferred. 
 
 2. The Non-religious Basis of Morality in the Plebeian's 
 
 Family to be substituted. 
 
 (a) The constitution of the Plebeian's family. 
 
 (b) The power it conferred. 
 
 II. The Ancient State. 
 
 1. The Status. 
 
 (a) The status based on religion to be displaced. 
 
 (b) The political status substituted, 
 
 2. As to Laws. 
 
 (a) The religious basis to be displaced. 
 
 (b) The political basis substituted. 
 
 III. The Ancient Coukts. 
 
 1. The Prsetor Urbanus. 
 
 2. The Prsetor Peregrinus. 
 
 3. The Jurisconsults. 
 
 "The law of the conservatioD of force," says You- 
 man, "has higher bearings than is seen of their
 
 74 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 action in matter. More and more we are perceiv- 
 ing that the condition of liumanity and the pro- 
 gress of civilization are direct resultants of the 
 forces by which men are controlled. What we 
 term the moral order of society implies a strict 
 regularity of these forces. Modern statistics dis- 
 close a remarkable constancy in the moral activi- 
 ties manifested in the communities of men. 
 Crimes, and even the modes of crime,''' have been 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 Ancestral Worship. 
 
 Mythology. 
 
 Minimum of the 
 State. 
 
 Law, the will nnd reason 
 
 or the Stale. 
 ScuatuB CoDRulta 
 
 ...B. C. 7:iri-aM A. D. 
 Legeb Centuriuta 
 
 u. c. SOU 
 
 riebiacites Tributa... 
 
 Ud-'im 
 
 Tweivo Tables *tn 
 
 Coniiuhium 44-1 
 
 KdicI of Pra:tor (Ur- 
 
 banuB) IMk 
 
 Btatits. Plebeian! as: 
 
 Milliard Tribune 4ir) 
 
 Con»ul Iinii 
 
 Uiclator 35H 
 
 Ceimur ».M 
 
 HrM'tnr .1.); 
 
 Poiillirii and Augurs., mil 
 Prjcior PeregrluuK... . 217 
 t^DlVfriial Reason as 
 
 Law. 
 JurlaconsulU 121-4.1 
 
 MaXIMI'M ok TlIK 
 ST.\I K. 
 
 
 Maximum of 
 Polytheism. 
 
 Law the will of the gods. 
 
 The Keligiou.s Kauiil.v. 
 
 Sacramental Marriage. 
 
 Patricians were Priests. 
 
 The Comitia Curiata a 
 legislature c Priests. 
 
 Polytlieisnt gave away 
 gradually as a basis 
 of morality, and civil 
 power correlatlvely 
 took Us place. 
 
 Iloneral immornlitj-. 
 
 Minimum of 
 
 I'oLYTHErSM, 
 
 ClCSAU. 
 
 in) Sei; (i>ll('.tcU:t,
 
 SOCIAL FORCES CORRELATED. 75 
 
 observed to occur with a uuiformity wliicli admits 
 of their prediction. Each period, therefore, may 
 be said to have its definite amount of morality and 
 justice. It has been maintained, for instance, with 
 good reason, that ' the degree of liberty a people 
 is capable of, in any given age, is a fixed quantity; 
 and that any artificial extension of it in one direc- 
 tion brings about an equivalent limitation in some 
 other direction. French revolutions show scarcely 
 any more respect for individual rights than the 
 despotism they supplant; and French electors use 
 their freedom to put themselves again in slavery. 
 So in those communities where State restraint is 
 feeble we may expect to find it supplemented by 
 the sterner restraints of public opinion.'"'^ 
 
 Some forces are correlative, and some are not. 
 Gravitation, for instance, is not correlative with 
 any other force. There is no correlation of thought 
 between parent and servant, as there is between 
 parent and child. Therefore, before we can sub- 
 ject any two social forces to the test of the law of 
 correlation, we must be sure that they are cor- 
 relative. Now, we are sure that work and energy, 
 work and wages, heat and electricity, virtue and 
 
 (a) Introductiou to Yoiiniaii's edition of Grove on Correlatiou 
 and Conservation of Force, xxxvii.
 
 76 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 vice, are correlative. One will be affected directly 
 or inversely as the other is affected. So, too, 
 there is an inverse correlation between the influ- 
 ence of a human and of a superhuman centre of 
 morality — one prevailing as the other declines; and 
 there is a direct correlation between a supposed 
 human moral centre and vice, and a superhuman 
 moral centre and virtue, the one increasing as the 
 other increases. When we see society steadily de- 
 cline in morality, for hundreds of years, we must 
 admit the continued operation of some law con- 
 trolling that decline. When we see men consult 
 the Praetor in the forum, rather than the Priest in 
 the temple, or take from within, and not from 
 above themselves, the rule and reason of conduct, 
 and see morality steadily decline under such a 
 choice, the operation of the inexorable law of cor- 
 relation, or of displacement of a conservative 
 force, and the substitution of one destructive is 
 evident. 
 
 The long history of Eome sjiows us, better than 
 we can otherwise see, the irresistible working of 
 this tremendous law. Taking our stand at C;esar, 
 and looking back through seven centuries of politi- 
 cal phenomena, the law will be seen to be proved. 
 After ull her struggles of Kings with Patricians, of
 
 SOCIAL FORCES CORRELATED. 77 
 
 Consuls with Tribunes; after her wise Praetors and 
 her imperishable laws, she sinks into loathsome 
 immoralities, and holds out her hands for the man- 
 acles of her master. "Why was this ? The forces, 
 like ballast in the foundering shij), had fatally 
 shifted from the side of theistic responsibility, and 
 consequently of public purity and right, to the side 
 of mere human responsibility, and consequently 
 of impurity and public wrong. The correlation 
 was entire. The conservative force of its ancient 
 religion, superstitious though it was, had de- 
 creased and faded out, and a thoroughly immoral 
 and destructive force had just that much in- 
 creased. The quid 'pro quo had been fully paid. 
 One force had gone, and another, and immorality, 
 had come. What is the explanation ? Had polit- 
 ical power decreased? On the contrary, it had 
 grown to full jurisdiction, not only over Kome, but 
 also over the world. Was it because of more 
 moral darkness? Though philosophy, either moral 
 or intellectual, was not known at Rome until 140 
 years B. C, yet the civil law, as it came from the 
 Catos, the Scaevolas, and Sulpitius, of centuries, 
 was a severe statement of political, moral duty. 
 The secret of failure of Koman civilization was in 
 this: Whatever advances moral thought had made,
 
 78 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 as seen in tbe adjudications of the courts, or in 
 the culture of the philosophers, it did not prove 
 to be moral power. Thought did not extirpate, 
 but only refined the vices of passion. The masses 
 of the people can not be philosophers, but they 
 may be worshippers. Their ideas must be very 
 general, and acquired in a practical way. All 
 classes, learned and unlearned, with their animal 
 passions ever active, need to feel responsible to, 
 and to be assisted by, some supernal authority that 
 governs Avith all power and without any passion. 
 
 But, however uncertain and indefinite, at this 
 time, popular ideas of morality and law might have 
 been, they were much more indefinite when, in- 
 stead of the uncertainties of the Prastor-law, they 
 depended upon tiie uncertainties of the Imperial 
 will. Despotism regards law as a thing of arbi- 
 trary and human limitation; moral reason claims 
 that it is essential rightuess; religion urges as law 
 the command of Omniscience. 
 
 The people absorb their moral ideas mostly from 
 religion; the lawyers claim to reach theirs by logic. 
 As an exclusive rule, which is the safer? Has 
 oitlier, by itself, been sufficient for the best move- 
 mtniis of civilizations? History and philosophy 
 reveal law. Plato, in Greece, and Cicero, three
 
 EVILS EVOLVE LAWS. 79 
 
 hundred years after, in Kome, wrote theories of 
 law — the hiw of the philosophers — not the law of 
 the lawyers; but law is the moral side of a fact, or 
 the concreting of a principle upon a fact — not an 
 abstract notion of what ought to be. Ex facto jus 
 oritur. It is no bodyless soul; and as we know the 
 soul only in connection with the body, so do we 
 know law only in connection with facts. Tlie law 
 never anticipates history. As there is no law with- 
 out a case, so there is no case without a law. It 
 comes with the occasion Avhich needs it; and, as 
 matter, action, and reaction are equal and op- 
 posite, so good laws have their occasion in the 
 vices, and their wisdom in the virtues, of society. 
 Laws are to restrain the bad, as well as to protect 
 the good, and hence law must increase as evils in- 
 crease.^ Events are before the law — the law never 
 before the event — at most, events and law co-exist. 
 Though law is only adjudicated morality, yet the 
 character of these adjudications Avill be evolved 
 from the judge's previous studies of abstract mo- 
 rality. Coleridge "recommends an advocate to 
 devote a part of his leisure time to some study of 
 
 ((() Bon<M leges malls ex. moribus procreantur: Good laws grow out 
 of evil acts. And it is even possible for bad men in office, and 
 before the eyes of good men, to declare good laws to I'estrain the 
 conduct of other bad men not in otiicc.
 
 80 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 metaphysics of the mind or metaphysics of theol- 
 ogy — something which shall call forth all his pow- 
 ers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of 
 truth alone, without reference to a side to be sup- 
 ported. No studies give such a power of distin- 
 guishing as the metaphysical, and, in their natural 
 and unperverted tendency, they are ennobling and 
 exalting. Some such studies are wanted to coun- 
 teract the operation of legal studies and practice, 
 which sharpen, indeed, but, like a grinding stone, 
 narrow while they sharpen." He is the wisest 
 lawyer who is the most enlightened moralist. 
 Mr. Richard Harrison, following the teaching of 
 Austin, has recently contended that the law of the 
 lawyer has nothing to do with morality. It is true 
 that law is obeyed, as law, because it is commanded 
 by the supreme authority, but the ever-occurring 
 question presents itself, what is the moral ground 
 of the command they prescribe as law ? We know 
 that wrong law is no law. Law is only the formula 
 of a principle, and to know the formula you must 
 know the principle underlying it. A right rule 
 implies a right principle, and no doctrine of slave 
 decisis forbids the questioning of an adjudication 
 wliich violates principle, moral or conventional. 
 Jjaw is not in the words, but in their meaning.
 
 LAW IS IN ITS REASONS. 81 
 
 Qui hceret in literd, hceret in cortice. And no axiom 
 in law is more generally recognized than that, when 
 the reason of a law ceases, the law itself ceases — 
 cessante ratione, cessat lex. He understands the 
 rule of law best who best understands its princi- 
 ple. The civilians held that the law was in its 
 reason. This reason, in early law, came from the 
 priests; in later law its form came from the logi- 
 cians. 
 
 Law literature did not begin until the close of 
 the Rej)ublic. Up to that time the moral ideas 
 before held in solution by the ancient religions 
 correlated mainly, at first, into the law of status and 
 the heroism of character. "In the absolute 
 authority accorded by religion to the father over 
 the children, by the ancestral worship," says 
 Lecky, "to the husband over the wife, to the 
 master over the slave, we may trace the same 
 habits of discipline that proved so formidable in 
 the field." The religious unity of the ancient fam- 
 ily led to the civil unity of the ancient State. 
 Ideas fall from one form into another. Correla- 
 tion is incessant and universal. There is change, 
 not creation. With the coming of the merchant 
 came the hx mercatoria, but not before. In the in- 
 stability of political forces, Eepublican Rome gave
 
 82 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 all ber strength, not to law, but to conquest. Re- 
 membering tliat, out of five hundred years of her 
 life as a Republic, Rome devoted two hundred and 
 seventy-five to war, we can understand Cicero's 
 axiom: Inter arma silent leges. Honors Avere for 
 heroes, not lawyers, says Lecky. 
 
 Force moving from a centre explains the growth 
 of Rome. From her radiated life, unity, and power 
 to the utmost bounds of known people. The Sam- 
 nites, for instance, and other nations or tribes 
 which she conquered, were disunited, and, like a 
 pile of sand, had no integration, cohesion, or mu- 
 tual support. Rome, strong in her unity, was 
 homogeneous in her energies, coherent, directed 
 by one will upon one object at a time, making the 
 most of everything to gain her end; but the Sam- 
 nites, with no mutual help from each other, were 
 weak through their diversities, and were conquered 
 even with greater power in their hands. All 
 through nature, many weak things unitcul prevail 
 over many strong things disunited. The life of 
 the weak is ever passing into the life of the 
 strong. Those who have much can gain more, 
 and those wlio have little can hold nothing- 
 Strength absorbs strenglh. The sparrow must 
 beware of the hawk, and the hawk of the eagle.
 
 CORRELATION OF CUSTOMS. 83 
 
 The laws of a people are so completely tlie ex- 
 pression and result of its civilization that, to be 
 studied with success, they must be studied histori- 
 cally."^ If we study the history of ancient civiliza- 
 ation by the character of its movements, we find 
 them to be religious, political, or legal; if by in- 
 stitutions, there are the family, the state, or the 
 judiciary; if by officers, they are the father, the 
 executive, or the Praetor. Whether we consider 
 one or the other of these, we shall find the basis of 
 morality correlating from the religious to the non- 
 religious side of said social forces. 
 
 The inverse correlation of one domestic religious 
 custom of a people into another custom, not relig- 
 ious, may be seen by a glance at the parallel 
 tables on the next page, viz. : 
 
 (a) Cumiuiii's Intro, to Justinian.
 
 84 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Plebeian's Secular Fajuly. 
 
 1. Poll/theism, with the Plebe- 
 ian, was a belief in the mytho- 
 logical gods of the elements of 
 nature. Its idea was ]}rovid<'.nce. 
 
 2. Secular marriages in the 
 Temple of Jnno, in imitation of 
 the Fatrician' sco»fa7Teatio. The 
 usual marriage of the Plebeian 
 with the Plebeian was 
 
 (a) The co-emptio, or the pur- 
 chase of a wife. It conferred 
 
 i. The Manus, or power, that 
 a master had over a slave he 
 had purchased. 
 
 ii. The Patria Potestns or 
 absolute, earthly, despotic power 
 over the life and death of his 
 family. 
 
 (b) The Usus. This was a 
 contract for marital companion- 
 ship, at the pleasure of the par- 
 tics. 
 
 (c) This secular marriage re- 
 sulted in great immorality: 4 
 Cililion. fli. 44. 
 
 Patrician's Religious Family. 
 
 1, Poll/theism, with the Patri- 
 cian, was the worship of his 
 Penates, or ancestral gods; and 
 its idea was j^iety. He, too, had 
 a mythology. 
 
 2. Sacred raarrlarje in the 
 strict privacy of the Patrician's 
 house (to be described hereafter). 
 His only marriage was by con- 
 
 farreatio. It conferred 
 
 (a) The Manus, or the au- 
 thority of a god over his wife as 
 over his creature. 
 
 (6) The Patria Potestas, or 
 same authority over his family. 
 
 (c) Aguation, or inheritance 
 exclusively through the males, 
 as the divine side of the family. 
 
 [d) This sacred marriage was 
 distinguished by severe moral- 
 ity: 4 Cibbon, ch. 44.
 
 RELIGIOUS AND SECULAK FAMILIES. 85 
 
 I. THE ANCIENT FAMILY. 
 
 We shall see the correlative exchange of social 
 forces when we look into 
 
 1. THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF MOKALITY 
 IN THE PATKICIAN FAMILY. 
 
 In order to see the decrease or displacement of 
 the religious basis of morality, and the correlative 
 increase or substitution of a political basis, we 
 must notice the polytheistic religions themselves, 
 that were to be displaced, in order to see the sec- 
 ular polity, to be correlatively substituted. It 
 must be kept in mind, that the conflict or correla- 
 tion of rival bases of conduct was not between 
 Polytheism and Monotheism, but between a relig- 
 ious basis in polytheism and a political basis in 
 the collective will of the state in Rome, and a 
 speculative basis in Greece. 
 
 (a) The Patrician's religious family constituted 
 by the sacrament of confarreaiio. To understand 
 this we must sketch the religious belief out of 
 which it grew. Thousands of years ago the Mo- 
 notheistic Hebrews and the Polytheistic Aryans, 
 probably one race, went out from their original hive 
 in central Asia. The Hebrew race, working out its 
 civilization under the worship of its one God, made
 
 86 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 its home and history along the eastern shore of the 
 Mediterranean Sea; the Aryan race, to which we 
 belong — working out its social ideas under the 
 worship of its many gods, ancestral and mytholog- 
 ical — dispersed toward its home in the west and 
 north. From two of these religious, ancestral and 
 Judaic, have issued two diverse conditions, ap- 
 pearing under the influence of Monotheism, at the 
 coming of Christ, in one broad, enlarging sea of 
 modern civilization. For the present discussion, 
 the grand and most ancient Hebrew element, which 
 became corrupted and weakened, will receive con- 
 sideration in its connection with Christianity, as 
 one with it. 
 
 During the two hundred and fifty years of the 
 kingdom, the shifting of power was from the many 
 heads of families, as Priests or Patricians, to the 
 hands of the one originally sacerdotal King. When 
 the Kings were expelled, and the Patricians recov- 
 ered their authority, the shifting of power, for the 
 first two hunt) red years of the republic, was from 
 the Priest-Patricians to the priestless and worship- 
 less Plebeians. It was a struggle of classes with re- 
 ligious traditions on the one side, and no religious 
 traditions on the otlicr; and the moral basis passed 
 frou) tiic religious to the uon-roligious side.
 
 now TO GOVERN PASSION. 87 
 
 Although love of power and of money are strong, 
 yet, in no one phase of early society do the laws 
 of moral conduct come more into view than in the 
 regulations of the domestic relations. The rela- 
 tion of the sexes shows most sensitively the morals 
 of a race. Shall it be managed by religion or by 
 logic, by the conclusions of mere reason or the 
 awful sanction of religious love, awe, and adora- 
 tion, or all these? Will lust listen to reason, or, 
 in strongest moments, even to religion? In what 
 direction can we look for its master? What power 
 can so impress the mind as to hold its lawless de- 
 mauds in subjection ? The governing power must 
 be one that prevents its inceptive thought. The 
 mind, once inflamed, is uncontrollable. Can mere 
 reason take command of the mind, either to an- 
 ticipate or to regulate and moderate this animal 
 despotism over mankind ? How was it disciplined 
 among the earlier people, and how under the 
 latter? Was there not a steady correlation of 
 purity into impurity, all the way down ? In average 
 human beings, says Mills, passion predominates 
 over reason. 
 
 Everything that can be accepted as history re- 
 specting the founding of Rome by Romulus, 735 
 B. C, shows the prominence of the family unit;
 
 88 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 and all history as to the founding of the Empire 
 by Caesar, speaks of the pre-eminence of the State. 
 The State entirely absorbed or substituted itself 
 for the family. As the purity and influence of the 
 family declined, the corruption and influence of 
 the State correlatively increased. The transmuta- 
 tion is obvious and complete. 
 
 It was the belief of the ancient Aryan race, as 
 admirably shown by De Coulauge in his "Ancient 
 City," that the father, the generator of a family, 
 was its creator, or its god; and that, when he died, 
 his soul was buried with his body, and needed for 
 its happiness the perpetual sacrifices of bread and 
 wine at the hands of his descendants, and from 
 no hands but those of his descendants. Hence 
 the family altar, the family property, and the in- 
 alienability, in those early days, of family estates. 
 When a girl married, her father, or the male head 
 of the family, as a god, gave her away to her hus- 
 band, as to a god of some other family. The bride 
 was dressed in the customary white of the Priest- 
 ess; and the giving away the bride, from which 
 our custom has descended, was the giving of a 
 priestess by one set of gods, to serve at the altars 
 of another set of gods, b}' offering broad and wine. 
 As none but members of a family could partici-
 
 ANCIENT MARRIAGE. 89 
 
 pate in the family worship to dead ancestors (and 
 which was conducted in the strictest privacy), a 
 man had to adopt his wife as his daughter, in or- 
 der to enable her to be present at his family wor- 
 ship. Hence, she took his name. Under this 
 fiction, she could be present and participate in the 
 worship of her husband's gods, or ancestors; but, 
 as she could not have two sets of ancestors, she 
 could no more worship her own. No one could 
 have two family religions. Indeed, sometimes 
 these family gods became involved in family feuds, 
 and were supposed to lead the battles that occa- 
 sionally occurred. It was in allusion to this 
 change of gods and people that Ruth said to 
 Naomi: "Entreat me not from following after 
 thee. Thy people shall be my people, and thy 
 god my god." A marriage was therefore a change 
 of church. At the door of her father's house, her 
 husband received her, and led her to the tomb of 
 his gods at his own home, and there both poured 
 the sacrificial wine, and broke the sacrificial bread, 
 and offered them to the dead for their benediction. 
 We now offer them to living friends. This was 
 called marriage by cov/arreatio, or the eating to- 
 gether of the farina cake devoted to the gods of
 
 90 THE UNITY OF LAW, 
 
 the husband's family. This is now a feast at the 
 house of the bride. 
 
 (b) Its power was: (i.) The Marital Authority, or 
 3Ianus: that is, her property, life, and children 
 were his, as if he were her only god. As a god in 
 fact he could not have more. This supposed 
 divinity of the father must be kept in mind in 
 every attempt to understand the domestic relations 
 and civil institutions of the ancient Aryans, from 
 whom the Greeks and Romans descended, (ii.) The 
 Paternal Authority, or Patria Potestas. If the 
 father of a family, being its generator, was its 
 god, of course it followed along naturally enough 
 that he might rule it absolutely as a god. This 
 tremendous power of the male representative of a 
 family — conferred, at first, by the sacred marriage 
 alone, and which is so unaccountable to modern 
 thought — existed in the conviction that the father 
 was a god. No other creator was known. Hence 
 he had over his children the absolute power, vUce 
 et nccis, of life and death; and this power lingered 
 in the law for centuries after the ancestral worship 
 had ceased.
 
 MYTHOLOGY NO MORALITY. 91 
 
 2. THE NON-RELIGIOUS BASIS OF MORALITY IN THE PLEBEIAN'S 
 FAMILY TO BE SUBSTITUTED FOR THE RELIGIOUS ONE DIS- 
 PLACED. 
 
 The Patrician's religion gave place to the Ple- 
 beian's politics. So far as the latter had a relig- 
 ion, they took it from nature, and not ancestors. 
 This ancestral worship led to the establishment 
 of altars, ceremonies, and social distinctions. But 
 the common people, who were not land-owners, 
 had no homes, and so no domestic altars and no 
 domestic worship. These, for the want of other 
 gods, made gods for themselves out of the elements 
 of nature, and worshipped the wind, the sun, the 
 water, the fire and air, as gods, and united them 
 into a sjnod of gods on Mount Olympus. This 
 was a religion of mere fancy; and having no hold 
 npon the conscience and the affections, was sim- 
 ply a ceremonial religion of fear and of public 
 policy. Morality was not its aim. In addition to 
 his ancestral worship, the Patrician had, Avith the 
 Plebeian, his mythological god also; but this had 
 no important influence upon civilization. Both 
 these religions, the ancestral worship of the Patri- 
 cians and the Olympian mythology of the Plebei- 
 ans, were in full credit at the founding of Rome, 
 753 B.C. From that day up to the Empire of 
 Csesar, ancestral worship gave way to mythology,
 
 92 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 and both beliefs gradually declined. Tliej were 
 between the upper millstone of popular skepti- 
 cism and the nether millstone of secular force. 
 The Patricians claimed the exclusive right to gov- 
 ern, because they had the lines of ancestral gods; 
 indeed, were gods themselves in prospect; at which 
 pretension the philosophers in Greece laughed, 
 and the common people in Eome gu ashed their 
 teeth. 
 
 (a) The Constitution of the Plebeiaiis Family. 
 We have said that it is in the domestic relations 
 of the early races that we must look for the basis 
 of their moral notions : 
 
 (i.) Corresponding to the Patrician's sacred mar- 
 riage by confarrealio, was the Plebeian's marriage 
 by purchase or mere contract — co-emptio. In all 
 Plebeian marriages, the coujngal union rested only 
 upon the mutual consent of the parties (mutnus 
 concensus), and on the affection which they had 
 promised each other {affectio maritalis). No for- 
 mality, religious or civil, Avas required, though a 
 ceremony was sometimes performed in the temple 
 of Juno, in imitation of the sacred one of the Pa- 
 tricians, before their family altars. The Patri- 
 cians did not regard this as marriage at all; as, in 
 their eyes, the marital and paternal authority
 
 WOMEN SOLD IN MARRIAGE. 93 
 
 flowed only from their religions ceremouy which 
 initiated the wife into the worship of the husband. 
 With them, marriage had only religious ends — 
 that is, a posterity to keep alive the worship of 
 the ancestors. As the Patricians were the oiily 
 class that had ancestors and a religion, so they 
 only had laws; because laws were the supposed 
 will of these gods. This state of things could not 
 last. As the Plebeians increased in numbers and 
 wealth, the private law of the Patricians had to be 
 more and more extended to the Plebeians. As to 
 marriage, though the Plebeians might many by 
 mutual consent, they could not have that power 
 over their families that the Patricians had over 
 theirs; so a formality was devised for their use 
 exclusively, which, in civil aflairs, had the same 
 eflfect as the sacred marriage of the Patricians. 
 They had recourse, as in case of the will, to a 
 fictitious sale. The father's power to sell a child, 
 resulting from the religious idea of having created 
 it, opened the door to this irreligious custom. 
 After their marriage by mutual consent, which was 
 their only marringe, the husband bought his wife, 
 co-emptio, and so obtained the vnoinis, or marital 
 power — but it was the maims of a vendee of a slave, 
 not that of a god over a creature, or of a father
 
 94 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 over a child, as in the case of the Patricians. Co- 
 emption, or purchase, was no part of the marriage 
 act, but entirely subsequent to it, to confer upon 
 the Plebeian husband a marital power like that 
 which the Patrician obtained by the sacro. 
 
 ii. Z7sHS corresponds to co-emption. One year's 
 uninterrupted marital companionship conferred 
 'upon the Plebeian the maims, or marital power, 
 as much as the sacra did upon the Patrician, or 
 the Plebeian's other mode of co-emptio. The Ple- 
 beians obtained the comnihuim, by the Canulean 
 law, 445 B. C. Although this law gave the Ple- 
 beian the right to intermarry with the Patrician, 
 it could not confer upon him the sacra. The 
 iiumus must be obtained, as before, in exclnsively 
 Plebeian marriages, by co-emjjfio, or the usus. 
 The union of a Patrician and Plebeian was a 
 mixed marriage, disapproved of, in the earliest 
 times, by the pride and conscience of the Pa- 
 trician; but it was a practical result from the 
 continuous displacement of sacred and the sub- 
 stitution of secular force. The legal device of 
 the iisus was the natural result of those secular 
 marriages by mere mutual consent, and origi- 
 nated under these circumstances: Tlie Patrician 
 marriage by the sacra was a relation supposed
 
 DECAY OF DOMESTIC MORALITY. 95 
 
 to be constituted by the gods, and, of course, in- 
 dissoluble; but a marriage by mutual consent only 
 was made by the parties, and might as easily be 
 unmade. 
 
