decisions of the courts in actions between man and man. Every case tried
in a civil court is a conflict between two parties, a struggle for
justice, the judgment being justice applied to the particular case. The
growth of English law has been through an endless series of conflicts,
and the law of to-day may be described as a line passing through a
series of points representing an infinite number of judgments, each the
decision of a conflict in court. For seven hundred years, with hardly an
interruption, every judgment of a court has been sustained by the force
of the State. The law thus produced, expressed in legislation and
interpreted by the courts, is the foundation of all English conduct and
character. Upon the basis thus laid there takes place a perpetual
evolution of higher standards. In the intercourse of a settled and
undisturbed community and of the many societies which it contains, arise
a number of standards of behaviour which each man catches as it were by
infection from the persons with whom he habitually associates and to
which he is obliged to conform, because if his conduct falls below them
his companions will have nothing to do with him. Every class of society
has its notions of what constitutes proper conduct and constrains its
members to carry on their lives, so far as they are open to inspection,
according to these notions. The standards tend constantly to improve.
Men form an ideal of behaviour by observing the conduct of the best of
their class, and in proportion as this ideal gains acceptance, find
themselves driven to adopt it for fear of the social ostracism which is
the modern equivalent of excommunication. Little by little what was at
first a rarely attained ideal becomes a part of good manners. It
established itself as custom and finally becomes part of the law.

Thus the State, in co-operation with the whole community, becomes the
educator of its people. Standards of conduct are formed slowly in the
best minds and exist at first merely in what Plato would have called