system of social aims secured by compulsion. It is therefore impossible
that a written law should meet all the special points of a particular
case. The application of the legal right must always be qualified in
order to correspond more or less to the idea of justice. A certain
freedom in deciding on the particular case must be conceded to the
administration of justice. The established law, within a given and
restricted circle of ideas, is only occasionally absolutely just.

The conception of this right is still more obscured by the complex
nature of the consciousness of right and wrong. A quite different
consciousness of right and wrong develops in individuals, whether
persons or peoples, and this consciousness finds its expression in most
varied forms, and lives in the heart of the people by the side of, and
frequently in opposition to, the established law. In Christian countries
murder is a grave crime; amongst a people where blood-vengeance is a
sacred duty it can be regarded as a moral act, and its neglect as a
crime. It is impossible to reconcile such different conceptions of
right.

There is yet another cause of uncertainty. The moral consciousness of
the same people alters with the changing ideas of different epochs and
schools of philosophy. The established law can seldom keep pace with
this inner development, this growth of moral consciousness; it lags
behind. A condition of things arises where the living moral
consciousness of the people conflicts with the established law, where
legal forms are superannuated, but still exist, and Mephistopheles'
scoffing words are true:

"Laws are transmitted, as one sees,
Just like inherited disease.