 (5) Tlie Consiitution of the Plebeian's Family 
 Changed, (i.) The Marital Authority, or Bkums, 
 was purchased by the husband, in co-empiio, 
 or he acquired it, by a lapse of time, in the fall 
 nsus, and all right over the wife's property. This, 
 which, upon separation, he retained. So, to 
 prevent his acquisition of this power, the wife, 
 in the tisiis, absented herself three consecutive 
 nights from her husband's home, thereby break- 
 ing the iisits ; and so, in case of separation, 
 the wife retained her property as a fernmc sole. 
 Purchase, or co-emptio, made the husband's rnaii- 
 2is complete and irrevocable, as that of a master 
 over a slave. But the tisns, with the three 
 nightly absences of 'the wife, became the most 
 common mode of conjugal union, as it defeated 
 the husband's ma)Uis, that otherwise would ob- 
 tain, and left the parties free to continue or dis- 
 continue the union at their pleasure; each retain- 
 ing all rights over their own persons and property, 
 ii. The Paternal Authority, or Patria Po- 
 testas. When this condition of domestic life was
 
 96 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 reached, the secular and the sacred forces were 
 completely correlated or exchanged, marriage was 
 a capricious and transient relation, and social 
 morals rapidly declined. It is said, by Seneca, 
 that even before the time of Csesar, women told 
 their ages, not by their years, but by the number 
 of their marriages. Ahn consulam inimero, sed ma- 
 ritorum cmiios suos compntant. The paternal au- 
 thority was entirely gone. Pliny says that in his 
 day the Eoman youth thought they knew every- 
 thing. They revered no one; they imitated no 
 one, but were a law unto themselves: Slatim sa- 
 jyiniit statim; sciunt omnia; neminem verodiir; imi- 
 taiitur neminem; atqid sihi exempla sunt. 
 
 In this movement the special will of the ances- 
 tral gods, as interpreted by the few Patricians, had 
 yielded, and the more universal will of the Ple- 
 beian masses having correlatively gained, the cen- 
 tre of law was changed from the supposed super- 
 human Avill to the real human will; and the includ- 
 ing circle was enlarged to the more general rights 
 of man. So far, the change from the religious 
 to the non-religious constitution of domestic rela- 
 tions did not improve morality.
 
 RELIGIOUS STATUS. 97 
 
 II. THE ANCIENT STATE. 
 
 As the era of the Eomfin Eepublic was not one 
 of speculative philosophy, but of persistent strug- 
 gle of class with class, its moral ideas, as crystallized 
 into law, pertained to man as a citizen, and not to 
 man as a worshipper. The man was lost in the 
 family, and the family in the state. 
 
 1. AS TO STATUS. 
 
 (a) The status hosed on religion was to he dis- 
 placed. Status was the first to feel the correlative 
 movements of early society. The Patrician was 
 forced down from the pedestal where ignorance 
 had placed him as a god giving all law, and the 
 Plebeian, from having no recognized rights, rose 
 to the dignity of a free and equal citizen, possess- 
 ing all rights. He extorted the laws of the Twelve 
 Tables from the Patricians. He made himself 
 Tribune, Consul, Censor, Praetor, and Pontiff. He 
 was recognized, as he should have been, as a man 
 with the rights of a man. 
 
 We see that, both in Greece and Eome, the polit- 
 ical instinct of all classes, and especially of the 
 Plebeian, early became predominant, and gradually 
 overrode all Patrician views of family religion. 
 When the straggling elements of society, the
 
 98 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 strangers, freedmeu, and illegitimates, multiplied 
 ill numbers and became wealthy, and united into 
 a class and were a society of tlieir own, tliey be- 
 came confident of tlieir power, and demanded sucli 
 democratic changes in the Patrician religion and 
 class-laws and law-procedares as would admit 
 them to a social equality with the first families, and 
 a fnll political equality in the administration of 
 public aftuirs. The success of this demand, begun 
 in the laws of the Twelve Tables, changed all sub- 
 sequent society. The influence of sacredfaith al- 
 most, if not entirely, disappeared, and civilization 
 became what secular force sought to make it. Dur- 
 ing the entire period of the Koman Republic, the 
 popular instinct of right and equality was seeking 
 to place civilization upon the eternal basis of 
 essential right, of reason, and of human equality. 
 
 (h) The political status that displaced a)td siihslitiited 
 the religions. 
 
 Religious Status. Political Status. 
 
 Laws had been originally ad- Laws came to be administered 
 ministered exclusively by ))y the people or their rep- 
 
 the Patricians as descend- i-esentatives. I'lebeians ex- 
 
 ants of the ancestral gods, torted from the Patricians 
 
 viz: as the right to hold the office of 
 
 1. Priests. 1. Military Trilmne, B.C. 445. 
 
 2. Kings. 2. Consul, B.C. 30(5. 
 .'i. Patricians. 3. Dictator, B.C. 356. 
 
 4. Censor, B.C. 351. 
 
 5. Pra-tor, B.C. 337. 
 
 (i. I'uiitill'.s and Augurs, P.. C.nOO.
 
 POLITICAL MORALITY INSUFFICIENT. 99 
 
 TJie cliaracteristic of the family is purity; that 
 of the State is, at most, order. The family is dis- 
 ciplined. The State is governed. The oversight 
 of the family is personal, individual, early, pri- 
 vate, and immediate. The supervision of the 
 State is political, incomplete, remote. The one 
 has to do with the formation of habits, the other 
 with habits that are formed. The State demands 
 obedience for itself, but demands morality for the 
 citizen as citizen, and not for the man as man. 
 But if morality has only public ends, then a man 
 need have only so much of it as the public re- 
 quires. Morality for the sake of morality will not 
 be the aim. If there be no such thing as right 
 and wrong, except as prescribed by the rule of a 
 temporary public expediency, then morality is an 
 arbitrary or conventional matter. But the law of 
 correlation moves to its end in spite of public 
 opinion. If man works with this universal law, it 
 is all right; but if he works against it, he must 
 take the consequences. There is no punishment 
 for the right-doer, and there is no escape for the 
 wrong-doer. Correlation is everywhere vigilant 
 and effective— in each man, and in all the world, 
 putting right where man puts wrong. Man is 
 ever transferring or correlating power from one to
 
 100 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 the otlier side of himself, making himself gen- 
 erally better or generally worse. All growth is 
 correlation: one thing increasing in one direction 
 as something else is decreasing in some other. 
 
 "Alexander Severus trusted the wisest of his 
 counsellors, the great legalists of the Empire, with 
 the introduction of new laws to curb the wicked- 
 ness of the time. But the multiplicity of laws 
 proves the decline of States."^ This is especially 
 evident in laws referring to morality or social cus- 
 toms. The maximum of law is the maximum of 
 the accumulated moral rules of the official few, as 
 against the immoral practices of the unofficial 
 many. Good laws are declarations of abstract 
 rights, which even immoral societies are not un- 
 willing to announce.'' The moment that the phi- 
 
 ('f) White's Hist. Eighteen Centuries, 6. 
 
 (//) " Tlic common order of science proceeds from the details to 
 the whole. The method of Sociology should ^jrocecd from the 
 whole to the details. There is no universal rule for the order of 
 study, but that of proceeding from the known to tlie unknown; 
 finding our way to the facts at whatever point is most open to 
 our observation. In the ijhenomcna of the social state, the col- 
 lective phenomena is more accessible to us than the parts of 
 which it is composed. Tlie state of every part of the social 
 whole, at any time, is intimately connected with the contem- 
 poraneous state of all others. Eeligious belief, philosophy, 
 science, the flue arts, the industrial arts, commerce, navigation, 
 government, all arc in close mutual dependence on one another
 
 RELIGION AND MORALITY DECLINE. 101 
 
 losophers in Greece and the Plebeians in Rome 
 denied the power of dead ancestors, however ex- 
 alted in immortality, to rule on earth, the entire 
 centre of ancestral religion and law dropped out, 
 and the moral basis of society was placed in the 
 wisdom of living men. 
 
 We are now to trace the decline of the one and 
 the correlative increase of the other of these ideas. 
 This was its movement for the five hundred years 
 of the Roman Republic. People in society must 
 be governed in some way. Religion decreases in- 
 versely as immorality increases. As immorality 
 increases, repressive civil laws must correlatively 
 increase, or anarchy ensue. When men deuy re- 
 sponsibility to superhuman authority, society, in 
 its necessities, must compel obedience to one hu- 
 man. 
 
 " Quid leges, sine moribus, vance 'proficiant.'''' 
 What can idle laws do, says Horace, without 
 
 iusomiioli that when any considerable change takes place in one, 
 we may know that a parallel change in all others has preceded or 
 will follow it. The progress of society from one general state to 
 another is not an aggregate of partial changes, but the product 
 of a .single in^mlne, acting through ail partial agencies, and can 
 therefore be most easily traced by studying them together." 
 MiWs Comti; 81. "The character of society is princixjally deter- 
 mined by the degree in which the better incentive, in each of 
 these cases, makes head against the worse." Id. 84. As to the 
 family life, marriage and divorce, see Id. 84, 85, and 86.
 
 102 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 morals ? If the convictions of the moral responsi- 
 bilities of a people are completely relaxed, or are 
 only abstract moralit}-, little can be expected from 
 the penalties or restraints imposed by the wisest 
 legislation, supposing such legislation to arise. 
 
 No forces move from centres more opposed than 
 the religious and the immoral, and the moral and 
 the non-religious. The decrease of the one is in- 
 versely as the increase of the other. When heat 
 is correlated into electricity, we know what the 
 force is which is to be re-made, or changed into 
 another. The line of correlation is distinctly un- 
 der our attention, and can be traced; so it is as to 
 the changes in social and political events. 
 
 2. AS TO LAWS. 
 
 (a) The rcUgious basis of morality to be displaced 
 from its laws. Morality and law were first declared 
 by the Patrician or religious families, then by the 
 gens or clan of religious families represented by 
 an assembly of the heads of these families, culled 
 the Comilia Ciiriata. Here, as before, the correla- 
 tion was inversely from religious customs to non- 
 religious institutions. No inverse correlation 
 was ever more obvious. As the authority of 
 tlic Comilia Curiaiu, or Synod of the Sacred
 
 POLITICAL LEGISLATION. 103 
 
 Fathers declined, that of tlie Comitla Centuriata 
 or mass-meeting of tlie arms-bearing people cor- 
 relatively increased. Morality and law, among 
 the earliest Aryans, was, as repeatedly said, the 
 supposed will of ancestral gods, the Peuates and 
 Lares. They were announced by the liviog male 
 representative of the farail}', at family sacrifices at 
 family altars. They were embodied in family 
 hymns and prayers, and also by the decrees of the 
 Comilia Curiafa, or synod of the fathers as priests. 
 (&) IJie non-reli(ji(ms basis of morality to be cor- 
 relatively substituted in the law. As the Plebeians 
 increased in number and power, law ceased to be 
 a family matter of the family gods — but grew out of 
 the will of the people as collected from the decrees 
 of the Senate, the laws of the Twelve Tables, the 
 enactments of the militia in what was called the 
 Comitia Centuriata, in the plebiscites of the Tribes, 
 and the edicts of the Praetors. ''^ There was no pre- 
 tense of religion in these laws. The Plebeians 
 could not participate in the family religion of the 
 
 [a) i. Comitia Curiata. 
 
 ii. Senatus Consulata B.C. 735-222 ^^^^ _ 
 
 iii. Laws of the XII Tables B.C. 450 
 
 iv. Plebiscites of the Tributa 446 
 
 V. Leges Centuriata 450 
 
 vi. Edicts of the Pnttor 364
 
 lOi THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Patricians, and the mythological one, wliicli grew 
 up from a personification and deification of tlie 
 elements of nature, liad no moral force. De Qaincej 
 says,^ "Tlie religion of these Olympian or Homeric 
 gods, in the eye of a Pagan, had no relation what- 
 ever to morals. Pagan religion, apart from ances- 
 tral worship, arose in no motive, but an impulse. 
 It arrived at no distant prize ahead; it only fled 
 from a danger behind. The gods of the Pagans 
 were wicked natures, to be feared and propitiated. 
 And thus it was that, in terror, blind terror, as 
 against power in the hands of divine wickedness, 
 arose the ancient religions of Paganism,^ that is, 
 the mythological religion. There was no doctrinal 
 part. Ceremonies were all of it." The sycophants 
 even did not pretend to love their gods." They 
 would have kicked Jupiter if they could. If the 
 city gods did not defend the city when in danger, 
 men even went so far, in spite of their general fear 
 of these gods, as to overturn their altars and stone 
 their temples. Indeed, the veneration of these 
 city gods, at a very early day in Greece, became 
 so weakened that the Greek imagination allowed 
 
 (a) 1 vol. Theological Essay on Christianity as an organ of 
 political movement. 
 (h) De Quinccy. Id. 
 (f) Mori vale's Conversion of Roman Empire: sec. 11.
 
 LEGES. 105 
 
 itself to be turned aside by more splendid temples 
 of some new god, richer legends, and more beau- 
 tiful statues/ All altars would be deserted for 
 those of the gods of Phidias and Praxitiles. It 
 was the form, not the morals, of their gods that 
 won worshippers. The Greeks worshipped beauty. 
 The divinity of the city gods they represented was 
 a sentiment and not a conviction. It is obvious 
 thiit such a religion could have only a deleterious 
 influence upon a civilization. There was no moral 
 fibre to it — nothing, like the worship of dead an- 
 cestors, for the heart — nothing for the conscience 
 — nothing for the world's best life — nothing but a 
 spectacular worship from which the soul had de- 
 parted. Thus, through all the enterprises of com- 
 merce, colonizations, international wars, the arts, 
 though all these were nominally under the super- 
 vision of religion and the priests, the Patricians 
 were led to look beyond their sacred altars at 
 home, and the Plebeians beyond the Prytaneum of 
 the city, and gradually, from losing sight of their 
 earlier faiths, respectively, became at last to be- 
 lieve in none. 
 
 i. Leges. The laws from which all religious 
 basis of morality had departed were these : The 
 
 in] A. C. 301.
 
 106 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 original assembly of citizens at Kome was tbe 
 comitia curiata, or assembly of Patricians as priests 
 in the consecrated temples; but this was the last 
 religious legislature, and was soon replaced, by 
 Servius Tullius, by the comitia centuriata, in which 
 the Patricians and Plebeians met together in the 
 Campus 31artius as they did in the army, and in 
 which the right of voting was allowed according to 
 a property qualification. The secularization of the 
 law began with this change. In this comitia those 
 leges or laws were passed which are mentioned as 
 one of the sources of law : criminals were tried and 
 magistrates were nominated. At first its enact- 
 ments required the sanction of the comitia curiata 
 -the assembly of the Patricians; but when that 
 necessity ceased, the curiata was only summoned 
 for the transaction of certain formal business, such, 
 as acloptions, abrogations, and the making of testa- 
 ments. Curiata law was strictly class law. The 
 Patricians claimed that they only had families, and 
 they only could adopt. The religious curiata de- 
 creased as the non-religious centuriuta correlatively 
 increased. 
 
 ii. Plebiscites. This comitia centuriata, or mass- 
 meetings of the citizens in their order, was suc- 
 ceeded by the comitia tributa, in which the voter,
 
 PLEBISCITES. 107 
 
 instead of claiming his riglit by a property qualifi- 
 cation, claimed it by residing in a particular dis- 
 trict or tribe. The laws passed by this assembly 
 of the tribes originally bound none but the Ple- 
 beians, hence their name of Plebiscite; but in the 
 year 286 B.C. the law of Hortensius made them 
 binding on all Roman citizens. By this, the relig- 
 ious force was still weaker, and the non-religious 
 correlatively stronger. 
 
 iii. Senatiis-Consulta. The other legislative 
 body was the Senate. Under the Kings this royal 
 council was composed of the wealthiest and most 
 illustrious Patricians, and was to the King what 
 the Cabinet is to modern Kings or Presidents. 
 Until the close of the Republic, it does not appear 
 to have had the direct power of enacting laws; 
 nevertheless, its orders issued to magistrates bound 
 those subject to their jurisdiction. Moreover, it 
 exercised a dispensary power with respect to indi- 
 viduals, and even made additions to certain laws; 
 but, in general, its functions were more administra- 
 tive than legislative. But, from the time of Augus- 
 tus, the senatus-consuUa, or ordinances of the 
 Senate, became a fruitful source of law; thence- 
 forward till the time of Severus, A.D. 222, they 
 are numerous. After Hadrian's time, it became
 
 108 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 usual to add to a seiiatus-consulta the formula, 
 Auctore D. Hadrlano, wliicli shows the dependence 
 of the Senate On the Emperor.-'^ Power became 
 centralized, and went from the many to the few, 
 and then to the one. The law of correlation was 
 as constantly at work here as it ever is. 
 
 iv. The Laios of the XII Tables. In early Home 
 the Patricians were the State, Their laws were a 
 body of family rules, deduced from their ancestraj 
 religion, embodied in tradition^ and ascertained by 
 custom. The Plebeians became a power in the 
 city, and demanded a written code, that they 
 might know for themselves what these laws were. 
 They do not seem to have desired to repeal them; 
 only to know what they were, and to share in 
 their administration. Power now begins to drift 
 in correlative equivalence from the few to the 
 many. As the Patrician laws were strictly re- 
 ligious laws, law now begins also to find its new 
 authority in secular force. 
 
 These tables, it is said, treated of lawsuits; of 
 thefts and robberies; of loans, and the rights of 
 creditors over debtors; of parental rights; of in- 
 heritances and guardianships; of property and 
 possession; of trespasses and damages; of estates 
 
 (d) Introduction to Cumins' Manual of Civil Law.
 
 ANCIENT COUETS. 109 
 
 in the countrj; of community rights of the people; 
 of funerals; of worship; aucl forbidding intermar- 
 riage with Patricians. If the coimuhium, or right 
 of the Plebeians to intermarry with the Patricians, 
 was not granted by this last table, it was granted 
 the next year by a law upon that subject, proposed 
 by the Tribune Cornulius. There were laws also 
 fixing the age of majority of infants; laws allowing 
 a creditor to attach the property, but not the per- 
 son, of his debtor; laws prohibitiug candidates 
 from soliciting votes at fairs and markets; laws 
 that no one should bind, injure, or kill any Roman 
 citizen; and laws forbidding nepotism. 
 
 III. THE ANCIENT COURTS. 
 
 1. THE RELIGIOUS COURTS DISPLACED. 
 
 The Twelve Tables which the Patricians wrote 
 out for the use of the Plebeians, from their re- 
 ligious customs, required an interpreter. Being 
 the mere record of religious and family customs 
 already known, and in living force at the time, 
 they were laconic in expression, and left much to 
 construction. At first, the Patricians undertook 
 this necessary ofiice, because they were alone in- 
 structed in the forms of the legis aciiones, or sup- 
 posed will of the ancestral gods — which gods were
 
 110 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 exclusively the boast of the Patricians, and their 
 forms of hymns and prayers were absolutely neces- 
 sary to move the will of their gods. As to law 
 days, there were dies fasti and nefasti. But in the 
 year B.C. 312, Cn. Flavins, a scribe to a blind Pa- 
 trician, surreptitiously published a calendar of all 
 laAv days, and a volume of forms of action. 
 Thenceforward, the monopoly enjoyed by the 
 Patricians declined. This change was completed 
 when T. Coricanus, the first Plebeian Pontifex 
 Maximus, B.C. 281, introduced the practice of 
 giving legal advice. This was but the explanation 
 of the religious ritual. Others followed his ex- 
 ample, and hence arose the Jurispnide)des, or ju- 
 risperiti, who walked the forum and acted as advo- 
 cates. Augustus afterward gave the opinions of 
 these Juris'prudentes the force of law.* 
 
 2. THE NON-BELIGIOUS COURTS TO BE SUBSTITUTED. 
 
 (a) Frcdor Urhaiins. Another change of the law 
 in the course of these revolutions was further 
 effected through a judge called a Pnx3tor. When 
 the Consuls, being engaged in almost continual 
 wars, could not attend to the administration of 
 justice, a magistrate was created for that purpose 
 
 (a) Cumins' Introduction to Civil Law, p. H.
 
 PRiETOR URBANUS. Ill 
 
 B.C. 3G5, to wliom the name of Praetor was thence- 
 forth appropriated. The first was Sp. Furius Ca- 
 miUus, son of the great dictator. His duties 
 were taken from the executive department. We 
 have in modern times dissolved the sovereign 
 powers of government, and redistributed them 
 into the present co-ordination of the executive, 
 legishitive, and judicial departments. Each de- 
 partment retains so much, and no more, of that 
 sovereign power, which originally was one, as was 
 necessary for its own efficiency. 
 
 The Praetor who administered justice only be- 
 tween citizens was called Pmotor Urbanus, and 
 the edicts or laws derived from him are called jus 
 honorarium. In the absence of the Consuls, he 
 supplied their place in administration. When the 
 Praetor entered on his office, after having sv^'orn to 
 the observance of the laws, he published an edict, 
 or system of rules, according to which he was to 
 administer justice for that year. Having sum- 
 moned an assembly of the people, he publicly de- 
 clared, from the rostra, what method he was to ob- 
 serve in administering justice. This edict he 
 ordered not only to be recited by the herald, but 
 also to be posted up in writing, in large letters, in 
 the Forum. Y/hat was good in the edicts of for-
 
 112 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 mer Prajtors lie retained, and added sucli new pro- 
 visions as the necessities of a progressive social 
 state required. But all his proclamations were 
 upon the basis of Koman law, as distinguished 
 from law as based upon universal reason. For 
 three hundred years law had been separating itself, 
 more and more, from the narrow national customs 
 evolved from a family religion, rather than from a 
 religion for the world. It was still more or less 
 assimilated to a religion no longer believed. As 
 law gradually developed from the organization and 
 religion of a Patrician famih', to serve the social 
 condition of a conquering people, it needed to be 
 further liberalized, by separating itself entirely 
 from these superstitions beliefs, and by recogniz- 
 ing and absorbing into its conclusions the wider 
 wisdom of the world. Up to this time only 
 Romans had rights in Rome. Strangers had no 
 place before the courts or the law. And wliy 
 could not strangers appeal to the Prictor Urba- 
 nus? For the reason that this Pra)tor adminis- 
 tered only the law that originated in a local re- 
 ligion, as shown by Do Coulange; and as an alien 
 had no part in the Roman family or religion, so he 
 had none in the Roman law. But change went on. 
 (h) The Praiov Fcrcf/rutns. Up to this time,
 
 PR^TOE PEREGRINUS. 113 
 
 as just saiJ, law was based on local religious 
 notions, and was called the jns civile, as opposed 
 to law based on universal reason and justice, 
 called jus gentium. An entire change in this 
 respect came at the appointment of the PrEetor 
 Peregrinus, B.C. 247. 
 
 This PriBtor pre-announced, in his annual edict, 
 those principles of universal reason and justice 
 upon which he would administer law during his 
 year. Law now grew entirel}^ on its popular side, 
 and not on its religious. The Prajtor was in the 
 place of the priest. To the law for the family had 
 been added the law for the clan and for the 
 stranger. Of the institutions derived from super- 
 stition the law retained what it must, and added 
 those of reason, as there Avas occasion. Of the 
 rest of the two hundred and fifty years of the Ke- 
 public, between eighty and one hundred, or from 
 a third to a half, were occupied by the Punic, 
 Macedonian, and Mithridatic wars. 
 
 The centre of law now passed from its special 
 circle in the narrow national religious law called 
 jus civile, to the universal circle of jus geutium, or 
 the law of universal reason, common to the whole 
 world. The one had contracted inversely as the 
 other expanded. The one displaced the other,
 
 114 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 just as the golden crown to be weighed by Archi- 
 medes displaced its own bulk of water in which 
 he placed it. 
 
 The basing of law upon the conclusions of uni- 
 versal reason was hit upon and gradually devel- 
 oped and defined in the administration of the jus 
 gentium. This was original as a principle of law 
 in Rome, as it was about the same time an orig- 
 inal, though changing, principle of philosophy 
 with Zeno, the Stoic, in Greece. Neither derived 
 it from the other. 
 
 Moral ideas and law become universal jast as 
 people become cosmopolitan. 
 
 "Athens and Eome gave the foreigner a good 
 reception, both for commercial and political rea- 
 sons. But neither their good-will nor their inter- 
 est could abolish the ancient laws which religion 
 had established.'' This religion did not permit 
 the stranger to become a proprietor, because 
 he could not have any part in the religious 
 soil of the city. It permitted neither the for- 
 eigner to inherit from the citizen, nor the citizen 
 to inherit from the foreigner, because every trans- 
 mission of property carried with it the transmis- 
 sion of a worship; and it was as impossible for 
 
 (a) ('oulaii<ic, Ancient City, 2(53.
 
