have been justified are later inventions to account for what are
in fact survivals from more primitive times, we have a right to
reconsider the popular reasons, and, taking a broader view of the
field, to decide anew whether those reasons are satisfactory.
They may be, notwithstanding the manner of their appearance. If
truth were not often suggested by error, if old implements could
not be adjusted to new uses, human progress would be slow. But
scrutiny and revision are justified.

But none of the foregoing considerations, nor the purpose of
showing the materials for anthropology contained in the history
of the law, are the immediate object here. My aim and purpose
have been to show that the various forms of liability known to
modern law spring from the common ground of revenge. In the
sphere of contract the fact will hardly be material outside the
cases which have been stated in this Lecture. But in the criminal
law and the law of torts it is of the first importance. It shows
that they have started from a moral basis, from the thought that
some one was to blame.

[38] It remains to be proved that, while the terminology of
morals is still retained, and while the law does still and
always, in a certain sense, measure legal liability by moral
standards, it nevertheless, by the very necessity of its nature,
is continually transmuting those moral standards into external or
objective ones, from which the actual guilt of the party
concerned is wholly eliminated.

LECTURE II.