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 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 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,