 EARLY JUEISCONSULTS. 115 
 
 the citizen to perform the foreigner's worship as 
 for the foreigner to perform the citizen's worship." 
 The law now stood distinctly apart from all pontifi- 
 cal restrictions and interpretation, and authenti- 
 cated itself by the credential of universal reason. 
 
 (c) Early Jarisconsjdts. The first of these dis- 
 tinctively known as Jurisconsults was Quintius 
 Mucins Scsevola. He was the instructor of Cic- 
 ero, and is the earliest jurist mentioned in the 
 Pandects. He collected the opinions of previous 
 lawyers (which must have been upon the ancient 
 religious customs), compiled a body of law in 
 eighteen volumes, and gave a better order to the 
 civil code. Publius Mucins SciTevola, his father, 
 was also eminent as a jurist. Gibbon says^ that 
 "the Mucian race Avas long renowned for its 
 hereditary knowledge of the civil law." Cicero** 
 says that, at that time, in the advanced old age of 
 Quintius Mucins, "multitudes of citizens and men 
 of the greatest distinction resorted to his house 
 for advice." The maxim, Fiat justicia, mat cmlum, 
 was his.° 
 
 Servius Sulpicins Etifiis was about the same 
 
 " (rt) Decline and Fall K. E., Ch. 44. 
 (h) De Oratore, Bk. 1, xliv. 
 (f) Cruttwell's Hist. Ho. Lit. 131.
 
 116 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 age of Cicero, and Lis early friend. Ho en- 
 joyed the reputation of being tlie first lawyer of 
 bis time, or of all who liad ever studied law as a 
 profession in Kome. Cicero, in his Ninth Phi- 
 lipic, says of him: "The praise of all mortals 
 will forever celebrate his wisdom, his firmness, 
 his loyalty, his admirable vigilance and prudence, 
 in upholding the interests of the public. Nor will 
 that admirable, and incredible, and almost god- 
 like skill of his, in interpreting the laws and ex- 
 plaining the principles of equity, be buried in 
 silence. If all the men of all ages, who have ever 
 had any acquaintance with the law in this city, 
 were got together in one place, they would not 
 deserve to be compared to Servius Sulpitius. 
 Nor was he more skillful in explaining the law 
 than in laying down the principles of justice. 
 Those maxims which were derived from Lnv he 
 constantly referred to the original principles of 
 kindness and equity." 
 
 Cicero, in his Commonwealth,'* makes Cato say, 
 "that the government of Eome was superior t-o that 
 of other states, for this reason : because in nearly 
 all of them there had been single individuals, each 
 of whom had regulated their commonwealth ac- 
 (a) Bk. II, 1.
 
 THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION. 117 
 
 corcliug to their oavii laws and their own ordinances. 
 So Minos had done in Crete, and Lycurgus in 
 Sparta; and in Athens, which experienced so many 
 revolutions, first Thesiis, then Draco, then Solon, 
 then Clisthenes, and afterward many others; a,nd, 
 lastly, when it was almost lifeless and quite pros- 
 trate, that great and wise man, Demetrius Phaler- 
 eus, supported it. But our Boman constitution, 
 on the contrary, did not spring from the genius of 
 one individual, but from many; and it was estab- 
 lished, not in the life-time of any one man, but in 
 the course of several ages and centuries. For, 
 added he, there never yet existed any genius so 
 vast and comprehensive as to allow nothing at any 
 time to escape its attention, and all the geniuses 
 in the world, united in a single mind, could never, 
 within the limits of a single life, exert a foresight 
 sufficiently extensive to embrace and harmonize 
 all, without the aid of experience and practice." 
 
 Here, for awhile, we lose sight of religion as a 
 source of morality and law. Its influence upon 
 both has ceased. As the religious force receded, 
 the civil advanced. The minimum of the former 
 was the maximum of the latter. The Priest has 
 gone and the Prietor has come. 
 
 At Cajsar culminated all the forces of ancient
 
 118 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Aryan civilization then in Europe. Servius Tul- 
 lius, B.C. 500, had secularized the ancient sacer- 
 dotal constitution of Komulus and Numa. The 
 human element of civilization had entirely cor- 
 related or exchanged places with the element 
 before supposed to be divine. It was the begin- 
 ning of the end. From the altars of faith — super- 
 stition if you will — mankind turned into the dark- 
 ness of universal doubt, and the lights of the sacred 
 altars went out in a midnight of horrors. Servius 
 dethroned the ancestral gods, and C?esar enthroned 
 a line of despots. 
 
 At CsBsar the old civilization ends, and the new 
 begins. The moral and the immoral are ever in 
 ebb and flow. Of one thing we may be sure, that 
 j2., no pr^scrij)tion runs against the omniscience and 
 omnipotence of a correlation that throbs and pul- 
 sates through external eons, holding in trust the 
 ultimate perfection of all things perfectible. The 
 command of nature is, "harmonize or perish." 
 Her creed is Progress, and her psalm is Hope.
 
 LECTUEE II.— Continued. 
 THE SECOND CORRELATION. 
 
 The Keligiotjs (Polytheistic) Basis of Mobalitx Displaced, and the 
 Philosophical Basis Coekelatively Substituted. (See Figure 5.) 
 
 In Borne we have seen Polytheism, witli its 
 domestic institutions resting on a sanction sup- 
 posed to be divine, displaced; and institutions, 
 both public and private, resting on the collective 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 Romulus — 735 B. C. 
 
 Maximum of Ee- 
 
 LIGION. 
 
 1. The will of the hum;iri 
 
 gods (ancestral^ as the 
 basis of morality and 
 law. General Morality. 
 
 2. The will of the siipe] 
 
 human gods, Mjthol- 
 ogy, slightly affects 
 morality. Both per- 
 ished before the skep- 
 ticism of the Philoso- 
 phers. 
 
 3. Maximum of Immorality 
 
 Minimum of Ee- 
 
 LIGION. 
 
 aiKMKr4mmrm 
 
 Minimum of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 I, The personal basis of 
 morality in the intel- 
 lect of man, as taught 
 by Socrates. 
 
 ■2. The impersonal basis in 
 in the order of nature, 
 as taught by Zeuo, the 
 Stole. 
 
 3. Ma.vimura of Immorality. 
 
 Maximum of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 C^.SAR.
 
 120 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 will of a whole populatioD, correlatively substi- 
 tuted. In Greece, this same Polytheism was dis- 
 placed, not only by this political power, but also 
 by the skeptical speculations of the philosophers, 
 respecting both matter and morality. Faith was 
 displaced by doubt. For nearly two hundred 
 years, from Thales to Socrates, the inquiry was 
 into the origin of matter. Socrates turned the 
 attention of all to the Tightness of human con- 
 duct, and the basis of the happiness of man. The 
 moralists difiered in opinion as widely as the ma- 
 terialists. Polytheism had failed, and the era of 
 Monotheism was dawning on the Pagan ages. A 
 reasonable doubt of the old religion led to a rea- 
 sonable faith in the new. 
 
 The following table summarizes the doctrines of 
 Ancient Moral Philosophy:
 
 ANCIENT MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 TABLE. 
 
 121 
 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 SUBJECT. 
 
 NAME. 
 
 SOCRATIC 
 
 jSIorality 
 
 KnoMledge is virtue. 
 
 Socrates, b. 4G9 B. C. 
 
 
 Intuition 
 
 Plato, ^gina, 430, d. 349. 
 Euclid, Magara. 
 
 Megaeic 
 
 Refutation 
 
 Cynic 
 
 Self-indulgence an evil. 
 
 Antisthenes, .444. 
 
 
 Diogenes, Sinope. 
 
 Cyrenaic 
 
 Self-indulgence a good. 
 
 Aristippus, Cyrene, 435. 
 
 Academy 
 
 
 Speusijjpus. 
 Xenocrates. 
 
 Old 
 
 
 MidiUe 
 
 Nothingcertainly known 
 Nothing naturally good 
 or bad. 
 
 Arcesilaus, 315. 
 
 New 
 
 Develops Probabilism. . 
 Truth has no criterion . . 
 
 Carneades, 214-129. 
 
 Peripatetic . . . 
 
 Experience 
 
 Ethical conclusions only 
 probable 
 
 Aristotle, Stagira, . .384. 
 
 Epicureanism . 
 
 Prudent pleasures 
 
 Epicurus, 342-271. 
 
 
 The rule for man is in 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 
 man himself 
 
 
 Grecian ) 
 Stoicism \ 
 
 Will and cliaracter 
 
 Zeno, b. circ. 340,d.2G0. 
 
 The rule not in man, but 
 
 
 
 in nature. 
 
 
 
 Theology 
 
 Cleanthes. 
 
 
 Moral conduct 
 
 Chrysippus, . . . .d. 208. 
 
 
 Ajjathy softens with 
 
 
 sympathy 
 
 Panwtius 180-111. 
 
 
 
 Philosophers expelled 
 
 
 
 from Rome by Cato, 
 
 
 
 155. 
 
 Roman Stoicism 
 
 New Academy 
 
 Posedonius, Syria. 
 Cicero 106-43. 
 
 ANNO ) 
 
 Rhetorical moralist .... 
 
 Seneca, Cordiilm, 3-65. 
 
 DOMINI 1 
 
 
 Philosophers banished 
 by Vespasian, 70-79. 
 
 
 Religious moralist 
 
 Epictetus, Phrygia, d. 
 
 
 Good principles innate. 
 
 circ. 94. 
 
 
 Philosophers banished 
 
 
 
 by Domitian 94 
 
 
 Contemplative moralist. 
 
 M. Aurelius, ..120-180.
 
 122 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 I. IS MAN IN HIMSELF A SUFFICIENT MORAL 
 CENTEE OF HIS OWN PERSONAL LIFE? 
 
 Among those who held that he is was Socrates.'^ 
 He thought that the moral basis or centre of con- 
 duct was not only in man, but that it was pre-em- 
 inently on the intellectual side of his nature. 
 With him and his school, knowledge is virtue, and 
 ignorance is vice. He said that it was impossible 
 for man to do the wrong, if he knew the right; yet 
 the necessities of society reply that ignorance is 
 no excuse. Ignoraiitla juris iieminem excused. It 
 is a proverb, that "men know the right, yet the 
 wrong pursue." "The good we would do we do 
 not, and the evil we would avoid, that we do." 
 
 If the Sophists before and after Socrates were to 
 be heeded, the intellectual side of man is the least 
 to be trusted. Protagoras'" taught that things are 
 as they seem to be to each man. But as things 
 seem different to difiereut minds, there could be 
 no unanimous knowledge. Gorgias'' landed in ab- 
 solute nihilism. His maxims were : {a) Nothing is; 
 for, if anything is, it must be either derived or 
 
 (a) b. 4G9 B. C. 
 
 (b) b. about 490 B. C. 
 
 (c) b. 427 B. (.;.
 
 THE SKEPTICS. 123 
 
 eternal. It can not be eternal, for the eternal is 
 infinite, and the infinite can neither divide nor 
 impart itself. It can not impart itself to itself, and 
 to impart itself to something not itself is to destroy 
 its infinity, (b) If anything is, it can not be known 
 without omniscience, for partial knowledge is 
 equivalent to no knowledge, (c) If anything can 
 be known, it can not be imparted to others; for no 
 two minds think alike, and no two use words in 
 the same sense. 
 
 Pyrrho, the skeptic,*^ equally excluded the moral 
 centre of life from the intellect of man. He held 
 that there was no criterion of truth. Contradic- 
 tion implies uncertainty. The skeptics asserted 
 nothing, not even that they did not assert. Ap- 
 pearance is all, and that is uncertain. 
 
 According to Arcesilaus'^ and Carneades,° both 
 of the New Academy, nothing is known for a cer- 
 tainty of the real existence or nature of things, and 
 our knowledge falls into the domain of the probable. 
 
 The skeptics made the end of life to be the at- 
 tainment of a perfect equanimity, and the differ- 
 ence between good and bad to be the result of 
 
 (a) d. 270 B. C. 
 
 (b) h. 315 B. C. 
 (f) b. 213 B. C.
 
 124 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 convention, not of nature. The Academicians did 
 not differ much in this when they accepted con- 
 formity to custom as the philosophy of life. With 
 both there was no essential difference between 
 right and wrong. They held it to be wise to do 
 what could be done, not what ought to be done. 
 Life, with them, was without a basis or centre of 
 morality, and even without a morality at all. Still, 
 while Socrates overestimated intelligence as a cen- 
 tre of morality, he could not too much magnify its 
 importance as a help to find the centre. All 
 threads of the wire-cable support the bridge. 
 
 Aristotle placed the moral centre not only in 
 man, but specially in his toill; not like Socrates, 
 his teacher, in man's hioivledge. Aristotle taught 
 that virtue is a golden mean, and is in man's pru- 
 dent habits or states of the Avill. 
 
 Epicurus placed the moral centre also not only 
 in man, bnt in his prudent pleasures. His 
 four canons were: (a) the pleasure which produces 
 no pain is to be embraced; (b) the pain which pro- 
 duces no pleasure is to be avoided; (c) the pleas- 
 ure is to bo avoided which prevents a greater 
 pleasure, or Avhich produces a greater pain; {d) 
 the pain is to be endured which averts a greater 
 ]iain, or secures a greater pleasure.
 
 MODERN SYSTEMS. 125 
 
 In addition to these subjective theories of the 
 ancients are the subjective theories of the mod- 
 erns. Mandeville placed moral conduct in human 
 pride, and said that "man has many impulses, 
 but among the strongest is that of pride, which in- 
 duces to self-denial in other things, that it may 
 jBnd more than its equivalent in the praise that is 
 returned; and the whole of virtue is found in the 
 vanity that is satisfied by flattery." ^ 
 
 Adam Smith based moral conduct on human 
 sympathy, and said that "in morals we change 
 places in thought with the actor; and if we deem 
 that we should approve of the act as a spectator, 
 we affirm it to be right, and wrong if we did not 
 so sympathize with it." Others, again, have 
 traced moral distinctions to an inner sense in man. 
 Shaftesbury and Hutcheson teach that man has a 
 sense to perceive right and wrong, as well as 
 senses for color, sound, and taste. This moral 
 sense is each man's source of all obligation, and 
 to him his measure of all virtue. Dr. Brown 
 founded moral conduct on an average moral senti- 
 ment. F. Schlegel supposed an individual con- 
 science, awed by a being above man. Others, 
 again, like Cudwortli, Kant, and Coleridge, sup- 
 
 (a) Hickox, Moral Science, p. 30.
 
 126 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 pose that the human mind is encIoAved witli iutui- 
 tloii, or an instantaneous vision of truth. Right 
 is right, because the mind sees it to be right, and 
 that is an end of it."^ These theories all have a 
 measure of truth in them, and are, therefore, 
 neither universally and exclusively true, nor uni- 
 versally and exclusively false. 
 
 But, however much we may laud man's knowl- 
 edge, prudence, instinct of happiness, pride of 
 character, tenderness of sympathy, inner sense, or 
 intuitive grasp of truth, all history and observa- 
 tion convinces us that 
 
 II. FOE FULL MORAL ENDS THE MORAL 
 BASIS IS NOT IN MAN. 
 
 If we legislate for man, we must know the na- 
 ture of man for whom we legislate. Does he need 
 help, and how much, and of wdiat kind ? Let us 
 examine the facts of this nature under three prop- 
 ositions: Human nature is down, however it may 
 be accounted for; whether it was originally down 
 and has ever been rising, or was originally elevated 
 and fell back; if it is ever to rise, it must be 
 helped up, as it can not fully help itself up; when 
 
 (a) Id.
 
 IS HUMAN NATURE FALLEN. 127 
 
 np it must be held up, as it cau not constantly liolcl 
 itself up. 
 
 1. HUMAN NATURE IS DOWN, WHETHER ORIGINALLY OR BY 
 A FALL. 
 
 Tlie moral prostration of man's nature is as mucli 
 a provable fact as that of liis form, stature, color, 
 weiglit, or anything in his history. Nothing is 
 easier than to prove human degradation. Whether 
 it began down, and has ever been rising, or began 
 up and fell back, it is down.'^ It is daily proved in 
 our courts by sworn testimony. Somehow, even 
 the human intellect is an unsatisfactory power. 
 The very multiplicity of philosophical speculations 
 and schemes of material science, and the uncer- 
 tainty and inability of the mind uniformly to de- 
 cide and verify the truth about itself or anything 
 else, affect its authority and suggest its fallen 
 state. Human nature is down as to foresight, for 
 expectations are disappointed and hopes fail us. 
 Human nature is down as to power; for, though 
 man has life, whether as a gift or as an evolution, 
 he has not, does not, and can not keep it. Francis 
 Galton, in his work on "Hereditary Genius," 
 argues that the human race was not only down, 
 
 (a) See opinions of Ancient Philosophy, quoted by Merivale. 
 Note in his lecture on Conversion of Roman Empire.
 
 128 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 but utterly savage at the start. He says: "The 
 sense of original sin would show, according to my 
 theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, 
 but that he was rising in moral culture with more 
 rapidity than the nature of his race could follow. 
 My view is corroborated by the conclusion reached 
 at the end of each of many independent lines of 
 ethnological research — that the human race were 
 utter savages in the beginning; and that, after 
 myriads of years of barbarism, man has but- very 
 recently found his way into paths of morality and 
 civilization." 
 
 But, though thus originally down, he thinks 
 human nature can be permanently helped up. He 
 says, in another place : 
 
 "I argue that, as a new race can be obtained in 
 animals and plants, and can be raised to so great 
 a degree of purity that it will maintain itself, with 
 moderate care in preventing the more faulty mem- 
 bers of the flock from breeding, so a race of gifted 
 men might be obtained under exactly similar con- 
 ditions." 
 
 Without any great and permanent advance there 
 maybe some change, in a generation or so; but 
 has this making of a race of mongrels and hybrids 
 to order over been permanently done, or is it prac-
 
 EVERYTHING HELPS EVEEYTHING. 129 
 
 ticable to be done? And if it were, would not men 
 soon become gods? 
 
 2. IF HUMAN NATURE IS EVER ELEVATED, IT MUST, AS SENECA 
 SAID," BE HELPED UP, FOR IT CAN NOT HELP ITSELF UP. 
 
 Nothing, not even liumanity, is alone or sufficient 
 for its own life. Environment is for man as well 
 as for the wheat and for the brute. No race in- 
 herits all the power necessary to raise itself into 
 highest civilization. Help is always needed. It 
 is said that' Greece received its civilization from 
 Egypt, and Egypt from India. However this may 
 be, Protagoras was right in magnifying the im- 
 portance of the relation of things. Without rela- 
 tions, nothing is, and in these relations each thing 
 helps every other thing. Is Prof. Tyndal scien- 
 tific in claiming that "science rejects the outside 
 builder?" He himself shall answer himself, in the 
 same sentence from which I quote him. "Sit- 
 ting," he says, "in the summer of 1855, with my 
 friend Dr. Debus, under the shadow of a massive 
 elm on the bank of a river in Normandy, the cur- 
 rent of our thoughts and conversation was sub- 
 stantially this: We regarded the tree above us. 
 In opposition to gravity its molecules had ascended, 
 
 («) Epistles, 52, sec. 2.
 
 130 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 diverged into brandies, and budded into innu- 
 merable leaves. What caused them to do so — a 
 power external to themselves, or an inherent 
 force? Science rejects the outside builder; let us 
 therefore consider from the other point of view the 
 experience of the present year. A low tempera- 
 ture had kept back for weeks the life of the veg- 
 etable world. But at length the sun gained power 
 — or, rather, the cloud-screen which our atmosphere 
 had drawn between him and us was removed — 
 and life immediately kindled under his warmth. 
 But what is life, and how can solar light and heat 
 thus affect it? Near our elm was a silver-birch, 
 with its leaves rapidly quivering in the morning 
 air. We had here motion, but not the motion of 
 life. Each leaf was a mass under the influence 
 of an outside force, while the motion of life was 
 inlierent and molecular."'^ This is sufficient for our 
 purpose. The growth of the tree upward against 
 the law of gravitation, and the motion of the quiv- 
 ering birchen leaves in the breeze were both phe- 
 nomena from "outside" help. The power of the 
 sun in his warmth lifted up the organizing mole- 
 cules of sap in the elm, and indirectly caused the 
 motion of the leaves of the silver-birch. Yerily, 
 
 (n) I'oimhir Sci. M., .hui. 1879, p. '271.
 
 THE OUTSIDE BUILDER. 131 
 
 nothing exists exclusively unto itself. Science 
 can find no life in tlie molecules of the elm that 
 was to be, until the sun, as an "outside builder," 
 commanded the molecules to work. The light, the 
 heat, the moisture, and the soil which entered into 
 the elm, were all "outside builders," building 
 from both within and without. The color of the 
 leaves, which consumed all other colors and re- 
 jected the blue and the yellow, was all outside 
 building. Indeed, as the Professor says, "the 
 ladder of physical reasoning is incompetent to lift 
 US above the veil that hides the Avorkings of the 
 inner and the outer building in nature's crypts." 
 But to human knowledge there is no building from 
 the inside without a building from the outside. 
 Modern religions are optimists, teaching that 
 supernatural help Avill come, as the warmth of the 
 sun descends into the bosom of the earth and the 
 flowers. 
 
 3. WHEN HUMAN NATURE IS UP IT MUST BE HELD UP, FOR IT 
 CAN NOT, OR WILL NOT HOLD ITSELF UP; IT DROPS BACK. 
 
 " Owing to several causes, there is a steady 
 check in an old civilization upon the fertility of the 
 abler classes; the imprudent and the unambitious 
 are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the 
 race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each sue-
 
 132 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 cessive generation less fitted for liigli civilization, 
 altliougli it retains the external appearance of one, 
 until the time comes when the whole political and 
 social fabric caves in, and a greater or less relapse 
 to barbarism takes place, during the reign of 
 which the race is, perhaps, able to recover its 
 tone."-'^ 
 
 This general statement as to the inability of the 
 human race to keep itself up is sustained by the 
 fact that, however spasmodically it may now and 
 then leap up, it constantly drops back, as proved 
 by the history of genius in well-known and distin- 
 guished families. And, though an investigation 
 into the history of the heredity of genius in three 
 hundred picked families shows in those families 
 five hundred and eighty-five .eminent and four hun- 
 dred and fifteen illustrious meUj or over three to a 
 family, yet there genius dropped off again, as if its 
 power were exhausted. And though it was also 
 ascertained that exactly one half of those illus- 
 trious men had one or more eminent relations, yet 
 there was no further advance. Humanity, like the 
 tides of the ocean, now rising by the goodness or 
 the severity of providence, and now gravitating 
 
 (a) See Caltoii im lliu-. (Jeniiis; 1 Kitter Hist. Anc. riiil. 174; 
 Hiillaiii Lit. Kuiopo, SI; 1 Clillet's (Joel in Human Tliouglit, 20.
 
 GENIUS DIES OUT. 133 
 
 by its own inherent weakness, solemnly ebbs and 
 flows with the throbbings of a ceaseless pulse. 
 
 Man rises when there is in him something from 
 above; but as life went out of the divine man, and 
 left only a corpse on the cross, when the Deity 
 departed, so man is but a mere animal when the 
 spiritual life is surrendered. 
 
 "If we know nothing more about a person than 
 that he is a father, brother, son, or grandson, or 
 other relation of an illustrious man, what is the 
 chance that he himself is or will be eminent ? If 
 his father be illustrious, it is one to two; if he be 
 only eminent, his own chance for eminence is one 
 to four. If a man's son be eminent, the chance is 
 one to six that the father himself is or has been 
 eminent." An investigation into the relationship of 
 thirty Lord Chancellors showed that eight tenths 
 of them had eminent relations; six tenths of fifty- 
 three statesmen had eminent relations, and so had 
 five tenths or one half of sixteen premiers; five 
 tenths of fifty-nine commanders; seven tenths of 
 fifty-six literary men; four tenths of one hundred 
 poets; three tenths of one hundred musicians; 
 four tenths of forty-two painters; two tenths of 
 one hundred and ninety-six divines, and four 
 tenths of thirty-six scholars had eminent relations,
 
 134 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 giving a general average of five tenths or one half 
 of the relations of eminent men as being them- 
 selves eminent. In contrast to the eighty per 
 cent, of eminent relations of the thirty chancellors, 
 only thirty-sis per cent, of two hundred and fifty- 
 six lower judges had eminent relations. 
 
 This tendency of human nature to drop itself is 
 seen all through the statistics of inherited genius. 
 Though one hundred and nine of the two hundred 
 and fifty-six English judges, whose lives were in- 
 vestigated, came oiit of eighty-five families, no 
 more came. Out of seventeen families came two 
 each, and no more; out of two families came three 
 each, and no more; and only out of the Atkyns 
 family came as many as four. Though twenty of 
 the Bach family were known favorably in music, 
 yet the genius culminated and fell oft' from Sebas- 
 tian Bach in the sixth generation. Though eight 
 or nine painters came out of the Titian family, 
 they degenerated from the death of the great head. 
 And so of Tintoretto's family, and Veronese's, and 
 Teniers', and Carracci's. The Kemble family kept 
 up its remarkable dramatic talent most wonder- 
 fully — at last it fell off. Alexander, Ca3sar, Na- 
 poleon, and Shakespeare left no successors. The 
 .stock iu which great genius or ability appears
 
 HUMAN NATUKE FALLS BACK. 
 
 135 
 
 either dies out of the families of the world, or the 
 genius dies out of the stock. Thus, the works of 
 genius may live, yet the genius itself dies. The 
 following table from Galton shows the percentage 
 of eminent relations to an eminent man : 
 
 THKEE HUNDRED FAMILIES 
 EXAMINED. 
 
 SEPAEATE GROUPS. 
 
 No. of families each containing 
 more than one eminent man 
 
 Total number of eminent men in 
 all the families 
 
 300 
 977 
 
 Percentages of Illustrious and 
 Eminent Men having Emi- 
 nent Relations. 
 
 
 3-> 
 
 15 2 
 
 Father 
 
 Brother 
 
 Son 
 
 Grandfather 
 
 Uncle 
 
 Nephew 
 
 Grandson 
 
 Great grandfather. 
 
 Great uncle 
 
 First cousin 
 
 Great nephew 
 
 Great grandson . . . . 
 
 Total average percentage of emi- 
 nent men having eminent rela- 
 tions 
 
 11-10 6-10 5-10 7-10 
 
 8-10 
 
 4-10 7-10 2-10 
 
 Galton admits this tendency or law of human 
 nature to fall off from an advance. He says: 
 "The table shows, in the most unmistakable
 
 136 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 maimer, the enormous odds tliat a near kinsman 
 has over one that is remote, in the chance of in- 
 heriting abilit}'. Speaking roughly, the percent- 
 ages are quartered at each successive remove, 
 whether by descent or collaterally. Thus, in the 
 first degree of kinship the percentage is twenty- 
 eight; in the second about seven; and the third, 
 one and one half. The table testifies to another 
 fact in which people do not commonly believe. It 
 shows that when we regard the averages of many 
 instances the frequent sports of nature in produc- 
 ing prodigies must be regarded as apparent, and 
 not as real. Ability, in the long run, does not 
 suddenly start into existence, and disappear with 
 equal abruptness; but rather, it rises in a gradual 
 and regular curve out of the ordinary level of fam- 
 ily life. The statistics show that there is a regular 
 average increase of ability in the generations that 
 precede its culmination, and as regular a decrease 
 in those that succeed it. In the first case the 
 marriages have been consentient to its production. 
 In the latter they have been incapable of preserv- 
 ing it." . 
 
 A further proof, as reported in the papers, that 
 vice is more hereditary than genius, and of the 
 constantly gravitating tendency of human nature
 
 HEREDITY OF EVIL. 137 
 
 to run clown bill, and, when down, to stay there, 
 has been given lately by Dr. Harris, of New York: 
 "His attention was called, some time since, to a 
 county on the upper Hudson which showed a re- 
 markable proportion of crime and poverty to the 
 whole population — four hundred and eighty of its 
 forty thousand inhabitants being in the almshouse 
 — and, upon looking into the records a little, he 
 found certain names constantly appearing. Be- 
 coming interested in the subject, he concluded to 
 search the genealogies of these families, and, after 
 a thorough investigation, he discovered that from 
 a young girl named 'Margaret' — who was left 
 adrift, nobody ever heard how, in a village of the 
 county, seventy years ago, and, in the absence of 
 an almshouse, was left to grow up as best she 
 could — have descended two hundred criminals. 
 As an illustration of this remarkable record, in 
 one single generation of her unhappy line there 
 were twenty children; of these, three died in in- 
 fancy, and seventeen survived to maturity. Of 
 the seventeen, nine served in the State prisons for 
 high crimes an aggregate term of fifty years, while 
 the others were frequent inmates of jails and pen- 
 itentiaries and almshouses! The whole number 
 of this girl's descendants, through six generations,
 
 138 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 is nine liuiidred, and besides the two hundred who 
 are on record as criminals, a large number have 
 been idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, pros- 
 titutes, and paupers." Dr. Howe also says, that of 
 three hundred idiots under his care, one hundred 
 and forty-five were the children of drunken parents. 
 Indeed, "the evil that men do lives after them." 
 And it is also true that we are not sufficient of 
 ourselves to help ourselves. 
 
 If, then, the moral basis or centre of conduct 
 is not sufficient in man's knowledge, as taught by 
 Socrates; or in his prudent habits, as taught by 
 Aristotle; or in his selected pleasures, as taught 
 by Epicurus; or if it be not in man at all by reason 
 of his general imperfections, 
 
 II. IS THE MORAL CENTEE A SUPERHUMAN 
 ONE TO BE FOUND IN THE ORDER OF 
 UNIVERSAL, IMPERSONAL NATURE? 
 
 Zeno, the stoic, held that it is found only there. 
 He taught that our individual natures are parts of 
 universal nature. In this opinion he was followed 
 by Cleanthes, his chief disciple. Both taught that 
 our chief good is to live in a manner corresponding 
 to nature (vivcre coiivenioUcr iiainrai) — and that 
 means corresponding to one's own nature, and to
 
 THE OPINION OF THE STOICS. 139 
 
 universal nature, as Clirysippus tauglit, or to uni- 
 versal nature, as Cleauthes taught — doing none of 
 those things which the common law of mankind is 
 in the habit of forbidding. This common law, 
 they said, is identical with that reason which per- 
 vades everything; being the same with Jupiter, 
 who is the regulator and chief manager of all ex- 
 isting things.'' 
 
 Cleanthes,'' the immediate successor to Zeno, 
 held that the universal nature according to which 
 people ought to live is the common one, above and 
 exclusive, or rather, inclusive, of all particular 
 nature. He excludes individual human nature, 
 making all consist in the indivisibility of uni- 
 versal order, and teaching that the soul of man is 
 material and reabsorbed at death by the soul of 
 the universe. Chrysippus, " on the contrary, recog- 
 nized our individual natures, but held that they are 
 all parts or units of universal nature as totality; in 
 other words, the whole is the sum of all its parts.' 
 
 (a) Diogenes Laertius, Tit. Zeno. 
 
 (h) b. 300 -d. 220 B. C. 
 
 {<■) 200 207 B. C. 
 
 (d) "The notion so commonly .adopted, that the .Stoics particu- 
 larly devoted themselves to the science of law, and played a great 
 part in constructing the fahric of lloman jurisprudence, is much 
 mistaken or exaggerated. The legal principles which can be 
 traced to their moral maxims are but few. This remark is op-
 
 140 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 But what do we mean by universal nature or 
 universal reason? The word universal is derived 
 from the Latin words uuum versus alia, and sig- 
 nifies one turned or extended into other or muny. 
 Hence, to call nature universal implies that one 
 all-including nature turns or extends itself to many 
 or divers natures below or within it. Universal 
 reason is one all-includiug reason extending itself 
 to other or many subordinate minds. Just so far 
 as human reason conforms to universal reason it 
 is governed by a reason more general than its own : 
 in other words, by a superhuman reason. But 
 right and wrong are ever unchanging", and can not 
 therefore have their basis or centre in ever-chang- 
 ing nature, or in an order that gradually but 
 
 posed to the common opinion of the commentators on Roman Law, 
 which the few and trifling coincidences which Heineccius dis- 
 covers between the stoic and the legal principles, are surely not 
 sufficient to justify:" 6 Merivale's Rome, 194, and note. 
 
 This notion of the impersonal Order of the Universe, instead of 
 a Personal Government of a Supreme Being, led, of course, to 
 fatalism, the inevitableness and ecpiality of all evil, and the abso- 
 lute irresi)()nsibility of vicious conduct. Tlie inevitahlencss of 
 evil made all e(pial in guilt. Treljatius taught tliat to steal one 
 grain of corn was equal in guilt to that of stealing the whole 
 lump; and he who touclied tlie ear of a man was liable to as great 
 damages as he wlio injured the whole body. With wrong con- 
 ceptions of Supernatural Personality, they had wrong notions of 
 the evil conduct violative of law. Indeed^ in the fatalism of the 
 Htoics tliere was ncitlior sin uor rcsiJonsilMlity.
 
 NATURE CHANGES. 141 
 
 ceaselessly changes. That which clianges is in- 
 complete; and that Avliich is incomplete is im- 
 perfect; and the imperfect can not originate and 
 authenticate anything essentially perfect, like the 
 law of moral rightness. Imperfect man can not 
 be the source of his own perfection. The centre 
 of moral force must be in the perfection of intel- 
 ligence and will, and this ever-changing nature is 
 not. Evolution is change. 
 
 But if the moral basis or centre of man's con- 
 duct is not in imperfect man' himself because of 
 his imperfections, can it be in the order of uni- 
 versal nature, of which imperfect man is the most 
 perfect unit? In other words, as the strength of 
 the chain can not transcend that of its weakest 
 link, so the perfection of nature in its totality can 
 not transcend the imperfections of man, its most 
 perfect part. Therefore, as we shall show in the 
 next lecture, the moral basis must be in super- 
 nature, where, in the infinitude of perfection, no 
 imperfection can come. The unity of supernature 
 is absolute, and here is the fons et origo of all 
 things.
 
 LECTURE II.— Continued. 
 THE THIRD CORKELATION. 
 
 The PHiLOSorHiCAL Basis of Moealitt in Natuke, whetheb PersonaIi 
 
 OB IMPEESOJJAI, WAS DISPLACED, AND A SUPERNATURAL OR MONOTHE- 
 ISTIC Basis in Judaism and Christianity was Corbelativelt Sub- 
 stituted. » 
 
 1. THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF MOEALITY TO BE DISPLACED. 
 
 An examination of the table of names in the last 
 lecture will show that at the coming of Christ 
 philosophy had been dead, even in Greece, foi- over 
 two hundred years, and was never a native or a 
 
 (i) Fk;. G. 
 
 CupasT. 
 
 Muiulii} baBedoii Worslii) 
 
 lu Superuaturu: 
 
 a, Judaism. 
 
 b. Cbrii>tiauit.v. 
 
 4. Marriage Sacramitilal 
 
 The llulj Roman V, 
 plru. 
 
 Moralily based ou Specula- 
 
 Maxiiuuni of Philosopliy — 
 Miuimuut uf Morality. 
 
 Miirriage, Secular. 
 
 Sciieca a Moralist 
 
 B. C.T-fif) A. D. 
 
 PhiloBophers baoiKlicd 
 
 by Veapasiau 70-79 
 
 lOpiorotus 
 
 Moralist 'Ji 
 
 I'liilosophers banished 
 
 liv Doniiliaii 91 
 
 M. Aurelius 
 
 Moralist iai-180 
 
 ilofihius 4;(-526 
 
 Schools ol I'hilusophy 
 
 at Atlieiis ol.ised by 
 
 onleror.liislinli.M.. 526 
 Thu Schooliiieii couvert 
 
 Philosophy into 
 
 Theology I'rom 
 
 AD. 740-13*7 
 
 'I'lIK I'IMCSENT 
 
 TiMi:.
 
 SUPERNATURAL MORAL BASIS. 143 
 
 power in Borne. As a literary fasliion, a lew wore 
 the robes of the philosophers, and aspired to the 
 distiuctiou of their wisdom. Kome preferred to 
 be great among the Nations rather than to be great 
 in the Schools. If it was thought in Greece, it was 
 will at Rome. The theistic notions of the ancient 
 philosophers were neither clear nor consistent. 
 The idea of one god was an Asiatic conception. 
 
 As the idea of the moral basis in nature, whether 
 a personal human nature as taught by Socrates, 
 the moralist, or an impersonal superhuman nature 
 as taught by Zeno, the stoic, gave way, as we saw 
 in the last lecture, it was correlatively and inversely 
 substituted by the idea of a morality based upon 
 the will of a Supernatural Person. 
 
 At the coming of Csesar the experiment of look- 
 ing for man's moral sufficiency in man himself, 
 whether in his laws and institutions, or in his 
 philosophies, or in the order of mere impersonal 
 nature around man, had been on trial for five hun- 
 dred years, and had signally failed. The basis 
 must be in supernature or nowhere. Exactly as 
 man's religious force declined his immoral force 
 inversely increased. Humanity had proved insuf- 
 ficient for humanity. Impersonal nature had not 
 moralized personal nature. A Jew of Nazareth
 
 1J:J: THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 came to teach new truths to the workl, of man's 
 moral responsibility to a personal Power above 
 Nature. Society took a new departure. As Chris- 
 tianity, with significance in a supernatural order 
 and Person, increased, human dependence, whether 
 in law, philosophy, or the polity of governments, 
 inversely decreased. Past experience had shown, 
 by the inexorable law of correlation, that the moral 
 centre was not in human nature but in super- 
 nature; where, in the iufinitude of perfection, 
 no imperfection could come. It is admitted that 
 nothing is sufficient in itself. Evolution is impossi- 
 ble without involution. Nature is the Phenomena 
 or finite side of things, and supernature the 
 Noumenon or infinite side. If it can be proved 
 that Nature is all, then nature is its own lawgiver, 
 but not otherwise. 
 
 2. THE KELIGIOUS BASIS TO BE COERELA.TIVELY SUBSTITUTED 
 FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL. 
 
 "When Monotheistic Christianity transferred the 
 moral centre altogether out of the sphere of nature, 
 cither human or superhuman, it placed it in the 
 universal parentage and authority of supernature. 
 For the philosophy of the philosophers came the 
 theology of the school-men. Instead of heroic 
 man becoming a god, the infinite God became in-
 
 ANSELM AND ABELARD. 145 
 
 cainate in man. The moral strength and hope of 
 of man was no longer his own wisdom, but the 
 infinite Generator worked in man to will and to 
 do His good pleasure. Men were told that, if they 
 lacked wisdom, to seek it from above themselves, 
 and it would be given. The ancients, seeking the 
 moral centre in man and nature, said that true 
 philosophy was religion; but Christian theolo- 
 gians, as represented by Duns Scotus and the 
 school-men, seeking the moral centre in super- 
 nature, held that true religion was philosophy. 
 Auselm said that he did not seek to know that he 
 might believe, but he believed that he might 
 know.^ Abelard said that he sought to know that 
 he might believe. Both were right. 
 
 Knowledge without worship leads to doubt. 
 Worship with knowledge leads to faith. At the 
 coming of Caesar the maximum of philosophy coin- 
 cided with the minimum of religion and morality; 
 and this because, with many curious and some wise 
 thoughts (even such as the world has always since 
 valued), the moral judgment became confused. 
 The philosophers took from the people their old 
 beliefs, and left them nothing in their place, or 
 
 (a) Non qiKcro Intellhjere itt crednm, sed credo nt IntcIUfjmn. 
 Al)elartrs luottu was I'atioiialistic: Non credviidum nisi 2^vias in- 
 tdhctuni.
 
 146 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 each one with his own new view; and left so many 
 and various opinions that no one knew what to 
 accept, and so accepted nothing. Speculation 
 was no substitute for worship. The guide of life 
 is the enlightened conscience. Optimism comes 
 from faith and hope; Pessimism from skepticism 
 and despair. 
 
 Socrates, like Chillion, one of the seven wise 
 men, said "know thyself, and do right; but in 
 whom does merely right knowledge lead to right 
 living?" "Omniscience is not the condition of 
 virtue." Aristotle said learn virtue by practice; 
 but how and where best to begin but in religions 
 feeling and with religious responsibility? Zeno, 
 the stoic, said assert 3'ourself and be strong; but 
 "who is sufficient for these things?" Epicurus 
 said, indulge yourself and be indifferent; but is 
 this wise? With one, virtue was culture; with 
 another, pleasure; and another, will-power. 
 
 Socrates sought moral principles; Plato, how 
 men might live like gods; Aristotle, practical 
 methods; Zeno, the cultivation of the will. Soc- 
 rates separated morality from mythological re- 
 ligion; Aristotle separated rules from principles; 
 and Zeno separated the man from the State. 
 From the iirst wo derive a valuable moral wisdom;
 
 PHILOSOrHICAL OPINIONS. 147 
 
 from the second, certain moral speculations; 
 from the third, prudent moral efforts; from the 
 fourth, a proud moral severity. Socrates would 
 have men learned; Epicurus, indifferent; Aris- 
 totle, practical; and Zeno, enduring. One offered 
 as a motive the rewards of virtue; another the 
 pleasures of virtue; and another the rightness of 
 virtue. Socrates made philosophers; Aristotle, 
 logicians; Zeno, heroes; and Epicurus, graceful 
 idlers. 
 
 Notice that stoicism, as compared with religion, 
 was a mere morality, impossible to be known to 
 any but the few, and even by them it was soon 
 corrupted; while religion, including both Judaism 
 and Christianity, certainly not less a morality, had 
 all the propagaud vigor of a popular and aggres- 
 sive religious faith. The spirit of Christianity was 
 intensely missionary, and its heroes were martyrs. 
 
 Stoicism made self-assertive philosophers of the 
 few who had time to meditate. Religion said: "I 
 can do all things through Him who strengtheneth 
 me." Stoicism: "I must do all, or nothing, by 
 myself." In one was despair and self-destruction; 
 in the other both humility and hope. 
 
 These two elements came together in parallel, 
 if not commingled streams, at Home, in the age of
 
 148 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Seneca the Eoman, and Paul of Asia. One was 
 a teacher to an Emperor, tlie brother of a pro- 
 consul, and a notability in society; the other, a 
 foreigner — a prisoner — the teacher of an unpopu- 
 lar faith. Why does one immediately fail, and the 
 other almost as immediately succeed? Before the 
 close of the second century from their contem- 
 porary presence in Home, the stoical wisdom of 
 Seneca, even while Marcus Aurelius, its imperial 
 teacher, is on his throne, goes down in fruitless- 
 ness; and the other, under the impulsion of the 
 law of "survival of the fittest," moves on like a 
 young giant, mounts the throne of the Caesars, 
 and spreads abroad into all lands "the light of 
 the world." 
 
 Christianity thought first of a personal God, 
 and then of a personal man. Stoicism thought 
 first of a personal man, and then of an impersonal 
 God. The one lield to a personal immortality and 
 accountability; the other to an impersonal im- 
 mortality and no accountability. One was na- 
 tional, the other universal — go ye into all the 
 world and preach the Gospel to every creature. 
 One was propagand, the other not. Stoicism was 
 inert, and endured; Christianity had tremendous 
 activity, and triumphed. Socrates and Seneca
 
 FAITH, 149 
 
 might individually die for their philosophy, but 
 millions died for their religion. Opinion was 
 distinguished by the self-destruction of the sui- 
 cide; but faith was glorified by the sacrifice of the 
 martyr. One perished, though nourished by the 
 favor of some few who knew it; the other survived, 
 though persecuted by all who did not know it. 
 
 The strongest roots of morality are in the sacred 
 sanctions of religion. We must love and rever- 
 ence that which we obey voluntarily. In the an- 
 cient religions, such as they were, there was the 
 supposed authority of a supernal will and wisdom 
 in moral rules and religious appointments. The 
 authority was above man. But in advancing cul- 
 ture the individual judgment became confused in 
 a multitude of systems, and uncertain as to what 
 authority he owed obedience, man insensibly 
 ceased allegiance, more or less, to all. He needed 
 something to decide his mind and fasten it to 
 mental and moral truth upon wdiich to build up 
 his life. For the want of anything definite, his 
 moral forces ran to waste, and his mcwal life col- 
 lapsed. This shows, that as the ancient religions, 
 though superstitious, whose fancies Avere ingrained 
 in common thought and feeling, declined, ancient 
 morals declined. The maximum of philosophy
 
 150 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 was tlie minimum of religion, and the minimum 
 of religion was the maximum of immorality. The 
 various cosmological theories as to whether every- 
 thing came from the water, the air, or fire, at most 
 entertained the speculations of those who had the 
 leisure to think upon such matters; but when re- 
 ligious movements had so far died out in the con- 
 fusion of speculative thought that men worshipped 
 nothing, then came practical results. There was 
 no moral bond on man, for there was no moral 
 authority above man. Time and human interests 
 were all. (See note, next page.) 
 
 The period of social decline during the time of 
 the philosophers, and after the general decay of all 
 religion, illustrates the fallacy of that as well as of 
 this age, that mere " knowledge is power." The 
 power man most needs comes from the moral side 
 of his nature, not its intellectual. There is no 
 connection between right and wrong and the mul- 
 tiplication-table. Men never do right because 
 they know the calculus. Opinion does not gener- 
 ally control action until it has warmth and moral 
 energy. Conduct comes out of conscience and the 
 emotions, rather than the mental persuasions. 
 Again, I beg to say that this dependence upon 
 mere intellectual culture is, in the woi'ds of Spen-
 
 MODERN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 151 
 
 cer, "the superstition of the age." It has be- 
 come a proverb, that " men know the right, yet 
 the wroug pursue." Every non-theistic direction 
 of society is fatally wrong. True social progress 
 is many-sided; but, whatever else may be lacking, 
 the experiment of modern civilization, judging the 
 
 Note. — We shall be better able to see which would probably 
 be the wisest civilizer when we consider the special character- 
 istics of — 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Epicureanism. 
 
 Stoicism. 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 Human Nature Phase. 
 
 Human Spirit Phase. 
 
 Divine Spirit Phase. 
 
 Expedient Morality. 
 
 Political Morality. 
 
 Personal Morality. 
 
 ComiKiuumnbip. 
 
 Self. 
 
 Fraternity. 
 
 Selt-lndulgence. 
 
 Self-Discipline. 
 
 Self-Uevotion. 
 
 Pleasure a Virtue. 
 
 "Will a Virtue. 
 
 Conscience a Virtue. 
 
 Suffering Shunned. 
 
 Suffering Defied. 
 
 Suffering Sanctified. 
 
 Self- Seeking. 
 
 Self-Poised. 
 
 Self-Sacrificed. 
 
 Kecreation. 
 
 Reserve. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 Mistresses. 
 
 Concubines. 
 
 Wives. 
 
 A Pleased Man. 
 
 A Proud Man. 
 
 A Pious Man. 
 
 Death Ignored. 
 
 Death Despised. 
 
 Death Conquered. 
 
 Indiflerence. 
 
 Composure. 
 
 Hope. 
 
 Inclination. 
 
 Will. 
 
 Faith. 
 
 Humor. 
 
 Contempt. 
 
 Charity. 
 
 Politeness. 
 
 Courage. 
 
 Exultation. 
 
 Pleasure. 
 
 Dignity. 
 
 Salvation. 
 
 Indolence. 
 
 War. 
 
 Good Works. 
 
 Weakness. 
 
 Rigidity. 
 
 Beneficence. 
 
 Smiles. 
 
 Frowns. 
 
 Cheerfulness. 
 
 Sentiments. 
 
 Thought. 
 
 Convictions. 
 
 Submission. 
 
 Resolution. 
 
 Reformation. 
 
 Catullus. 
 
 Cato. 
 
 Christ. 
 
 The Individual. 
 
 The Nation. 
 
 The World. 
 
 Respectability. 
 
 Honor. 
 
 Conscience. 
 
 Legal License. 
 
 Legal Rules. 
 
 Legal Principles. 
 
 Carelessness. 
 
 Apathy. 
 
 Sympathy. 
 
 Its one idea of good. 
 
 Its one idea of good. 
 
 All ideas of good.
 
 152 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 future by the past, will most certainly break down 
 if anything" be lacking on its religions side. 
 Progress absorbs its strongest aliment, and re- 
 ceives its highest inspiration, not from any one sj's- 
 tem of opinions, but from religion. Early stoicism 
 in Rome shows the insufficiency of mere iutellect- 
 nalism. Men thhih one way and act another. Even 
 Seneca, the stoic philosopher, and Seneca, the 
 sycophant of Nero, are two different men. So are 
 Marcus Aurelius the stoic and Marcus Anrelius the 
 emperor. It would be too tedious to describe fully 
 the fearful demoralization of Kome, saddest of all 
 during the final days of philosophy. It was spec- 
 ulative wisdom without worship, and so failed to 
 preserve society. Man needs religious feeling as 
 Avell as moral thought. The line of this last ended 
 in both immorality and despotism. 
 
 And now, standing at the grave of the republic 
 and the cradle of the Roman empire, let us look 
 back to the founding of Rome, and around, and 
 let us see what has been gained by seven hundred 
 years of Patrician and Plebeian Avars, bloodshed, 
 and suffering. The philosophers have come and 
 spoken, and departed. The temples of the gods 
 have been built and deserted, millions of patriots 
 have laid down their lives for human freedom — the
 
 NON-RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION. 153 
 
 living son ceases to worship his dead father; the 
 hymns to the Penates are silent; the sacred fire 
 burns no longer upon the household altar; the 
 satirist sneers at the devotee, and, in the presence 
 of the despotic Caesar, man stands without faith 
 and without freedom. Gathering into himself all 
 power, this great conqueror did not pretend to rest 
 his dominion on the authority of the gods, like the 
 sacerdotal kings; nor to represent the popular will, 
 like the tribunes, or even to be bound to regard 
 the interests of his conquered millions. No sooner 
 had the Eoman people fully gained their freedom 
 than they lost it. What a conclusion to these long 
 lines of civilizing movements! Liberty, with man- 
 acles on her hands, shackles on her feet, and the 
 knife of the despotic butcher at her throat; the 
 philosophers a set of trifiers; the priests a horde 
 of imposters; woman a degraded minion! This is 
 but a sketch of a godless civilization bursting away 
 from the ancient religions, poor as they were. 
 
 From this the law of ancient civilization would 
 seem to be that the maximum of philosophy, as 
 we have said, coincided with the minimum of 
 morality. 31enial and moral ivisdom loitliout relig- 
 ious ivorsMp did not ineserve civilization. For one 
 thousand years, from the Law of the XII Tables
 
 154 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 to Justinian, a mere intellectual morality, freed 
 from religion and announced in the courts, con- 
 stituting the great Corpus Juris Civilis, had chance 
 in controling civilization and failed. The min- 
 imum of religion coincided with the maximum of 
 despotism. The lines of merely political govern- 
 ment, minus religion, did not lead to liberty; in a 
 word, that all the lines of Pagan faith, force, and 
 philosophy, as they led away from religious wor- 
 ship, led alike to slavery. As secular influences 
 increased, the sacred correlatively decreased; and 
 with this decrease the best side of civilization 
 broke down. As the popular religious worship 
 faded, force and philosophy were left without a 
 god, and culminated in the destruction of society. 
 "Whence was the remedy to come ? For society to 
 progress, it needed to be based on the three great 
 principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. 
 Must it vainly struggle for these in the future as 
 in the past?
 
 LECTURE II.— Continued. 
 THE FOURTH CORRELATION. 
 
 The Political Basis of Morality in the Meke Law of the State 
 culminating in the empire, was displaced, and the monotheistic 
 Basis, as taught by Jud^usm and Chkistianity, was Coerelatively 
 Substituted. (See Figure 7.) 
 
 Caesar dies. The Paf^an religions are without 
 moral iufluence. Philosophy has vainly said all it 
 liad to say, and promises no more. We have been 
 told that science rejects all outside builders, un- 
 
 FiG. 7. 
 Cesar. 
 
 The basis of morality 
 and law began ti 
 change from the 
 will of the State t( 
 the will of the One 
 God. 
 
 Constantine. 
 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 Other Christian Rul- 
 ers. 
 
 Priests became Civil- 
 ians. 
 
 Kings crowned hy 
 Popes. 
 
 iiSfik^E 
 
 Christ. 
 
 Marriage sacred. 
 
 Persecutions. 
 
 The Holy Empire. 
 
 924 to 1530 there were 
 172 Lord Chancel- 
 lors. 123 were 
 Bishops. 
 
 Christianity founded 
 nearly all the great 
 schools and colleges 
 of Europe. 
 
 1000 to 15U0. 
 
 Crusades. 
 
 SchoIa.«ticjsm. 
 
 Reformation. 
 1.517. 
 
 Laws and most emi- 
 nent men were 
 Christian. 
 
 Chki.stianity. 
 Ca?saris;Ti represents the State; and Christianity, Monotheism.
 
 156 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 foldiug from witliin whatever it essentially is. 
 Morality based on State command has had its full 
 unfolding. Its evolution has run through five 
 hundred years — increased, culminated, and failed. 
 It became evident in Csesar that State-built mor- 
 ality was not sufficient for that harmony which 
 is civilization. What now? Mankind must be 
 helped. The evolution of principles within must 
 be joined to the involution of correlative princi- 
 ples from without. 
 
 Christ is born. Morality, reversing its move- 
 ment, returns slowly from a political to a theistic 
 basis. '^ Man is taught that he is responsible to an 
 Infinite Being: to the High and Holy One that in- 
 habited eternity, of too pure eyes than to behold 
 iniquity, and one who Avill by no means clear the 
 guilty, all-knowing and almighty. To the will of 
 such a Being, human conduct was referred by the 
 new religion. The authority was not the will of 
 the State, nor the darkened wisdom of man, nor 
 his impassioned pleasures, nor his irregular habits, 
 nor the blind order of impersonal nature, but the 
 commands of the Universal Father. 
 
 At the founding of Rome, as we have said be- 
 
 {ii) As to tlio moral comlition of Home at this time, see Lecky, 
 K. M. 177; U Meri vale's Ivomc, VM 202.
 
 EELIGIOUS MORALITY. 157 
 
 fore, man's moral aud political responsibility was 
 supposed to be to the will of the ancestral gods. 
 During the republic it was held to be in the aggre- 
 gated will of all men, called the State. At the be- 
 ginning of the empire it was restricted to the 
 irresponsible will of the one man, Ciesar. Moral 
 chaos came. At the coming of (;hrist, all moral 
 responsibility, whether personal or political, was 
 held to relate to the will of the Jew's one super- 
 natural Jehovah, and to the Christian's one Re- 
 deemer, Christ. 
 
 It is not claimed that Judaism or Christianity 
 makes moral law, any more than that either made 
 gravitation. All that either or both could do was, 
 and is, to so awaken and direct thought, so sol- 
 emnize and consecrate the feelings, and so crys- 
 tallize maxims as to unveil the law already and ever 
 existing. That Christianity, as a successor to 
 Judaism, did vitally affect the law, we propose to 
 show. As the religious factors increased, the non- 
 religious factors correlatively decreased. Ex ne- 
 cessitate, if our argument be valid, religious moral- 
 ity must resume its control of human conduct, or 
 society must perish. Mere intellectual morality 
 or expediency-law has ever proved insufficient. 
 Prohibitory laws do not prevent wrong. Man
 
 158 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 hopes to escape or defy the power of liis fellow- 
 man. At best, lie heeds but partially even a su- 
 pernatural power, which he can not escape or defy. 
 Man's best life comes from being helped to do right 
 from principles within, not from prohibitory laws 
 that punish him for doing wrong. And so is man 
 that even religious morality is not universal. But 
 again and ever we repeat, intellectual knowledge is 
 not moral power. Good laws indicate evil times. 
 "We do not have bad morals that we may have good 
 laws; but even with good laws we have bad morals. 
 Let us distinguish Theism and Religion, which 
 we must consider, from Theology and Creeds, 
 which we are not to consider. "There are many 
 theologies, and but one religion."'' Man, in his 
 Aveakuess below, ever reaches up to superhuman 
 power above. Dependence is the one fact of the 
 universe. Man turns to the Infinite, and this is 
 Religion. Though like the blind, groping his un- 
 defined way, man may not see the full light, yet he 
 knows its life-giving presence by the warmth of 
 its beams. This absolute religion has had its 
 interpreters in all ages of the Avorld; men who, 
 with different degrees of mental illumination, have 
 attempted to give expression to the great religious
 
 ABSOLUTE RELIGION. 159 
 
 thought of tlie universe; prophets, apostles, and 
 martyrs, philosophers and poets." 
 
 As this religious bias is in each, and in all, each 
 man must reverence the reverence of every other, 
 whether he be Pagan, Jew, Christian, Mahom- 
 medan, or Buddhist. Religion is on man's spir- 
 itual side, and pertains to worship; theology is on 
 his intellectual side, and pertains to opinion; mor- 
 ality is on his ethical side, and pertains to con- 
 duct. Morality is religion in practice; religion is 
 morality in principle. Morality is religion toward 
 man; religion is morality toward all above man; 
 these act and re-act upon each other. 
 
 We all feel sure that we live, move, and have 
 our being in some superhuman, if not super- 
 natural, and eternal power. This feeling has 
 done a marvelous work in civilization, as one of 
 its mightiest forces. It has correlated, or come 
 and gone like every other force, in evolving the 
 unequal but progressive result. Each for himself 
 may name the supremacy which we all thus admit. 
 It is sufficient to realize that man is not at the top. 
 We are controled. The Inevitable is our master. 
 Everything controls each thing, and each thing 
 controls everything, or the whole each part, and 
 
 (a) See Upham, Absolute Religion, p. 12.
 
 160 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 each part the whole. The question is not whether 
 this or that religion is true, but Avhether religion 
 of some sort, entirely apart from its dogmas, is 
 an universal factor in the movements of civiliza- 
 tion. Prof. Tyndal says: "The religious feeling 
 is as much a verity as any other part of human 
 consciousness,"'' and speaks of "the immovable 
 basis of the religious sentiment in the emotional 
 nature of man." He says, " there are such things 
 ivoven into the texture of inmi as the feeling of awe, 
 reverence, and wonder." He also says: "Mr. 
 Buckle sought to detach intellectual achievement 
 from moral force. He gravely erred; for without 
 moral force to whip it into action the achieve- 
 ments of the intellect would be poor indeed."^ 
 It is not this religion or that — Jewish or Chris- 
 tian, Buddhistic or Mohammedan — but it is re- 
 ligion in its place in society, and as a fact 
 in history, and as a part of our psychological 
 texture, that we are compelled to consider. It 
 is as inseparable from ourselves and civilization 
 as heat is from light. Wliether Moses, Buddha, 
 Christ, or Mohammed propose it, religion is a 
 characteristic of man, and is identified with his 
 
 ill) I'oj). Sd., J.an., 187!>. 
 (0) lielfast Address.
 
 CIVILIZATIONS DIFFER. 161 
 
 moral life; and, iu one way or another, that moral 
 life is a part of bis recognized laws. In moral 
 movements correlation is exposed to religion as 
 well as everything else. In the Roman Republic 
 it correlated with or was absorbed in the political 
 force; and in Greece it gave place to the specu- 
 lative or philosophical force. Different civiliza- 
 tions have different views of man. The Indian 
 holds that the individual Avas a mere breath to be 
 reabsorbed; the Greek, that man was all right in 
 himself, and only needed development; the Chris- 
 tian, that in some way he has become all wrong, 
 and needs regeneration. These different psychol- 
 ogies aim at far different ends. The Buddhist 
 expects to be united with the divine, by losing his 
 individuality and being re-absorbed into the di- 
 vine. The Christian hopes to be re-united to the 
 divine, and retain his individuality. The Greek 
 expects to develop the nature he has; the Chris- 
 tian, the new nature of the Spirit. The Buddhist 
 expects to be obliterated, and gain annihilation; 
 the Christian, to efface a sinful nature, and gain 
 another with personal immortality. The Buddhist 
 expects to be immortal in an impersonal Nothing- 
 ness; the Greek to be immortal in himself as he 
 is developed by culture; and the Christian, to be
 
 162 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 personally immortal in the Christ who redeems 
 and purifies him. In China, the worship is of 
 dead ancestors, rather than of any Supreme God. 
 As to morality, they hold actions to be tuise or 
 nnivise, rather than right or wrong, guilty or inno- 
 cent. The act brings with it no moral responsi- 
 bility. The State aims to make people wise by 
 punishing for want of wisdom. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF MORALITY TO 
 BE CORRELATIVELY SUBSTITUTED FOR 
 THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE POLITICAL 
 BASIS. 
 
 :. CHRISTIANITY RECONSTRUCTS CIVILIZATION. 
 
 As a fact in histor}^ Christ came, and all human 
 things took a new departure. The religious life 
 was revived. Theism was again to be recognized 
 in human governments. 
 
 While secular force increased and centralized in 
 the emperor, a mightier parallel was by its side. 
 The old secular force and the new religious faith 
 went on together — the State and the Church — co- 
 workers in social progress. We must remember 
 that when the ancient State was added to the fam- 
 ily, it did not supplant it or its laws; and when 
 the Church was added to both, it supplemented 
 what was good in each, and corrected, as far as it
 
 GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY. 163 
 
 was i3ermitted, Avliat it tlionglit was inconipatible 
 with social atlvancement. 
 
 It is needless to recount the trials of Christian- 
 ity for the first three hundred years of its exist- 
 ence. Its ten persecutions, and its innumerable 
 martyrdoms, are familiar history to all. By Con- 
 stantine it acquired political protection. At the 
 fall of the civil Koman empire began a train of 
 events which resulted, through the conquests of 
 Charlemagne, in the more enduring and more ex- 
 tended dominion of the Holy Boman Empire. 
 From Constantine to Charlemagne it more and 
 more affected political institutions, sitting on 
 thrones, organizing courts, connecting conscience 
 with law, and correlating philosophy into theism. 
 It established itself, in its first movements, by its 
 theological creed, its moral maxims, its sacra- 
 mental worship, and the devoted lives of its disci- 
 ples. The ancestral worship of the patrician was 
 exclusively for the family, the teachings of the 
 ancient philosophers were for the learned few; but 
 the Christian religion carried its morality and its 
 comforts of hope and worship down to the poor 
 and obscure, and up to the distinguished and rich. 
 It stopped not in cities, but it went out into the 
 hedges and highways of the world; it lingered not
 
 164 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 even in Asia, its Lome, but it went abroad into all 
 the world, and delivered its moral ideas, and its 
 feelings of devotion, to every creature. The time 
 had come for a new, wider, more enduring force 
 in civilization and law than that of any religion or 
 philosophy ever before known; a force that had 
 man for its subject, and the world for its forum 
 and jurisdiction; a force more organized and prop- 
 agand than that of any previous intellectual or 
 moral movement; a conservative, remedial, aggres- 
 sive, hopeful, universal regenerator. Such was 
 Christianity. It brought the grand old Jewish law 
 and civilization down to an age and people when 
 these old legal and civil forces could join in the 
 moral care of the whole world, which, in their 
 former exclusiveness, they could not do; and it 
 added natural reason and the morality of an ac- 
 credited revelation to what was good in the an- 
 cient family and political law of the Greeks and 
 Romans. Solon had spoken mere human wisdom; 
 Moses, and now Christ, claimed to speak divine 
 wisdom. Mars Hill, Sinai, and Calvary became 
 the immovable thrones of eternal law. Christian- 
 ity reunited religion, morality, philosophy, and 
 law, Avhich Socrates, five hundred years before, 
 
 had divorced, and made the law of human re-
 
 CHRISTIANITY A CIVILIZER. 165 
 
 lations conservative by again teaching it as di- 
 vine. TIius Christianity, as a civilizer, apart from 
 Christianity as a theology, spread itself everywhere 
 as a new living force. Its morality had new mo- 
 tives, new development, and new application. It 
 claimed to be no merely human theory of conduct, 
 upon the low plane of human reason, confined to 
 the schools of a select few, and barren of practical 
 results; but it acted as if inspired by a supernal 
 power to realize and propagate itself, and claimed 
 to be a revelation. All ages have had their moral 
 schemes; but none, like Christianity, was ever 
 more self-helping, more all-helping, more simpli- 
 fied to common apprehension, and so earnestly and 
 universally disseminated over the earth. Its max- 
 ims were for all classes and all nations, and it 
 could, therefore, enter into the civilization of all 
 ages. It united the highest moral feeling with the 
 purest moral thought, and so unveiled essential 
 law. 
 
 From this general discussion of principles rep- 
 resented we deduce these conclusions: 1. That if 
 all sacred lines lead to bigotry, so all secular lines, 
 whether before or after Christ, tend to despotism. 
 Which has been the worst — under which evil has 
 society been the purest and happiest? Let us seek
 
 166 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 the best in all secular wisdom and the best in 
 every sacred worship. 2. No religious error can 
 resist secular force and philosophy, and no secular 
 force should be encouraged to resist religious truth. 
 3. Superstition and myths originate in the tradi- 
 tions of the past or the fears of the present, and 
 their movement is a shrinkage from the belief of the 
 many to that of the few. Christianity is claimed to 
 be a revelation from God, and its movement, like 
 that of all truth, has been an increment from the 
 belief of the few to that of the many. 4. The radi- 
 ations of Christianity carry the lines of modern 
 liberty, equality, and fraternity across all secular 
 lines, and modify them, while the lines of secular 
 force cross all the lines of ancient religion and 
 liberty, and destroy them. 5. The maximum of des- 
 potism was the minimum of Christianity, and the 
 maximum of Christianity is the minimum of des- 
 potism. Moral action comes from moral thought, 
 and moral thought is made effective by moral feel- 
 iug, and moral feeling by worship, but moral ac- 
 tion is no part of merely mental culture. Theodore 
 Parker, in his discourse on Eeligion, says: "The 
 religious and moral elements mutually involve 
 (sacli other in practice; neither can attain a perfect 
 development without the other; but they are yet
 
 CIVILIZATION DEFINED. 167 
 
 as distinct from eacli other as the faculties of sight 
 and hearing, or memory and imagination." 
 
 Socrates came and expanded moral thought, 
 but contracted religious if not moral feeling. 
 Christ came and enlightened moral thought and 
 expanded moral feeling. One had wisdom and no 
 worship; the other had both wisdom and worship. 
 The gauge of civilization is not so much in its 
 mental thought, or its moral thought, as in its 
 moral feeling. Feeling gives faith, and faith gives 
 feeling, and this is religion. Religion is sensitive, 
 and secular force represses it, and skeptical phil- 
 osophy chills it; but it triumphs by persecution, 
 and expires by neglect- 
 Let us see whether the civil or religious basis of 
 the principles of life has evoluted the most happi- 
 ness of life. That is best which saves most life, and 
 that is Avorst which destroys most life. Civilization 
 is man and society at their best; in other words, 
 the civilizing law is the law of harmony — it is evo- 
 lutions. It is a ladder with its two sides, the one 
 sacred and the other secular, parallel and con- 
 nected, yet meeting in infinity, bearing upward to- 
 ward an awaiting Power, the ascending generations 
 of men. Each nation has its own ladder — as of 
 utility in China and Germany, of meditation in
 
 168 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 India, of speculative tliouglifc in Greece, and of 
 love of glorj in Rome. 
 
 Christianity is part of spiritual equality and 
 tlie law of lielp — in otlier words, it is invo- 
 lution. On the sacred side of civilization, the 
 Church of Christ, with her ancient creed, her 
 deathless hopes, the consecrated zeal of her de- 
 voted missionaries and saintly martyrs, with a full 
 conviction of her divine permanence, and syn- 
 chronizing with all civil changes of eighteen 
 hundred years, contrasting with the throbbing 
 fragments of dismembered kingdoms and de- 
 mocracies, and the blood and carnage of innu- 
 merable revolutions, the Church abides — the con- 
 servative unity of divine order against popular 
 passion and chaos — an enlarging, ancient, and per- 
 petual power of supreme good. Christianity has 
 no nationality or political partialities. Its mission 
 is to men, and not to governments. It is restricted 
 to no class or race; but regarding the whole Avorld 
 as one country, with unabated zeal and exhaust- 
 less enterprise and cnergj', it seeks human im- 
 provement under all vicissitudes and under overj' 
 form of government that challenges the secular 
 control of man. The Church will erect her altars 
 beside every throne, and place her mitre by the
 
 SOCIAL FORCES CORRELATED. 169 
 
 side of every crown. Cousin Sfiysf " Cliristianitj 
 is the philosophy of the people." True civiliza- 
 tion is the work of some Power averaging a people 
 upward. 
 
 THE CORRELATION AND EQUILIBRIUM OP SECULAR AND 
 SACRED FORCES. 
 
 The secular side of this ladder of civilization is 
 broken by decay, hacked by the swords of patriots, 
 and of traitors of revolutions, and patched by the 
 carpentry of repeated and successive social experi- 
 ments. On this side are the fluctuations of civil 
 administrations — the chief frictions of society — 
 the compulsions, the prisons, the armies and 
 battles, and the wastage of life and treasure. For 
 eighteen hundred and seventy-nine years A.D. 
 1-1879, tliere have been in Italy: 
 
 On the Secular Side: On the Sacred Side: 
 Fifty Caesar Emperors (1^76) Were two hundred and fifty- 
 Seven Gothic Kings (476-563) nine Bishops or Popes of Eome, 
 Thirteen Lombard Kings ; elected from every class and 
 twenty-one Exarchs of Ravenna nation, ruling with remarkable 
 (553-752). unity of policy and permanence 
 French and German Empe- of order. Some of their deaths, 
 rors, Norman Dukes, Princes, though many of them were old 
 Saracens, Austrians and others, men when elevated to the Pri- 
 to the present time. Assassiua- macy, were conspicuous for mar- 
 tions were numerous. tyrdom for truth and holiness. 
 
 (a) 1 History of Philosophy, p. 47.
 
 170 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 During tlie one thousand years, from tlie estab- 
 lishment of the Eastern or Greek Empire, in 450, 
 to 1450, at its overthrow by the Turks, there have 
 been, 
 
 On the Secular Side: On the Sacred Side: 
 
 Seventy-eight Greek Empe- For same time, one hnndred 
 rors, with an average reign of and thirty Patriarchs of the 
 twelve years, ruling by force of Greek Church, with an average 
 arms. patriarchate of seven years, rul- 
 
 ing by force of religious, theol- 
 ogical, and ecclesiastical ideas. 
 Tlie administration of each was 
 long, considering the great age 
 at which so many of them en- 
 tered upon their consecrated 
 duties. 
 
 Taking another one thousand years of compari- 
 son, in Euglish history, from the beginning of 
 modern times, A. D. 837-1837, to the beginning of 
 the present reign, and there have been, 
 
 On the Secular Side: On tlie Sacred Side: 
 
 Sixty-four English Sover- In the same time, seventy- 
 eigns, witli an average reign of four Archbisliops of Canter- 
 fifteen years, ten changes of bury, with an average primacy 
 dynasties, and eleven unnatural of thirteen years, and three 
 deaths. unnatui'al deaths. Here, too, 
 
 were many old men, to reduce 
 the average length of service. 
 
 But the parallelism is rather between Christian- 
 ity as a great unit of faith and power in the Avorld, 
 whether administered by Eoman Pope, Greek Pa-
 
 SECULAR WASTAGE. 171 
 
 triarcli, or Anglican Arclibishop, and the various 
 and changing nationalities of civil order, rather 
 than a comparison of any one branch of the uni- 
 versal church with any one civil order of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 WASTAGE ON THE SECULAR SIDE. 
 
 On the secular side is almost all the destructive- 
 ness of civilization. As, in these days of statistics, 
 they have ceased to be pedantic, I will state that 
 it is said that Xerxes left over five million human 
 skeletons on the soil of Greece. Alexander scat- 
 tered them over the eastern world by millions. 
 Who can estimate the millions slain by Attila, 
 Alaric, Genseric, and Odoacer? Zenghis Khan, 
 the Tartar, captured ninety cities, and slew four- 
 teen millions of men; and from the Caspian to the 
 Indus, ruined a tract of country of many hundred 
 miles, which was adorned with the habitations and 
 labors of mankind, and in four years, says Gibbon, 
 committed ravages that five hundred years have 
 not been sufficient to repair. Timour, one hun- 
 dred and seventy years after, extended and inten- 
 sified these horrors. Gibbon says that, "though 
 • the petty tyrants of Persia, whom he conquered, 
 might afflict their subjects, whole nations were 
 crushed under the footsteps of the monster. The
 
 172 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 ground whicli had been occupied by flourishing 
 cities was often marked by his abominable tro- 
 phies, by cohimns and pyramids of human heads. 
 Astracan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Alep- 
 po, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand 
 others, were sacked, burnt, or utterly destroyed, 
 in his presence, and by his troops; and the victims 
 of his ambitious cruelty might be counted by mill- 
 ions." In eight years, C?esar fought five hundred 
 battles, captured two millions of men, thousands 
 upon thousands of whom died in captivity, and 
 slew one million two hundred thousand; twenty- 
 two thousand of the inhabitants of Cordova he 
 put to death for adhering to Pompey, in battle. 
 Pompey conquered fifteen kingdoms, and took 
 eight hundred cities. Charlemagne made fifty- 
 three campaigns, and slew hundreds of thousands. 
 Napoleon took twenty-one cities, fought forty-seven 
 battles, "and caused the death of five million men 
 from thirty years old to middle age, and who had, 
 therefore, still thirty-seven years each to live, ac- 
 cording to the calculated probability and the laws 
 of life. He destroyed, therefore, one hundred and 
 eighty-five millions of years of life," if they all had 
 boon the life of one man.
 
 WHAT WAR COSTS. 173 
 
 England, alone, in one hiin- During these one hundred and 
 
 dred and twenty-seven years, twenty-seven years, the Church, 
 
 from 1688-1815, the date of in her conservative and peaceful 
 
 the downfall of Napoleon, spent works, was repairing this enor- 
 
 sixty-five years in secular war, mous secular wastage to civil- 
 
 and only sixty-two in peace, ization by establishing, in addi- 
 
 expending ten billions one hun- tion to the existing ten great 
 
 dred and fifteen millions of dol- endowed schools or universities, 
 
 lars, and sacrificing, in the last nearly two liundred other im- 
 
 war alone with Napoleon, on all portant educational institutions, 
 sides, nearly a million and a 
 quarter of lives. 
 
 A great English statesman (Burke) estimates 
 that hitherto there have been sacrificed in battles 
 and their immediate consequences, the horrid ag- 
 gregate of thirty-six billions of human lives, 
 which, if extended to the allotted age of man, 
 would have been one trillion three hundred and 
 thirty-two billions of years of human lives — the 
 number of individuals sacrificed being about 
 thirty-six times as many peoj^le as are now in the 
 world. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate the value of the 
 property wasted by the sacking and burning of 
 villages and cities, the destruction of ships and 
 commerce, the ruins of splendid capitals of wealth 
 and art in the revolutions of empires, and their 
 repeated conquests and re-conquests of each other 
 in all the ages of secular movements, leading up
 
 174 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 so-called liiiman progress to this hour. God's 
 memory only knows tlie indescribable aggregate of 
 tlie siglis, tears, blood, groans, and graves on this 
 secular side of civilization. 
 
 Yoltaire says that it is war alone that impover- 
 ishes nations. 
 
 According to history, Julius Cfcsar, upon his 
 conquest of Gaul, Africa, Egypt, and Pontus, is 
 said at one time to have had carried before him in 
 his triumph, as spoils of war, vessels of gold and 
 silver, computed by modern authors to be equal in 
 value to twelve millions of pounds sterling, and 
 brought into the Roman treasury, besides one 
 thousand eight hundred and twenty-two pounds of 
 gold, diamonds of enormous weight. 
 
 WASTAGE ON THE SACRED SIDE. 
 
 On the sacred side of civilization, the destruc- 
 tion of life and property, compared with those on 
 the secular side, is as nothing. 
 
 From the secular side deduct, for the wastage 
 on the sacred side, any numbers that the utmost 
 stretch of the imagination would state as probable 
 (Voltaire's estimate is ten millions), say two mill- 
 ions for the Crusades, one million, if you choose, 
 for the Inquisition, and six millions for the Thirty-
 
 TRUE CHRISTIANITY. 175 
 
 years' War (Sclierr, as cited by Hlttell, says eleven 
 millions five hundred thousand) — and these esti- 
 mates are thought to he enormous — and still these 
 nine millions or fourteen millions are as nothing to 
 the thirty-six billions on the other side. For every 
 one killed through the perversion of religion, there 
 have been four thousand slain for the secular wick- 
 edness and energies of civilization. 
 
 The office of Christianity is to bind up wounds, 
 not make them; to receive blows, not give them; 
 to leave its benediction on graves, not dig them. 
 Its wars and bloodsheds have been the mournful 
 fruits of secular perversions, when abused and de- 
 bauched by unchristian passions. In the wars in 
 the days of Christianity, religion has been the 
 pretext, not the real cause. All the true passions 
 of Christianity are benign and passive, not bitter 
 and aggressive. All earthliness destroys it. It 
 has suffered persecutions and martyrdoms, and 
 has been pre-eminently on the defensive. Its 
 prophets have been stoned, sawn asunder, and 
 burned; its Teacher crucified; its disciples hated, 
 impoverished, slain by every device that imagina- 
 tion can picture. The passions, the pleasures, 
 the pursuits of the world have conflicted with it; 
 and yet, in the main, its history has been one of
 
 176 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 beneficence. Its greatest sliame lias been its per- 
 secution of the Jews. It is yet to be seen what 
 atonement the immutable laws will evolve. When 
 smitten on the one cheek, it has generally turned 
 the other. 
 
 This religion, though far short of its wish or 
 ability, has done all the good a wicked world 
 would let it do, and far more than any other 
 agency thus opposed, as it has been, by national 
 wars, secular engrossments, and personal corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 It has been asked, why did not Christianity, 
 with its continuity and moral conservatism, avert 
 national dissolutions and chaos? It preserved all 
 that was worth preserving, or all that it was per- 
 mitted to preserve. For three hundred years it 
 had first to preserve itself. 
 
 It may be asked, by way of reply, why did not 
 the earthly secular influences save them, if religion 
 be unnecessary to the world ? Why do not secular 
 laws, even now, keep the peace of the world and 
 secure personal safety? The fault is not in public 
 laws. Why do not philosophers, poets, orators, 
 and scientists enlighten more people? The answer 
 is, because they are not known to the multitudes; 
 and if they were known, they offer no religion to
 
 BUEKE ON SECULAR WARS. 177 
 
 the conscience and feelings of man, and so no self- 
 restraining power. TLe masses are ignorant, and 
 will ever remain so. We would suppose that hu- 
 manity had Lied enough to stop war. But each 
 generation, not sharing in the experience of the 
 past, must try war for itself. 
 
 The cause why the past does not more improve 
 the present is in ourselves. But in all fairness, it 
 may be said that secular influences have failed far 
 more than the sacred. Divine wisdom says, "Ye 
 will not come unto me that ye might have life." 
 " Why will ye die ?" 
 
 As a rule, we repeat that the movements on the 
 sacred side have been conservative : soothing hu- 
 man passions, instructing the savage nature of 
 man, and training it in the habits of morality and 
 worship. Burke says: "If pretended revelations 
 have caused wars where they were opposed, and 
 slavery where they were received, the pretended 
 wise inventions of politicians have done the same. 
 But the slavery has been much heavier and the 
 wars far more bloody, and both more universal by 
 many degrees. Show me any one Avickedness 
 produced by the wickedness of theologians, and 
 I will show you a hundred resulting from the 
 ambition and villainy of conquerors and states-
 
 178 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 men. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I 
 will undertake to show you a hundred for one in 
 political laws and institutions." Secular forces, 
 like the spots on the leopard, or the stripes on the 
 tiger, differ with every race, tribe, and age. But 
 Christianity, the great sacred force, so far as we 
 are concerned, like the diffusive light of the sun, 
 is one. 
 
 It is evident that civilization derives a very dif- 
 ferent support respectively from these secular and 
 sacred sides. On the sacred side are found the 
 strength of exalted emotion and refined senti- 
 ments, persistence of mission and zeal, unity of 
 great remedial, helpful, leading ideas and doc- 
 trines, and universality of application to all na- 
 tions, tongues, and eras. 
 
 2. THE CORRELATION OF MORALITY FROM THE STATE BASIS TO 
 THE MONOTHEISTIC, PARTICULARLY AS SEEN IN CHRISTIAN- 
 ITY, APPEARS IN THE GROWTH OF LAW. 
 
 Law, divorced from religious morals, falls off 
 into a system of mere logic, and morals, divorced 
 from religion of some kind, gradually lapses into 
 mere theory. When Christianity began to affect 
 the law, the law retained all its past logical per- 
 fection for the rule, and added the elements of the 
 new religion for its ]n-inciples. The practical part
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND LAW. 179 
 
 was from man, the essential was accredited to a 
 Power above man. 
 
 It is impossible to avoid the consideration of 
 Cliristiauity in its relation to the laAvs of Christen- 
 dom. Misunderstanding what Sir Matthew Hale 
 meant in saying that "Christianity is parcel of the 
 laws of England," and Lord Mansfield's subsequent 
 modification, that "the essential principles of re- 
 vealed religion are part of the Common Law," 
 there has been an overstrained denial of what they 
 are supposed to have dechired. Laws reflect pub- 
 lic opinion, and if there be Christianity in that, 
 there is something of Christianity in the law. 
 Late writers seem to have written under the im- 
 pression that the admission that Christianity is a 
 part of the law of the land must lead to the legal 
 adoption of a Christian worship by the State; but 
 a Christian ritual by the State is not necessary to 
 the identification of Cliristiauity with the common 
 law of the land. It must be evident to all readers 
 of history that the prevailing thought of a people 
 shapes its public polity. All law springs from 
 popular beliefs. This has been so in all ages, and 
 must ever so continue. The deepest interests of a 
 people inspire its laws — and this is their religion. 
 The people who first came to tljis continent were
 
 180 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 most devout, even fanatical Christians. With the 
 Puritans of New Enghancl, the disciplinary laws of 
 the church were the municipal laws. They came to 
 the wilderness of America expressly to enjoy re- 
 ligious freedom — not freedom from religion, but 
 freedom in it. It was deep religious feelings and 
 convictions that expatriated them from former 
 homes; it was the power of these feelings that sus- 
 tained them under their severe trials, and the tone, 
 and spirit, and sanction of their views of Chris- 
 tianity entered into and characterized all their laws. 
 They professed to prefer no one sect or denom- 
 ination, but the settlers of this continent and the 
 institutors of our laws were both intolerant and 
 practically denied religious equality as to other 
 religions. Out of this history, and by people 
 moved by zealous feelings and convictions, come 
 our laws. These laws are neither Mohammedan, 
 Brahminical, nor Jewish, beyond what the Chris- 
 tian Church, in all its past ages, allowed them to 
 be. Our domestic relations, our legal holidays, 
 the mental and moral habits of the people, the 
 conscientious element of equity law, the universal 
 and legal prohibition of Mormon polygamy, and 
 more that might be mentioned, show that the 
 spirit of Christianity, if not its precepts, as a great
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND LAW. 181 
 
 religion of the world, are a part of, and, indeed, 
 saturate the whole of our Common Law. Even the 
 adopted Civil Law is filtered through fifteen cen- 
 turies of ecclesiastical life. Indeed, our civiliza- 
 tion is Christianity largely organized into political 
 and social life. The most of the history of this 
 people is under it; at the altar, at the font, at the 
 grave — all is Christian. While the laws may nom- 
 inally tolerate every religion, it is useless to deny 
 that practically, in the inevitable prejudices of the 
 people, no other than the Christian religion is at 
 home in America, or under any European civiliza- 
 tion. Christianity and progress, in our thoughts, 
 are one. The cause enters into its effects; and so 
 far as Christianity, from its own essential life, has 
 helped the law to principles of right unknown to it 
 before, so far it is a part of the law."" Christianity, 
 
 {a) See Cooley's Constitutional Limitation, p. 472; Whealon v. 
 Peters, 8 Pet. 591; Sedgwick on the Construction of Statutory 
 and Constitutional Law, p. 14; Cooley on Constitutional Limita- 
 tions, 4/2; 3 Wharton's American Criminal Law, p. 188; Vidal 
 V. G/ranVs Executors, 2 How. 127; Updeyraph v. The Common- 
 roealth, 11 Sergeant & liawle, 394; The People v. Buggies, 8 John- 
 ston R. 290; The Vomwonwealth v. Kneeland, 20 Pick. 20G; The 
 State V. Chandler, 2 Har. 553; Bloom v. Richards, 2 Ohio, 387; ■ 
 McGutrick v. Wasson, 4 Ohio, 571; The Board of Education of 
 Cincinnati v. Minor et al, 23 Ohio, 246; Andreiv v. The N. Y. 
 Bible and Prayer Book Society, 4 Sandf. Sup. Ct. Rep. ISO; Don- 
 ahoe V. Richards, 38 Me. 379; Pomeroy, Introduction to Munic-
 
 182 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 then, historically, is as much a part of the law of 
 the land as the suu is of the wheat in the field, or 
 of the rose in the garden, or of the rainbow in the 
 sky that glorifies the expiring storm. 
 
 All law of the lawyer is but the collective opin- 
 ions and will of the public, first seen in customs, 
 manners, and social habits, duly expressed; and if 
 that be Christian, the law is Christian; if that 
 mind be Mohammedan, the law is Mohammedan; if 
 Buddhistic, the law is Buddhistic. Universal jus- 
 tice becomes law, so far as national idiosyncracies 
 appropriate and adapt it to their social life. So 
 that the question is not so much whether Chris- 
 tianity be a part of the Common Law as that the 
 law, for its own permanence, be approved by 
 Christianity, if Christianity be the popular faith. 
 Law exists so long as public opinion permits it to 
 exist. The public opinion of this country is Chris- 
 tian opinion; therefore, law lives or dies at the 
 bidding of Christianity, and not Christianity at the 
 bidding of the law. If the Legislature should enact, 
 or the Court should enunciate as law, anything that 
 gravely wounded the Christian sentiment of the 
 
 ipal Law, 392. It may be said generally that the above authori- 
 ties lay down tlie rule tliat all religions have e(|ual rights before 
 tlic law, but have they contributed ecjually to its principles ?
 
 LAW AND PUBLIC OriNION. - 183 
 
 laud, tliousauds upon thousands of Christian pul- 
 pits, presses, books, and organizations would at 
 once and persistently assail, if not destroy it. The 
 strongest feelings of the majority of the people 
 would cry out against its existence. Suppose all 
 marriages, in any form, were deemed no longer 
 necessary; or husbands and wives could divorce 
 themselves at pleasure; or there was permitted a 
 plurality of husbands and wdves : or a promiscuous 
 living of men and w^omen together — how long do 
 you suppose such a law would stand? With a 
 Christianized public opinion, you must have Chris- 
 tian laws, or laws which Christianity does not op- 
 pose. Feudalism went down before the public 
 Christian opinion of the centuries. So did polyg- 
 amy, and slavery, and the degradation of woman. 
 Keligion, above all else, makes public opinion; 
 and public opinion, with the sword behind it, an- 
 nounces law. The relation, of religion and law is 
 not that luldch the law, as an abstract entity, may 
 choose of itself to give to religion, hut -precisely that 
 lohich religion, as the rnost potential form of pnhlic 
 opinion, may choose to require or permit the law to he. 
 The general effort, of late, seems to be to show 
 that our municipal law takes only that notice of 
 Christianity which it takes of any other religion.
 
 184: THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 But the law notices Christianity as it notices no 
 other religion, because the prevailing public senti- 
 ment, which is always the law-maker, requires it. 
 It notices Christianity all that Christianity re- 
 quires. Christianity neither asks nor permits — nor 
 could it endure — the State to issue legal formulas 
 of law about doctrine or discipline. But Chris- 
 tianity extends its help to the law, while asking 
 none in return. The law has the holy days of the 
 Christian religion and none of any other. Chris- 
 tianity moulds the general morality of society, 
 gives the sanction to legal oaths; by prayers on 
 public legal occasions, by refusing the right of 
 Governors to return bills to the Legislature on 
 Sunday, by forbidding Courts to transact business 
 on Sunday, the law commits itself to Christianity. 
 It is idle to talk about Sunday as a mere munici- 
 pal appointment of a secular rest. Christianity 
 struggles for the sanctity of this day, because it is 
 a sacred day. The Supreme Court of Ohio, un- 
 der the pressure of anti-Christian sentiment, has 
 been called upon frequently, and has expressed 
 quite sharply, opinions adverse to the former 
 maxim, that Christianity is a part of the law of 
 the land. It says: "The only foundation, or 
 rather excuse, for the proposition that Christian-
 
 LAW AND rUBLIC OriNION. 185 
 
 ity is a part of tlie law of this country, is the fact 
 that it is a Christian country, and that its Consti- 
 tution and laws are made by a Christian people." 
 That foundation or excuse, it would seem, is quite 
 sufficient. "A Christian country" and "a Chris- 
 tian people" might well be supposed to have 
 Christian laws. The Court further says: "If 
 Christianity is a law of the State, like every law, 
 it must have a sanction. Adequate penalties must 
 be provided to enforce obedience to all its require- 
 ments and precepts." And it has many of these 
 sanctions in its marital and other relations; but 
 laws may have principles without special sanc- 
 tions. The maxim is not that "Christianity is 
 a law of the State," but that "Christianity is a 
 part of the Common Law." If Christianity, in- 
 cludiug the moral law of Moses, is not a law of 
 the State, as public opinion it makes the laws 
 of the State. The Common Law of a State is 
 the common moral sense of the State. Chris- 
 tianity, as teacher of the common moral senti- 
 ments of the people, is, certainly, "a part of the 
 Common Law of the people." All laws have both 
 a rule and a reason, or principle of the rule. 
 Christianity, or its institutions, is the principle of 
 our laws — or rather the laws do not venture to con-
 
 186 THE UNITY OP LAW. 
 
 flict with Christianity. Principles need no sanc- 
 tions or penalties. The people, animated by these 
 Christian principles, have, through the department 
 to which they delegated legislative power, enacted 
 such rules, called laws, as they saw fit for the 
 public peace and other ends of civil government; 
 but they neither needed, nor, in the numerous de- 
 nominational specialties of Christianity, would 
 they ask, for any special legislative sanction for 
 their religion. The question is not Avhether there 
 is or is not any sanction for whatever of Christian- 
 ity there may be in the common law; nor whether 
 other religions are also protected; nor whether the 
 law will go further in the recognition of Chris- 
 tianity than to keep the peace in matters concern- 
 ing it; bat are not the distinctive principles of 
 Christianity ingrained in the moral basis of the 
 common law? Did not Christian Prelates orig- 
 inate, and, for over five hundred years, preside in 
 the courts of equity '? Has not Christianity done 
 more for the underlying moral principles of the 
 law than any other religion, and has it a moral 
 basis from any other source not approved by 
 Christianity in its long connection with law ? 
 
 Whore religions arc mainly preceptive, these re- 
 ligions can be put into the shape of municipal law
 
 LAW AS CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 187 
 
 with penal sanctions; but as Christianity offers 
 itself as a religion of principles, rather than pre- 
 cepts, a spiritual power in individuals, rather than 
 a something for the civil body of the State — an in- 
 fluence over the inner feelings, a regulation of the 
 devotions, with a vision ever turned toward the 
 eternal — it is evident that, to make it preceptive 
 as law, would be to destroy it. There is a spirit 
 of love in it that no State could enforce by law. 
 But to say that there is no Christianity in our 
 common law is to say that there can be a control- 
 ling power without an influence, or a body without 
 a soul, and a rule without a principle — a child with- 
 out a father. 
 
 But it by no means follows that because Chris- 
 tianity did not ask to be legalized by its creature, 
 the law, here, as in some other countries, it is no 
 part of our common law. All judge-made law is 
 nothing but the announcement, in the absence of 
 statute law, of what the Court understands to be 
 the well-ascertained and settled common moral 
 ideas of the public at the time. Certainly, no, ju- 
 dicial decision could stand the ordeal of public 
 condemnation, that should conflict with any settled 
 public morality. Christianity is a great promoter 
 of moral principles, "lying behind and above"
 
 188 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 the common law. It is not a law of the State, 
 needing a special sanction ; but as yellow is a part 
 of all rays of white light, so Christianity is 
 diffused all through the best institutions and 
 laws of our civilization. It not only makes laws 
 for those Avho will not be governed without law, 
 but, like the moralities of all ages and religions, 
 it gives principles to those who wish and endeavor 
 to live Justly without written law.*^ 
 
 (a) Christianity and the Civil Law in England. 
 Hale, Hist. C. L., 139, says: "The growth of 
 Christianity in this Kingdom, and the reception 
 of learned men from other parts, and especially 
 from Home, aud the credit that they obtained 
 here, might reasonably introduce some new laws, 
 and antiquate or abrogate some old ones that seem 
 less consistent with Christian doctrine. And by 
 this means were introduced not only some of the 
 judicial laws of the Jews, but also some points re- 
 lating to, or bordering upon, or derived from the 
 canon or civil laws, as may be seen in those laws 
 of the ancient Kings, Una, Alfred, Cannutus, etc., 
 collected by Lombard." C. J. Holt, 12 Mod., E. 
 482, says: "The laws of all nations are doubtless 
 raised out of the ruins of the civil law, from which, 
 
 {(i) Sec Albany Law Joiinial, May 20, 1870.
 
 STOICISM AND LAW. 189 
 
 it must be owned, tlio principles of our own law 
 fire borrowed in many things." 
 
 With respect to this civil law it is well to re- 
 mark here that no one knows — though many and 
 learned efforts have been made to ascertain — what 
 the text of the civil law writers originally was; for 
 each successive writer, commentator, or codifier, 
 corrupted its integrity and adapted it to his own 
 time. 
 
 It is evident that law, like everything else, 
 comes out of its antecedents and its environment, 
 and that the mental and moral ideas most preva- 
 lent in the popular mind, or most controlling with 
 the law-maker, must enter into the spirit and form 
 of the law he makes. Professor Maine contends, 
 as Ave have seen, that stoicism — or living accord- 
 ing to nature — pervades and characterizes the 
 whole body of civil law, because the civilians 
 were stoics. For the same reason, it would seem, 
 and indeed it is admitted, that Christianity is also 
 a part of the vitality and essence of common law, 
 because its early legislators and judges were Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 Saunders in his introduction to Justinian, says: 
 "The influence of Christianity on Koman law was 
 partly direct and partly indirect. The establishment
 
 190 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 of abierarcliical rank, the power granted to religions 
 corporations to Lold property, the distinction be- 
 tween Christians and heretics, affecting the civil 
 position of the latter, the creation of Episcopal 
 courts, and many other similar innovations, give 
 rise to direct specific changes in the law. But its 
 influence is even more remarkable in the changes 
 which were suggested by its spirit, rather than in- 
 troduced as a necessary part of its system. To 
 the communit}' which citizenship bound together, 
 succeeded another, bound by the common ties of 
 religion. The tendency of the change Avas to re- 
 move the barriers which had formed a part of the 
 older condition of society. If we compare the 
 Institutes of Justinian, A.D. 540, with those of 
 Gains, A.D. 130, we find changes in the law of 
 marriage, in that of succession, and in many other 
 branches of the law, in which it is not difficult to 
 recognize the spirit of humanity and reverence for 
 natural ties which Christianity had inspired. The 
 disposition to get rid of many of the more pecul- 
 iar features of the old Eoman law, observable in 
 the later legislation, was partly, indeed, the fruit 
 of secular causes, l)ut it Avas also, in a great meas- 
 ure, due to the alteration in thought and feeling 
 U) wliich the new rolitrion had i^ivon birth."
 
 CANON LAW. 191 
 
 « 
 
 Gibbon says that Tribonian, by order of Jus- 
 tinian, altered the text of the authors from whom 
 he made extracts, into "the words and ideas of his 
 servile reign;" and this was, at least, nominally 
 Christian. 
 
 (&) Christianity through the Canon Laio. In 
 speaking of the jurisprudence of the Court of 
 Chancery, Maine says, A. L. 42: "The early Ec- 
 clesiastical Chancellors contributed to it, from the 
 Canon Law, many of the principles which lie 
 deepest in its structure." Hadley, introduction, 
 B. L., 45, says: "The Church, at an early period, 
 claimed and secured the right of jurisdiction in 
 cases where her own interests were involved, or 
 those of her ministers. The Ecclesiastical Courts 
 had cognizance of offenses committed against cler- 
 gymen (or alleged to have been committed by 
 clergymen), and of all encroachments, real or sup- 
 posed, on the property rights of the Church. But 
 their jurisdiction took a wider range. On the 
 ground that marriage was a sacrament, it was ex- 
 tended to matrimonial law, to cases of divorce, 
 alimony, and the like. From the connection of 
 wills or testaments with death — the solemn transi- 
 tion to a spiritual world — it was extended to tes-
 
 192 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 taiuentary law, to the proof and execution of wills, 
 and even to the administration of properties whose 
 owners died without wills. To all these cases the 
 ecclesiastical courts applied their own ecclesiastical 
 or common law." This was little else than the 
 opinions of the jurisconsults of the Koman Empire, 
 or civil law, run through the mould of thought of 
 the Priests, Bishops, Popes, and scholars of the 
 Roman Church, applied to both secular and eccle- 
 siastical matters. Under their jurisdiction, such 
 as, in addition to cases already mentioned, was the 
 legitimacy of children born out of lawful wedlock, 
 and the whole doctrine respecting the distinctions 
 of j'us ad rem and jus in re, of oaths and usury. ^ 
 
 Law became the favorite study of Churchmen. 
 Skillfully adapting the Koman Jurisprudence to 
 their purposes, they framed a code which, tainted 
 as it was by the vices of those to whom it owed its 
 origin, is, nevertheless, by the example which it 
 furnished to the rude nations among whom it was 
 promulgated, a most important era in the intel- 
 lectual history of the species. "^ 
 
 (c) Chrislianity and Feudalism. The first polit- 
 
 (a) 2 Col(iiihon on Roman Civil Law, Tit. IX, § 1003. 
 (I>) I'liii. and i'rac. of Juris., riiilluiorc, 12.
 
 FEUDALISM AND LAW. 193 
 
 ical unity begins in the force of some man of strong 
 will, booted and spurred, riding down liumanity 
 around Lim. Such men unify their clans, and 
 form kingdoms; and kingdoms form empires. But 
 when political centralism forms the mass, the man 
 becomes nothing, and power becomes impersonal, 
 with neither sympathy nor conscience. Such it 
 was everywhere in the eleventh century, when Wil- 
 liam the Norman conquered Saxon England, and, 
 as a pall over a grave, spread over the island his 
 one feudal despotism. This was the most savage 
 unification that ever stamped the soul out of the 
 individual man. 
 
 But as man is most truly man when there is 
 nothing above him but God, and most truly free 
 when free from within; as the good ever pursues 
 and subdues the evil of the world; as the law of 
 self-preservation preserves all that is worth pre- 
 serving; as destructive combinations ever beget 
 conservative combinations; and as grains of sand 
 scattered upon glass come together at the vibration 
 of music, so did the sufferings and religious sym- 
 pathies of the Middle Ages unify the people at the 
 beckoning of the Church, and form an omnipresent 
 brotherhood, as free in Christ as their limited cul- 
 ture would permit.
 
 194: THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 The Church had no struggle for the right of 
 alienation of land under the Saxons, though a kind 
 of feudalism had partially crept in Britain before 
 the time of the Normans; but at the Conquest 
 feudalism was fully established, and the right of 
 alienation by will was entirely taken away, aud so 
 remained, until the reign of Henry VIII. 
 
 Feudalism, as we have said before, was a vast, 
 indeed, universal system of military despotism, and 
 lands were held upon condition of giving military 
 service for their use. Only military leaders were 
 free. Even among these, there was a series of 
 ranks and dependencies. In fact, at the Norman 
 Conquest, it may be said that man, in secular 
 affairs, had ceased to have any individual impor- 
 tance, and personal freedom was not known on the 
 earth. All the best aspirations of human nature 
 were subordinated to arbitrary force. 
 
 The brutality of this system is beyond descrip- 
 tion. The despots were unlettered, coarse, cruel 
 masters. Ouo power alone remained sufficiently 
 strong to grapple with the monster, and renew the 
 liberties and civilization of the world — that of 
 Cliiisliaiiit)' and the cliurcli. This, providentially, 
 was everywhere. When the civil powers of Home
 
 FEUDALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 195 
 
 broke np, Cliristianity and tlie Clinrcli remained 
 entire. Where human nature was most degraded 
 and most oppressed, there these were with God's 
 commission to emancipate and elevate. All were 
 free under the Saxons; under the Normans, all but, 
 the church were unresisting slaves. Whether it 
 was the instinct of self-preservation or the active 
 energies of its liberating principles, the Church, 
 under Norman England, was the champion of both 
 personal and national liberty. By degrees it broke 
 every chain. It took the lowly son of the serf, as 
 Becket and Wolsey, from military bondage, ele- 
 vated their mitres above the baronial crown, and 
 clothed him with the power of sacred orders, with 
 baronial crowns beneath his unsandaled feet.*^ It 
 raised woman as she crouched at the foot of her 
 savage lord, and recognized her rights, and sancti- 
 fied her worth. It enlightened the judge of secular 
 courts, and taught him law. 
 
 The issue between Feudalism and Christianity 
 was direct, constant, and utterly irreconcilable. 
 Feudalism regarded man as a mere military force, 
 a chattel, a slave, a creature to serve another. In 
 the Christian scheme, he was an immortal being, 
 
 ((() Fhil., ante, 192.
 
 196 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 responsible to God. In these two systems, the 
 controlling ideas and influences were: 
 
 Under Christianity. 
 
 Under Feudalism. 
 
 Christ. 
 
 Masters. 
 
 Man. 
 
 Serfs. 
 
 Sin. 
 
 Wars. 
 
 RedemiJtioii. 
 
 Poverty. 
 
 The Church. 
 
 Ignorance. 
 
 Education. 
 
 Degradation. 
 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 Despair. 
 
 Liberty. 
 
 
 Progress. 
 
 
 The most glorious struggle of Christianity has 
 been to dissolve and dissipate, by enlightenment, 
 this colossal, all-absorbing, all-crushing, feudal 
 system of brute force, and form and mould 
 society upon the principles of regulated liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity. 
 
 As to real property, feudalism locked up its 
 alienation, and held the country but as one vast 
 military camp. But when the military necessities 
 fell off, there was no longer any reason for the 
 system, and it ought to have been changed to suit 
 the real condition of the world and the growing 
 interests of commerce. But by whom and how 
 could this be done? Among the most eftective 
 agencies were the Church, and the court it estab-
 
 LAWS FKOM CHRISTIANITY. 197 
 
 lislied. The Christian Clmrcli created tlie court of 
 chancery, and for six hundred years supplied it 
 with chancellors, only one of whom was success- 
 fully impeached. Several times, when laymen were 
 appointed to the wool-sack, so corrupt or incom- 
 petent were they, that the crown was forced to re- 
 turn to the clergy for the chancellor. It is simply 
 impossible, without giving the whole history of the 
 common law of England, to state anything like its 
 debt to the Church. The Church shaped, if it did 
 not create, the law of uses;'* it protected woman 
 in the sacredness of her marriage, restrained di- 
 vorce, secured her right of dower and as distrib- 
 utee in her deceased husband's personal estate; 
 protected minor children, lunatics, and the imbe- 
 cile; watched over the conscientiousness of con- 
 tracts; mitigated the severity of punishments; put 
 down the trial by battle; wrote Magna Charta, 
 and almost every important early statute. If 
 the opportunity to do all this by the Church was 
 accidental, the Church was true to the opportunity. 
 As your religion, so is your law; and as your law, 
 so is your civilization. 
 
 (d) Chrlsliamty is for all nations. As has been 
 said, Christianity is not with governments as such. 
 
 (a) Digby Hist. Real Law, 2G8.
 
 198 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 It does not propose to tear down or build up any. 
 Its work is with man in liis earthly career, and 
 fronting an eternal destin}-. The soul of an Afri- 
 can is as dear to it as that of the mightiest em- 
 peror of the world. It comes not to call the 
 righteous, but sinners to repentance. It invites 
 all, the proud and the lowly, the white and the 
 black, the monarchist and the aristocrat, the citi- 
 zens of republics and the conspirators of treasons. 
 It did not save Rome, for such was not its mission. 
 Men died, and needed salvation, whether the Hun 
 ruled at the capital or the Vandal in the province. 
 , Christ said His kingdom was not of this world. 
 Beyond this world, the State projects no exploring 
 thought for man. From this solemn future of hu- 
 manity Christianity never withdraws its contem- 
 plations and preparations. The State is the em- 
 bodiment of human apathy. Christianity is the 
 expression of divine sympathy. The one addresses 
 itself to the will, and commands; the other to the 
 heart, and persuades. Each one's secular life 
 comes from what he is to man, and his sacred life 
 from what he is to all above man. 
 
 The State is the authority of law compelling the 
 masses; Christianity is the power of love perfect- 
 ing man. The ono is an organism, and attempts
 
 THE FUTURE CONTllOLS THE PRESENT. 199 
 
 only a policy; the other is a helping scheme, and 
 prevails by principles. Policies change, principles 
 abide. As self-preservation is an instinct Avith 
 both men and nations, so secular governments, 
 with their temporal missions, however changeable 
 in form and religion, will run on to the end. There 
 is uo danger that the unwise opposition of skep- 
 tical learning, the engrossments of wealth, or the 
 intoxication of station, will ever extinguish relig- 
 ion in the earth, however painfully, for a time, 
 they may impair its benign work. Beligion is the 
 first emotion in youth and purity, and it will be, 
 as ever, the last sustaining power at the dread 
 portal of the grave. 
 
 France tried civilization without religion; and so 
 do thieves, assassins, traitors, and others chained 
 to crime. But society, however diverted for a 
 time by brilliant error, ever returns to its altars 
 and its worship as the truest power in the heart of 
 man, the holiest light in earthly homes, and the 
 only hope in the universal grave. We care less 
 for what has been than for what will be. Eternity 
 awes us more than time. The future controls the 
 present, as we see in every roof built for future 
 shelter, every morsel put away for future food; in
 
 200 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 short, considerations of tlie future enter into every- 
 thing man does. We need have no fear of decay. 
 The religious side of civilization is as long and 
 continuous as its line of funerals. The grave is 
 ever before man, and however he may seek to for- 
 get it, the death of friends, the vacant chair at the 
 fireside, the hushed sound of coming and going 
 feet that once were heard in hall and chamber — all 
 this is an inexorable teacher. Coming deaths cast 
 their shadows before, and the present or last one 
 builds a creed of the future. So, then, man can 
 not get rid of religion if he would; it is inevitable 
 and all-controlling. Whether we curse or pray, 
 the unpausing future inevitably comes and goes, 
 and we go with it. In spite of ourselves, its influ- 
 ence is ever iipon us, and beneath the canopy of 
 its solemn shadow, with skeletons b}^ our sides, 
 and graves in our hearts, we erect the altar of 
 human faith and hope. We look at death and 
 pray. The great mystery leads to a great solution. 
 Civilization derives its secular inspiration from 
 events, but its sacred power from the force of re- 
 ligious principles. The secular side is collective, 
 and looks to conduct, or what wo do; the sacred 
 side to chai-acter, or what we arc, and to destiny, 
 or what wo become. God is in all.
 
 THE MOTIVE OF CIVILIZATION. 201 
 
 Advanced civilization is mostl}^ a foreigner. India 
 gave it to Egypt; Egypt to Greece; and Greece to 
 Rome. From Greece we get philosophy, law from 
 Home, and religion from Judea. The best we have of 
 anything is but in part from ourselves. The petals 
 of the flower that opens its sweet colors to our 
 wonder and delight are painted by a pencil held in 
 the distant sun. As from above come the waters 
 that flow through shapes of good and ill, with an 
 ever-varying depth and curve, to the unfilled sea, 
 so do the supreme civilizing forces come not from 
 ourselves, but from the dee]5 providence of divine 
 wisdom. On its secular side, civilization either 
 descends to us from the past, like golden sands 
 down the channel of the ages, or it drifts to us, 
 like seeds on the wind, from neighboring conti- 
 nents; or it is carved, like mottoes on jewels, by the 
 sword of remorseless conquest. 
 
 While the motive of civilization is found in the 
 hopes of a hidden future, its lessons come from the 
 experiences of a revealed past, which, though dead, 
 yet speaketh. From age to age, ideas or jjatterns 
 are left in history, but they do not transmit or 
 propagate themselves. Successive generations 
 must teach them to each other. But the ideas of the 
 past are recast in a mould of the present. Scarcely
 
 202 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 any tiling is used in its original form. We have 
 versions, not the text. Even when Tribonian cod- 
 ified the writings of the Roman Jurisconsults, 
 Justinian directed him to adapt the language and 
 principles to his own times. We use the past, as 
 we do steps, to mount to a higher light in the pres- 
 ent and future. This mounting needs help; and 
 each man, era, and nation needs it in its own way. 
 No one is born to piety, civilization, or learning. 
 Each must be taught its own. 
 
 Buckle says, "Intellectual activity must precede 
 religious improvement." Mill sa3'S, "Mr. Buckle 
 fell into a mistake which Comte avoided, that of 
 regarding the intellectual as the only progressive 
 element in man, and the moral as too much the 
 same at all times to affect even the annual average 
 of crime. M. Comte shows, on the contrary, a 
 most acute sense of the causes which elevate or 
 lower the general level of moral excellence, and 
 deems intellectual progress in no other way so 
 beneficial as by creating a standard to guide the 
 moral sentiments of mankind, and a mode of bring- 
 ing those sentiments effectively to bear on con- 
 duct."'' Mr. Bagehot,'' combating Mr. Buckle's 
 
 {a) Mill's Comte, 103. 
 
 (/;) i'liy.sios and Politics, Iiitoi-iuitioiKil Soicntilio .Scries, p. 11.
 
 buckle's mistake. 203 
 
 idea that intellectual and material forces have been 
 the mainsprings of progress, and moral causes 
 secondary, and, in comparison, not to be thought 
 of, says: "On the contrary, moral causes are the 
 first here. It is the action of the Avill that causes 
 the unconscious habit; it is the continual effort of 
 the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of 
 the end; it is the silent toil of the first generation 
 that becomes the transmitted aptitude of the next. 
 Here, physical causes do not create the moral, but 
 moral create the physical; here, the beginning is 
 by the higher energy — the conservation and propa- 
 gation only by the lower. But we thus perceive 
 how a science of history is possible, as Mr. Buckle 
 said — a science to teach the laws of tendencies — 
 created by the mind and transmitted by the body, 
 which act upon and incline the will of man from 
 age to age." In point of fact, religious instruction 
 has preceded any permanent intellectual advance. 
 Keligion has been the librarian, school-builder, 
 and schoolmaster of our civilization. Ulphilas 
 penetrated the savage wilderness of the North, and 
 carried religion, a translation of the Bible, and all 
 practicable culture to the Goths, when the State 
 could not control society, and secular learning was 
 closing its schools. But true religion and true
 
 204 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 learning are different sides of the one road to the 
 Father. They mutually help each other. Exactly 
 this forerunning, -which Buckle claims for intel- 
 lectualism, is what Christianity has done. Like 
 rays of light, it goes out in every direction from its 
 great centre, and, as in the Reformation, fires the 
 intellect, moves the heart, and directs the energies 
 of man. Eeligion is always first. Numa, the 
 Priest-King, was before Servius, the Soldier-King. 
 If stoicism, as an advance upon materialism, 
 placed the basis of moral conduct upon the con- 
 clusions of universal reason, in what was the 
 moral basis of conduct according to Christianity 
 an improvement? With one it was a blind, nec- 
 essary, impersonal authority; with the other, it 
 was the personal authority of One infinite in 
 knowledge, will, power, goodness, and holiness. 
 With one it was Fate; with the other a Father.
 
 LECTUKE III. 
 
 THE UNITIES OF SYSTEMS. 
 
 Wlieuce do all things come ? All philosophers, 
 ancient and modern, whether they studied force, 
 the elements, substances, relations, methods of 
 development, motions or durations, they each and 
 all held to some one underlying and all-including 
 unity — to a causa causans. Schelling says: " Our 
 minds strive after unity in the system of its 
 knowledge; it will not endure that there shall be 
 impressed upon it a separate principle for single 
 phenomenon, and it will only believe that it sees 
 nature Avhere it can discover the greatest sim- 
 plicity of laws in the greatest multiplicity of phe- 
 nomena, and the highest frugality of means in 
 the highest prodigality of effects."'^ Heraclitus 
 said that "All things are efficient and energetical 
 only in their harmony, or subjection to some 
 central principle of life."" Auaximander said that 
 
 (a) Schwegler's Hist. Phil. 317. 
 
 (b) 1 Maurice, 9G.
 
 206 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 "The lufinite is the origin of all things."* "Crea- 
 tion is the decomposition of the infinite."" As 
 every ray is just so much sun, as every bay is just 
 so much of the sea, as every second is just so 
 much of eternity, as every segment is just so 
 much of the endless circle, so all phenomena is 
 just so many manifestations of Infinity. 
 
 The Stoics were in fact Pantheists, and believed 
 that all matter is divine, and all divinity matter. 
 As a phrase is to the sentence, so is man to God. 
 If man were not man, God would not be God. 
 God is the whole, and all things are parts. The 
 parts must be, for the whole to be. The Stoic's 
 nature was God, and to live according to God was 
 to live according to nature." 
 
 The correlative of unity is plurality; and the 
 correlative of plurality is unity. We can not con- 
 ceive of one without the other; and so one is as 
 necessary to our thought as the other. If both 
 
 (a) Lewes, 12. 
 (6) Id. 13. 
 
 (c) *' Universale, nnum est actu, miilfa 2wtentia :" The universal 
 is one actually, hut many potentially. (Jiniie jiriticiphim est 
 uninn: Every principle is one. Ab uiio noii nisi nnum: Hill's El. 
 of I'lii. 1(11, notes. 
 
 I'ope says that the Infinite 
 
 " Lives through all life, extends throuL,'Ii all extent, 
 S[)r<_-ad.s uiidividcd, and oitcrattw unyiicnt."
 
 ALL NATURE OxNE. 207 
 
 are necessary to our thought, theu to our thought 
 both necessarily exist. We have the idea of one 
 because we compare it with the idea of many; 
 and we have the idea of many because we com- 
 pare it with the idea of one. Schlegel would make 
 them identical. Hegel would make them a rela- 
 tion ever becoming; but may we not make them 
 distinct and successive, necessary to each other — 
 the existence of each a cause of the existence of 
 the other. Hegel held that unity was everywhere 
 found under contradiction, and identity under 
 difference. Infinite unity is Spinoza's infinite sub- 
 stance, Fichte's infinite subject, Schelling's infi- 
 nite MIND, and Hegel's infinite thinking. 
 
 The unity of law now sought, is proved in the 
 unity of nature. The very word "nature" admits 
 a uniting principle in the sum total of everything. 
 The word "matter" generalizes the ideas of im- 
 penetrability, extension, divisibility, inertia, and 
 weight. The word "universe" ties all things to- 
 gether in one system of principles and phenomena. 
 
 1. TAKE, FIRST, THE UNIVEKSAL TIE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 
 
 The bond, or centrality of all matter first sug- 
 gested by Pythagoras, re-asserted by Copernicus, 
 in the sun-centre theory of the world, was estab-
 
 208 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 lislied by Kepler in his three hiws — the elliptical 
 movement of the planets, their description of 
 equal areas about their centie in equal times, the 
 periodicity of their times proportional to the 
 squares of their distances; and by the one law of 
 Newtou, that attraction varies inversely as the 
 square of the distance. From that moment man 
 saw how the many were one. The Universe ap- 
 peared. 
 
 However much, from a conceivable centre, the 
 outlook is plurality, there is no denying that at 
 the circumference the inlook is uuity. Upon such 
 generalizations are constructed all schemes of ma- 
 terial and moral philosophy. 
 
 According to the theory of material science, as 
 now held, the sun, as the first representative of 
 material unity, by its heat, expelled from itself 
 immeasurable volumes of ether into the colder 
 regions of outer space. There this ether Avas con- 
 densed, and, by the motion origiually imparted to 
 it by the sun, or the one poAver or origin superior 
 to and including the sun, Avhatever it may be, Avas 
 rolled up into Avorlds, and by force of the same 
 centrifugal motion, modified by the centripetalism 
 of gravitation, began to move round orbits pecul- 
 iar to each. As condensation increased, gravita-
 
 IMPERSONAL NATURE. 209 
 
 tion and resistancG increased, diminishing both 
 revohition along its orbit and rotation on its axis, 
 gradually drawing each orb back into the sun. 
 Here, from the unity of the sun or Avhatever is 
 one, if that is not the origin of things, goes out 
 the plurality of the worlds, and now the plurality of 
 Avorlds draw back into the unity of the sun.^ The 
 materialistic philosophy of the early schools so mo- 
 nopolized the minds of the philosophers at first, 
 that the moral or law-side of conduct was lost 
 sight of until the time of Socrates. But whether 
 the origin of things with them wafj water, earth, 
 fire, air, or motion, each and all held to an ulti- 
 mate unity of some kind. There was but one 
 origin, not two, whatever that one was, and one 
 motion, and that was the harmony of elliptical or- 
 bits. Look further at 
 
 2. IMPEKSONAL NATURE. 
 
 This is either inorganic or organic. There is 
 unity in organic nature. The higher is not with- 
 out the lower. The tree is only the upper end of 
 its hidden roots. The inorganic mineral enters 
 into the organic vegetable and animal. There is 
 no chasm. "Yet minerals are not vegetables, veg- 
 
 («) Darwinism and Design, by St. Clair, p. 21.
 
 210 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 etables are not animals, animals are not men; but 
 men, animals, and vegetables are all organized and 
 living beings. They are distinguished from min- 
 erals which are neither one nor the other, by cer- 
 tain general facts common to all.'"^ All organized 
 beings have a limited duration; all are born small 
 and feeble; during part of their existence, all grow 
 and strengthen, then decrease in energy and 
 vitality, sometimes also in size; finally all die. 
 Throughout life, all organized and living beings 
 need nourishment. Before death, all species re- 
 produce their kind by a seed or an egg, and this is 
 true even of those which seem to come directly 
 from a bud, from a layer, from a graft; for from 
 bud to bud, from layer to layer, from graft to graft, 
 we can rise to the seed and the egg. Finally, all 
 organized and living things had a father and a 
 mother. 
 
 "These grand phenomena, common to all living 
 things, and consequently to man, imply general 
 laws which control them, and which must govern 
 man as well as the plant. It is thus seen that man 
 and the lowest insect, the kings of the earth and 
 the lowest mosses, are so linked together that the 
 entire living world forms but one Avhole, all the 
 
 {11} (^>ii;iLrcf;i;^'i..s (111 N;il. Hist, of M;iii, Luct. 1.
 
 PERSONAL NATURE. 211 
 
 parts of wlncli harmonize in the closest mutual de- 
 pemleiice." 
 
 Science can be systematic because Nature is 
 systematic. The force of gravitation varies in- 
 versely as the square of the distance. Both heat 
 and light are polarized. Heat, light and sound 
 are alike refrangible. The unvarying law of grav- 
 itation shows that there is some uniting principle 
 in all forms of matter. Things are not in discord, 
 but concord, and are therefore ultimately one. 
 Darwin says : "The structure of every organic being 
 is related, in the most essential yet often hidden 
 manner, to that of all other organic beings, with 
 which it comes in competition for food or resi- 
 dence, or from Avhich it has to escape, or on which 
 it preys. "^ 
 
 3. PERSONAL NATURE. 
 
 There is a unity in all the species of the human 
 race. They have the sameness of form and func- 
 tion, a radical unity of language, an identity of 
 intellectual processes, and a unity of religious 
 feeling and moral sense. The race is universally 
 thought of and spoken of as the human family. 
 The unity of the human race is agreed upon by 
 nearly all. 
 
 (rt) Origin of Species, Ch. III.
 
 212 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Prof. Quatrefages, of Paris, remarked to his 
 class upon tlie subject of the unity of the human 
 race: "Our experience is to-day as complete as 
 possible. Unless we deny all modern science, 
 unless we make man a solitary exception in the 
 midst of organic and living beings, we must admit 
 that all men form only one and the same species, 
 composed of a certain number of different races; 
 we must, therefore, admit that all men may be con- 
 sidered as descended from a single primitive pair. 
 We have reached this conclusion outside of all 
 species of dogmatic or theological discussion, 
 outside of all species of philosophical or meta- 
 physical consideration. Observation and experi- 
 ment alone, applied to the animal and vegetable 
 kingdom; science, in a word, leads us logically to 
 this conclusion: tliere exists but one species of men. ''^ 
 "The various races have descended from one 
 original stock. Wherever we look, man is the 
 same."** "We recognize," says Agassiz, "the fact 
 of the unity of mankind."'' "All human races are 
 of one species and one family."'' 
 
 ('() (Jiiatrefagos' Lectures on M;iii, Lect. L 
 
 (h) Dr. Draper, as ([uoted hy Dr. Cahell, in liis work on tlic 
 Unity of jSIankind, pages 140, 154. 
 
 (c) Cal)ell, 158. 
 
 ('/) I'ricliard on tiie Natural Hist, of IMan, 545; Djiiwin on Ori- 
 gin of Species, eii. vi; llerl)ert Spencer, I vol. Iliology, cli. viii; 
 (Juitou on lieieditary (Jeuius, lUiS '.(.
 
 NATIONAL UNITY. 213 
 
 4. THE UNITY OF SOCIAL FORCE. 
 
 It is a basis of classification for things to assert 
 themselves, upon the principle of like to like. 
 Hornogenity is unity, and heterogenity is diversity. 
 No known power does or can keep the former 
 apart, or the latter together. Similar things ceu- 
 tripetalize, and dissimilar things centrifugalize; 
 and both are united in the compound force of cir- 
 cular, or rather elliptical, motion. 
 
 Political groups are held together by force, sym- 
 pathy, or interest. All enforced co-operation must 
 result in assimilation, like the unification of the 
 scattered Teutonic or Celtic tribes, speaking the 
 same radical language, and living in coterminous 
 localities; or it must produce ultimate disruption, 
 like the dismemberment of the dissimilar races, 
 upon the breaking up of the Roman empire first, 
 and afterwards of the empire of Charlemagne. 
 Force is a mechanical link only; interest is tran- 
 sient and conventional; sympathy alone is natural 
 and enduring. But this is hourly a wider bond. 
 
 Intercommunication by locomotion, and electric 
 or phonetic message, must consolidate the social 
 and political world. Everything is centralizing. 
 Ocean steamers are making all nations neighbors. 
 Telegraphic wires, like nerves of the body, unite
 
 214 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 all the limbs in one service. The nations of the 
 world are knowing more of each other, interests 
 are more international, prejudices must give way 
 to acquaintance, national boundaries are more and 
 more indistinct, international unity of coins, 
 weights and measures, international postal systems, 
 international tolerations of religions, interchanges 
 of agricultural implements, international exposi- 
 tions tliat are the bazaars of the world, the tem- 
 ples of national unity and secular civilization; all 
 these and more show the mighty law at work. 
 Men do not always see or intend the full results of 
 the great things they do. It is not likely that 
 Fulton or Morse anticipated the unification of all 
 the nations and families of the world; but it will 
 be done by their work. 
 
 The forces of nature have become indirectly 
 mighty unitizers and civilizers. The application 
 of steam to navigation and electricity to communi- 
 cation will largely decentralize the cities, dena- 
 tionalize the nations, and make the whole world 
 one country. Steam ferries have been established 
 between the hemispheres, and railways, like webs, 
 cover the continents. Electricity has become a 
 postal courier, and counts time and space as less
 
 NATIONAL UNITY. 215 
 
 than nothing. We put palaces on wheels and hotels 
 on the waves, and speed over oceans, hills, and 
 rivers, and deserts, as a pastime revelry. Steam, 
 like a great giant, has tunneled the mountains, filled 
 valleys, and channeled plains with prodigious 
 strength. This mighty worker has laid his hand 
 upon every altar of religion, and commanded 
 serving priests to compare and purge their creeds. 
 Foreigners are meeting as never before; ideas, 
 customs and worships are brought into one light; 
 toleration follows acquaintance; and what is false 
 will be dropped, and what is true will abide, sure 
 and comforting, in the universal reason of the one 
 family of earth. Commerce will give a common 
 interest. Money knows no national boundaries, 
 creeds or speech. Strange nations are bringing 
 their good and their bad together, at first to hate 
 eacli other; then to laugh at each other, and then, 
 except as with the negro, to wed each other. Each 
 nationality has its detestable peculiarities, but 
 each, in the end, absorbs something good from 
 his foreign neighbor, and brings himself and 
 nation to an average of human improvement. No 
 man is jealous of his brother, and steam and 
 electricity are making all nations such. Even this 
 continent belongs, it is said, to all nations, with-
 
 216 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 out respect of persons. Every nation has made 
 its contribution to what we call its civilization. 
 Thousands of years ago China and Egypt kept the 
 record of the stars by which we sail our ships. 
 No one race or era can say that progress is all 
 its own. If Montgomery from Ireland, fought 
 for American Independence, so did Steuben and 
 De Kalb from Germany, and Lafayette, Count 
 Destaing and others from France, Pulaski and 
 Kosciusko from Poland, and Paul Jones from 
 Scotland. Champions offered themselves from all 
 the world, and we were launched upon our own 
 career. Almost all nations claim to have helped, 
 and so all here have been made at home, where 
 none are strangers. 
 
 This law of centralization is further seen in the 
 inevitable aggregation of capital and combination 
 of energy. The works required in this day are so 
 colossal that the capital of no individual citizen is 
 adequate. The extension of long and huge canals, 
 the interoceanic lines of railways, the irrigation 
 of broad territories of arid desert lands, the great 
 aqueducts for vast cities, the millions expended to 
 light them, requires either despotism for taxes or 
 unprecedented combinations of individual inter- 
 ests and cai)ital to build them. No unaided man
 
 ALL CAUSES ONE. 217 
 
 or fortune is equal to the day. One man is noth- 
 ing. His individual importance has been lost. 
 In every direction the centres of civilization are 
 fewer, aggregations more extended, and power 
 more intensified. The individual once had the 
 energy of individual force, and sought success by 
 pushing himself; now he is hopeless of success ex- 
 cept as he makes others push him. Power is now 
 in combination. The pendulum of events swings 
 backward and forward, and effectiveness returns 
 from the uncombined many to the combined few, 
 
 ebbing and flowing in the lapse of the ages. 
 i 
 
 i. THE UNITY OF CAUSATION. 
 
 As one is before two, so one cause is before two 
 causes. The idea is before the reality, the archi- 
 tect before the plan, and the plan before the 
 structure. J. S. Mill says: "It is a universal 
 truth that every fact which has a beginning, has a 
 cause."'' "The plurality of causes," says Bain, 
 " is more an incident of imperfect knowledge than 
 a fact in the nature of things. As knowledge ex- 
 tends, we find less plurality. The numerous ap- 
 parent causes for motion, are different only in 
 superficial appearance. They are all one at the 
 bottom."" 
 
 (a) Logic, Bk. III., CIi. 5. (b) Bain's Logio, 247.
 
 218 
 
 THE UNITY OF LAW.
 
 MORAL UNITY. 219 
 
 Causes are either efficient or physical. Efficient 
 cause is that which makes all other causes to be 
 causes. In fact, it is no cause, but the originator 
 of cause. To say that it is unknowable does not 
 satisfy the mind or stop inquiry. Human thought 
 irresistibly goes back and back, as long as a chain 
 of causation can be traced, and when it confronts 
 the incomprehensible infinity, it stops in the pres- 
 ence of a plenitude of intelligence and power. 
 This infinity has ever been sought, and behind its 
 mystery is at once the womb and the goal of hu- 
 manity. As nothing can produce nothing, cause 
 must be something, for from it came the universe. 
 It is something; and one infinite something pro- 
 ducing a plurality of finite somethings. It is that 
 unity of efficiency that lies back of all phenomenal 
 conditions, however numerous and entangled. It 
 is the weaver of the web. It is; whether it an- 
 swers your questions or not. Whatever it is, it 
 has a unity of will, power and knowledge. It is 
 absolutely One, and this is Infinite Being, for 
 BEING is the only Indivisible Unity. . 
 
 5. MORAL UNITY. 
 
 The highest conceivable power is that of pre- 
 scribing the law of right conduct to intelligent 
 beings. Either there is no such thing as moral
 
 220 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 right, or its law is the highest. The legislator 
 must know not only what is right for the individual 
 in himself, but also Avhat is right in all his rela- 
 tions, of all persons, of all nations, and of all time. 
 What is right is right. " There is no tribe so rude 
 as to be witliout a faint perception of a difference 
 between right and Avrong. There is no subject on 
 which men of all ages and nations coincide on so 
 many points as in the general rules of conduct, 
 and in the qualities of human character which de- 
 serve esteem.""* And even Hume says: "The 
 principles upon which men reason in morals are 
 always the same, however different the conclu- 
 sions." Sir James Mackintosh further says: "Law- 
 givers and statesmen, but above all, moralists and 
 political philosophers, may plainly discover in all 
 the useful and beautiful variety of governments 
 and institutions, and under all the fantastic multi- 
 tude of usages and rites which have prevailed 
 among men, the same fundamental, comprehensive 
 truths, the sacred master-principles, which are the 
 guardians of human society, recognized and re- 
 vered, with few slight exceptions, by every nation 
 u[)on earth." 
 
 As the harmony of matter, from atoms to spheres, 
 
 {a) MackiiitoHli Ilia. M. I'hi. sec. 1.
 
 WHERE IS THE MORAL CENTRE. 221 
 
 implies unity, motion, and centralization of power, 
 so the harmony of human conduct, both individual 
 and social, implies the unity of purpose and cen- 
 tralization of moral law. Where is the centre of 
 centres of both matter and morality? Does the 
 centre of morality and matter coincide, or are they 
 different ? If they differ, then there are two uni- 
 verses, which is impossible; and if they coincide, 
 the}' are the same, which is final and absolute 
 unity. Eight human conduct refers its action to 
 one will, as the harmonious movement of matter 
 seeks one centre. 
 
 There cannot be two authorities; an authority 
 of the whole, and another conflicting authority of 
 the parts. As the greater includes the less, as the 
 whole is the sum of all its parts, so the universal 
 is the summation of the special. Everything has 
 a centre. What is the centre of law ? The centre 
 of law and the universe are the same. 
 
 In matter we see a line of law run to each atom, 
 then to each molecule of atoms, and then to each 
 mass of molecules; and all lines to be tied at one 
 unknown point, or rather gathered into one hand. 
 
 The great question has ever been, where is the 
 one moral centre? Is it ivithui man, as Ave have 
 seen that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus
 
 222 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 taught? or not in man, as Zeno, Buddha and Christ 
 taught? If in man, is that centre in his knowledge, 
 as Socrates and Phito taught; or in a golden mean 
 of virtuous hah'its, as Aristotle taught; or in indi- 
 vidual Jiappiness as Epicurus taught? If not in 
 man, is the moral centre in an impersonal order of 
 nature, making minor distinctions between man 
 and man insignificant, as Zeno taught? or is it in a 
 superhuman and supernatural personality, as 
 Moses and Christ taught? But are not all these 
 philosophies true in part, and all that are mere 
 philosophies, not true in part? Is the centrality 
 of the individual atom exclusive of, or incompat- 
 ible with, the centrality of the molecule and the 
 mass? The universe is the centralization of cen- 
 tres. It is this centre of centres that all philos- 
 ophers have ever sought. 
 
 Law of conduct has its centre in the nexus of 
 the relations of society, and implies a moral unity 
 of all its members through all their relations. 
 Without confining itself to any speculative theory 
 of moralit}', it passes upon the morality of each 
 case as it arises. Its adjudications are concrete, 
 not abstract. The morality of each case is in the 
 case itself, and cannot be anticipated. Hence the 
 invalidiiy of ohiter dicta of the courts. All that
 
 THE MORALISTS. 223 
 
 the abstract morality of maxims can do, is to 
 so educate the miiid that it will be sensitive to de- 
 tect its concrete presence. 
 
 The materialists showed that all plurality ends 
 in unity. Do not the moralists show the same? 
 Is conduct without law '? If not, must not that hiw 
 have a central authority? As it is so related to 
 matter, must there not be some intimate essen- 
 tial unity between the laws of each ? If there 
 be evolution, correlation and ceutripetalism in 
 matter, could morality have a different method 
 without utter confusion of all life? And if this 
 were so, would not matter be moving on the 
 fixed lines or method we have named, and would 
 not morality move upon any other, as it might 
 happen? If the method of matter and morality do 
 not coincide, wherein do they differ? There must 
 be unity or diversity. If there be unity, all is 
 harmony, as we seek to show; if there be diversit}', 
 as we deny, all would be discord. Mind and mat- 
 ter must and do agree. 
 
 When speculation wearied of the attempt to 
 solve the mystery of matter, there arose a succes- 
 sion of- great moral teachers. But from Socrates 
 down, each master held that there was but one 
 authority in morality, however much, as in the
 
 224 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 case of the origin of matter, tliey differed as to 
 wLat that oue authority was. After all the light 
 of the past, do we say that there are more thau 
 one? If there is but oue authority, we repeat their 
 old question, and ask what is that one? 
 
 Law is disclosed by resistance, whether the re- 
 sistance be voluntary or involuntary. Anarchy 
 has no place or toleration in the nature of things. 
 If there be no persuasive force to right conduct, 
 wrong conduct must be resisted by repressive 
 force. Conduct must centre upon some one prin- 
 ciple, human or superhuman. No theory of morals 
 is all true or all false. Truths supplement each 
 other, like colors in a ray of light. That must be 
 held to be the true basis or centre of moral life 
 which best accounts for most of the best known 
 moral phenomena. But each and all theories of 
 morals, like converging facts, lead to one end. 
 
 In the first lecture of this course it was held 
 that all unity tended to plurality, as, for example, 
 the transformation of the homogeneous into the 
 heterogeneous. We stood at the centre and 
 looked towards the circumference. Now we re- 
 verso the vision, and stand at the circumference 
 and l(Kjk towards the centre, to see all plurality 
 end in unity. The tendency of the one to the
 
 ALL FOKCES ARE ONE. 225 
 
 many, and of the many to tlio one, is seen all 
 throngli nature. Eveiytliiug original seeks to 
 give itself away to everything derived. The root 
 of the tree will not keep itself all root, but gives 
 something of itself to trunk, and the trunk gives 
 something of itself to branches, and the branches 
 give something of themselves to leaves and to 
 seeds. The one grain of wheat gives itself to 
 scores of other grains. The life in it, like a 
 traveler, has a new lodging-place every night. 
 The mists exhaled by the one sea come back to it 
 again in the many rivers. The countless tones 
 from the chords of nature's vast harp symphonize 
 in one mighty hymn. The units of atoms, mole- 
 cules, and stellar orbs that wheel into system, have 
 one obedience. 
 
 We have said that there can not be two authori- 
 ties. All forces must be as one. Nature ever 
 keeps the peace among her phenomena, through 
 their homogeneity, and over all diversities, she 
 lierself presides as absolute unity. 
 
 That Avhich diverges also converges. You can 
 not have the distinction of individuals without 
 the unity of the species, nor the differences of 
 species Avithout the higher unity of the genus. 
 One can not be without the other. As a whole
 
 226 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 implies and includes the parts, and as all parts 
 imply and are tlie whole, so the universal reason 
 implies the individual reason, and the individ- 
 ual reason is the universal reason, or it is no 
 reason. Whatever is moral is universal. When 
 conduct finds its reason apart from the universal 
 reason, it is not moral conduct. It is the rebel- 
 lion of a part against the whole, and so against 
 itself. Anything makes the most of itself when 
 it makes itself a part of what is above itself. 
 Therefore the human reason is most human Avhen 
 it is most superhuman; just as the root of a tree is 
 most a root as it extends itself up into branches, 
 leaves and seed. What we call a root and a tree 
 are not two things, but one; so reason is not two 
 as universal reason and as human reason. Though 
 universal reason may act as special reason, special 
 reason must be one with universal reason, to be 
 any reason at all; for, while a part can not be the 
 whole, of the whole there may be a part. And as 
 a ])art is nothing unless it is of a whole, so special 
 reason is no reason unless it be complete in uni- 
 versal reason. In other words, reason, to be 
 reason in its ultimate sense, must be universal. 
 
 The word " universal" is a condensed induction. 
 It is one common to all. The whole covers each,
 
 PLURALITY AND UNITY. 227 
 
 and each thing is related to every other. We do 
 not knoAv things apart from their rehitions. As 
 these relations are universal, so the reason that 
 regulates them must be universal. Morality is 
 conduct as appointed by universal reason, or the 
 extension of one all-embracing principle of right- 
 ness to individual life, and this is law. 
 
 Convergence and divergence are but opposite 
 extremes of the same line. The arrow is pointed 
 at both ends. It is evident that centripetalism or 
 some uniting principle is universal, to both matter 
 and morality. Though for two thousand years, 
 from Pythagoras to Copernicus, science ignorantly 
 centred this system of worlds in the earth, and 
 though we now know that it is in the sun, still all 
 minds knew that there was a centre of some kind 
 and somewhere. So in morality, one mind searches 
 for the centre in one direction and another in 
 other directions, yet no one doubts that there is 
 for conduct some one supreme moral centre. The 
 roads may be many, but the end is one. Semper, 
 uhique, omnibus. It is a universal principle that 
 plurality implies and ever tends to unity. If matter 
 and morality are each a force, these forces work as 
 one. If matter has many elements, these elements 
 find themselves, like parallel lines, meeting in in-
 
 228 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 finity. The same is the fact in morality. If the 
 two, matter and morality, liave each their own 
 centre, their centres coincide or are one and the 
 same, for there is hut one uvifi/. There is a centre 
 of centres. Derivation implies unity. Creation 
 implies unity. Plurality implies unity. Unity 
 can be nothing but unit}'. If we are at unity the 
 outlook is plurality; if we are amidst plurality, the 
 inlook is unity. 
 
 No one man has any natural, absolute right to 
 govern another man, nor has any man with insep- 
 arable relations to all other men, any natural, ab- 
 solute right to govern himself in those relations. 
 All related must govern each one related. As 
 the whole governs each, so each governs himself 
 through the Avhole. The many govern the one, 
 and that one is one of the many. Each atom, mass 
 of atoms, accepts within itself, and each man ac- 
 cepts within himself, a control necessarily from 
 without. All centres are strung on one string of 
 law, and therefore themselves have one centre. 
 
 It is clear that the governing power is responsi- 
 ble primarily only to itself. This, no one private 
 citizen can be, for ho is responsible to all others 
 than himself. All must govern, or none can gov- 
 ern. "Every commandment in a civil society pri-
 
 burke's opinion. 229 
 
 marilj flows from the totality of its members — 
 from the public."''' "The sovereign power consists 
 in the collective will, and in the faculty of willing 
 and disposing those forces which obey that will. 
 This sovereign power should be disposed of as in- 
 divisible in its nature, and as appertaining to the 
 totality of the members of the body politic — to 
 the entire people."'' 
 
 So far as each governs himself in his rela- 
 tions, he must govern through the whole or total 
 power of the public. Burke, in his speech in the 
 trial of Warren Hastings, says: "No man can 
 lawfully govern himself according to bis own will; 
 much less can one person be governed by the will 
 of another. We are all born in subjection, all 
 born equally, high and low, governors and gov- 
 erned, in subjection to one great, immutable, pre- 
 existeut law, prior to all our devices, and prior to 
 all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas 
 and all our sensations, antecedent to our very ex- 
 istence, by which we are all knit and connected in 
 the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we 
 can not stir. This great law does not arise from 
 our conventions and compacts; on the contraiy, it 
 
 (a) Pomeroy on Constitutional Law, Intro, sec. 4. 
 (I>) Id., sec. 7.
 
 230 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 gives to our conventions and compacts all the 
 force and sanction tliey can have." This is the 
 unit}'' we have been seeking in the light of reason, 
 rather than by the authority of Avritten revelation. 
 Henceforth we may consider the two authorities 
 as one, and, so far as they concur, as the expres- 
 sion of one will. 
 
 6. THE UNITY OF INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 The perfection of intelligence is inversely as the 
 number of individuals possessing it. It is like a 
 pyramid of stars surmounted by the sun, with 
 numbers increasing towards the bottom and with 
 glory increasing towards the top. Kegarding 
 will as law, we find it varying in the force of 
 gravitation of matter, inversely as the square of 
 tiie distance. This mutual law of atoms is more 
 as they are together, and less as they are apart. 
 The smaller the material lumps, the more are 
 their numbers, and the less is their power; and 
 conversely, the larger the lumps, the fewer are 
 their numbers, and the greater is their power. 
 The law is one, but varies inversely as to num- 
 bers, but directly as to size. Gravitation is a 
 mode of Mind in matter; but does not that Mind 
 exhibit its power, in the same way, in the culmi- 
 nating kingdoms of animal life?
 
 INSTINCTIVE INTELLIGENCE. 231 
 
 In physiology, the classes of animals are : First. 
 Rncliata, with parts arranged around a vertical 
 axis: as sea-urchins, starfish, sea-anemones, and 
 corals; second, Mollusca: as muscles, oysters, 
 snails, clams, and cuttle-fishes; third, Articulata, 
 comprising all animals whose bodies are made up 
 of similar rings: as worms, crabs, and all insects; 
 and, fourth, Vertebrata, including all animals hav- 
 ing a backbone, such as man, monkeys, whales, 
 bats, birds, reptiles, bactrians, and fish. The 
 number of species of animals is not known, but 
 may safely be estimated as a million or more, of 
 which the small and microscopic comprise an 
 immense majority.^ It is in mental physiology 
 that we see the perfection of intelligence to be 
 inversely as the number of individuals possessing 
 it. Animal life is scaled by intelligence, either in- 
 stinctive or reflective. 
 
 (a) Iiistuidive intelligence, if intelligence it can 
 be called, is necessary intelligence; a uniform and 
 unprompted tendency to do a certain thing; innate, 
 not acquired or progressive. As instinctive intel- 
 ligence, especially in insects, is more, reflective 
 intelligence is less. Instinctive action is predeter- 
 mined action, and works out the design of another, 
 
 (a) Tenney on Zoology, p. 4.
 
 232 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 not its owu. What it is, it is in its organization, not 
 its will. Each creature dominated by instinct in- 
 herits, not acquires, his intelligence. The young 
 bee needs no teaching to build its cell, nor the 
 bird its nest. The chicken picks its way out of its 
 shell, with no suggestion from its mother hen; and 
 it always begins at the larger end of the shell. 
 Nor can a creature of mere instinct be taught to 
 do what it has not been organized to do. It can 
 not be educated by experience. Its organic capac- 
 ity is its true capacity. 
 
 Special preparation is made for each grade of 
 life. The vegetable life has its basis in assimila- 
 tive power, feeding on and lifting inert minerals 
 into its own plane. Some animals have an outer 
 life of action, and others both an outer life of 
 action and an inner life of thought. Special 
 preparation is made for each. The outer life of 
 action is based upon a system of nerve-threads 
 and nerve-centres. Imagine a long skein of 
 white silk tied up into knots, at certain distances 
 apart, and you have an idea of the ganglionic 
 system along which required action is telegraphed 
 to the muscles. This system includes a spinal 
 cord, a prolongation of the spinal cord, and a 
 sort of hoad-centro of those nerve-threads at the
 
 REFLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE. 233 
 
 top, called the sensorium, and another central sta- 
 tion for higher animal action, called the cere- 
 bellum. 
 
 (6) Reflective intelligence. For reflective, con- 
 scious intelligence, or the inner life of thought, 
 there is superadded to all this nervous system for 
 animal action, another instrument of mind called 
 the cerebrum. From the lowest vertebrates this 
 organ increases in volume, complexity, and import- 
 ance of place, to its fullness and perfection in man. 
 As the cerebrum, so is reflective intelligence. 
 As reflective intelligence is more, instinctive action 
 is less; or, in other words, mind is more as mate- 
 rial ends are less; and, e coiiverso, material ends 
 are more as mind is less. Thus nature's grada- 
 tions are evident. There is more unintelligent 
 life, as in the vegetable, than intelligent, as in the 
 animal. There is more instinct life among the ani- 
 mals, as with the insects, than intelligent, as with 
 cerebrated animals, like fishes and men. There are 
 more rudimentarily cerebrated animals, like fishes, 
 than fully cerebrated animals, like man. Intelli- 
 gence scales all the way up. According to the 
 doctrine of the survival of the fittest, the better 
 are always the fewer, and the best are always the 
 fewest.
 
 234 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 We must remember that one grade of life is 
 correlative to another grade of life; the vegetable 
 feeds on minerals, the animal feeds on living veg- 
 etables; and one living animal of higher degree 
 not only feeds on vegetables, but, as a rule, on 
 other living animals of lower degree. In both 
 vegetable and animal kingdom, the fittest survives; 
 and n© animal species has more intelligence than 
 is needed to preserve the species; otherwise the 
 species would not only survive, but increase be- 
 yond the containing capacity of space. The many 
 are the perishable. Among the lower animals the 
 fittest survive, because, by rapacity, speed or cun- 
 ning, they know best how to survive. Nothing 
 dies that knows how to live. The hundred know 
 best how to survive over the thousand, and the 
 ten over the hundred, and the one over the ten. 
 
 Again, for Avant of food, "largo animals can 
 not be so abundant as small ones; the carnivora 
 must be less numerous than the herbivora; eagles 
 and lions can never be so plentiful as pigeons and 
 antelopes; the wild asses of the Tartarian deserts 
 can not equal in numbers the horses of the more 
 luxuriant prairies and pampas of America. The 
 animal population of the globe must bo stationary, 
 or perhaps, through the influence of man, do-
 
 NUMBER OF ANIMALS. 235 
 
 creasing. Fluctuations there may be ; but perma- 
 nent increase, except in restricted localities, is 
 almost impossible. For example, our own obser- 
 vation must convince us that birds do not go on 
 increasing every year in a geometrical ratio, as 
 they would do were there not some powerful check 
 to their natural increase. Very few birds produce 
 less than two young ones each year, Avhile many 
 have six, eight, or ten; four will certainly be 
 below the average; and if we suppose that each 
 pair produce young only four times in their life, 
 that will also be below their average, supposing 
 them not to die either by violence or want of food. 
 Yet, at this rate, how tremendous would be the 
 increase in a few years! A simple calculation will 
 show that in fifteen years each pair of birds would 
 have increased to more than two billions; whereas, 
 we have no reason to believe that the number of 
 birds of any country increases at all in a hundred 
 years. If it be true that animals increase in a 
 geometrical ratio, when favored by conditions of 
 life, they must also decrease by a fixed ratio, or 
 the world could not contain them. If we test the 
 matter by birds, "as on the lowest calculation the 
 progeny are each year twice as numerous as their 
 parents, it follows that, whatever be the average
 
 236 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 number of individuals existing in any given 
 country, livice that number must 2^erish annually — 
 a result perhaps under rather than over the 
 truth."'' Taking the number who perish in the 
 struggle of existence as the weakest in intelli- 
 gence, and those who survive as the strongest, our 
 proposition is proved as stated. 
 
 Power is focalized. Great men have few suc- 
 cessors. Exceptional intelligence proves the rule 
 of the general average. As in all the universe 
 nothing is more distinguishing than intelligence, 
 therefore it is the gift of only the few; for that 
 distinguishes no one which all have in the same 
 degree. If intelligence extended from unity to 
 plurality, it lessened in degree as it increased the 
 number of individuals endowed with it; or, if 
 (though such a thing were not conceivable) intelli- 
 gence began with plurality, it decreased the num- 
 ber receiving it, as it increased the degree of its 
 strength, from little knowledge to all knowledge. 
 It seems to be certain that intelligence extends 
 through gradations of classes and individuals, to 
 inconceivable plurality in ever-lessening degree, 
 und that such plurality converges ti) infinite unity.'' 
 
 (a) Wallace on Nat. Selection, paper II; Darwin, Origin of 
 SpecicM, (Jli. III. 
 
 {/>) Siiico writing tlie above I have seen a work ))y Pro. 15irks, 
 <it ( iiiiiliriilgc, hliiglaiid, on "Sii|)( inatiiiiil i;t:\ illation," in wliicli, 
 1^1. IIJ 2, lie gives tlie same idea of culuiiuating unity.
 
 SCALE OF INTELLIGENCE. 237 
 
 However it may be accounted for, we see that 
 from plant irritability to the instinct of the incon- 
 ceivably numerous animalculae, and up to the 
 highest grade of intelligent creatures, as the scale 
 of intelligence rises, the number of individuals 
 possessing it decreases, and even in the same grade 
 that those who know the most vary inversely as the 
 ratio of the numbers. The ignorant are man}'; the 
 all-knowing but One. 
 
 We can conceive of infinite intelligence, infinite 
 power, infinite purity, infinite Avill; but these all 
 must be identical, as there can not be several infin- 
 ities. The law mentioned has before it both finite 
 intelligence and infinite intelligence. Which is 
 from the other? Either infinite intelligence is 
 from finite intelligence, or finite intelligence is 
 from infijiite intelligence. But if infinite intelli- 
 gence is from finite intelligence, then finite intelli- 
 gence is either self-existent or from nothing. 
 But if finite intelligence is self-existent, a fortiori 
 infinite intelligence is self-existent, and so not 
 from finite intelligence. But if finite intelligence 
 is neither from infinite intelligence nor is self-ex- 
 istent, it is from nothing, which is absurd; for 
 from nothing nothing is. So, by the law of con-
 
 238 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 traclictioiis, finite intelligence must be from Infinite 
 Intelligence, whicli nothing tr;inscends. 
 
 "Tlie culminating point of Man's Intellectual 
 interpretation of Nature may be said to be liis rec- 
 ognition of the Unity of the Power, of which her 
 phenomena are the diversified manifestations. 
 Toward this point all scientific inquiry now tends. 
 For the convertibility of the Physical Forces, the 
 Correlation of these with the Vital, and the inti- 
 macy of that nexus between Mental and Bodily 
 activity which, explain it as we may, can not be 
 denied, all lead upward toward one and the same 
 conclusion— the source of all Power in Mind. * 
 * "^ * And thus, whilst the deep-seated in- 
 stincts of Humanity, and the profoundest re- 
 searches of Philosophy, alike point to Mind as the 
 one and only source of Power, it is the high pre- 
 rogative of science to demonstrate the iivUi/ of the 
 Power whicli is operating through the limitless ex- 
 tent and variety of the Universe, and to trace its 
 coiil'undly through the vast series of ages that have 
 been occupied in its evolution."'^ 
 
 This relation of one to many and many to one 
 is everywhere revealed. The prism gives us many 
 colors, and the spectrum many qualities in one ray. 
 
 (<i) C'tirpciitur's Mental Tliysioloj^y, sec. r)79.
 
 THE CENTRE OF CENTRES. 239 
 
 The uniformities in the sequence of form give see erkata. 
 us the law of gradation, inflecting every curve, and 
 varying the opening of every angle. In sound, 
 there is rythmic unity in the countless notes regis- 
 tered on the air; and in color, hues, scales, and 
 tones keep together in harmonies of analogy of 
 contrast, to the unity of one total effect. Centres 
 are themselves centralized. Nothing is alone. 
 Every atom has its centre, and the centre of every 
 atom is tied to the centre of every other atom, and 
 to the centre of centres of everything that is. The 
 many atoms unite in one molecule, many molecules 
 in one mass, and many masses in one system, and 
 many systems in the all-including universe. 
 
 In concluding this course of lectures, preliminary 
 to one upon legal ethics, have we not seen that 
 matter and morality are under the same laws, have 
 the same correlative movement, inversely or direct; 
 the same centralization, and are traceable to the 
 same unity of will? If this constant aim has been 
 reached in the wide induction followed, we see that 
 all the threads of law run back into the hand of the 
 one Law-giver. Have we not reached an Authority 
 for that morality which is antecedent to all law, 
 who is eternal, omniscient, and absolutely One, 
 " whose voice is the harmony of the world?"
 
 240 THE UNITY OF LAW. 
 
 Having seen the unity of this intelligence in the 
 method of material evolution, by which matter is 
 ever pushed forward from heterogeneousness to 
 homogeneousness, from incoherence to coherence, 
 from the indefinite to the definite, from the many 
 to the few, and from the few to unity, as held by 
 nearly every philosopher; and having seen the 
 laws of moral conduct moving along coincident 
 lines, evolving the unity of families, gens, cities, 
 and nations of lingual affinity; having seen relig- 
 ious and non-religious forces, for thousands of 
 years, correlating directly and inversely, even as 
 in matter-force; having seen that all material- 
 ists have gone back to some one origin of the uni- 
 verse, and all moralists to some one basis of moral- 
 ity, and all causes to be included in one cause; that 
 all nature, whether personal or impersonal, emerges 
 from some one beginning, and all intelligence is 
 graded in ascending augmentations of power, what 
 name shall we give to this Unity from whom all 
 things did come in the past, to whom all things 
 relate in the present, and to whom all things return 
 in the future ? The name with the Jews was Jeho- 
 vah; with the Greeks, Zeus; with the Romans, 
 Jupiter; and with the Saxons — God.
 
 LAW r-TT^RAHY 
 
 rNIVEKSnY ( ' (ATJPORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES