aking up to the consciousness of sovereignty, and when
the horrors of the wars which followed the Reformation showed that even
sovereign powers ought to conform to some rules of conduct. It has been
the work in its origin of writers and teachers of law, and has been
built up more recently by agreement between States. Unlike the law
between man and man, which modern states enforce by organized
compulsion, there is no standing organization whose business it is to
see that it is kept. It is not true to say that for this reason it is
not law at all, for in primitive times the recognized rules of private
law were enforced not by State sanction but by the action of
individuals, with the support of the opinions and at times the active
help of their neighbours and friends. But a law which is defied with
success and impunity is no law. The reality and strength of
International Law has lain in the fact that its breach brought at least
the risk of suffering, through the common disapprobation of civilized
nations; its preservation and maintenance for the future must lie in a
certainty of disaster, not greatly less than that which awaits the
transgressor of private law.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Jethro Brown, _The Austinian Theory of Law_. Murray.

Maine, _Ancient Law_. Murray.

Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_. Cambridge University
Press.

Vinogradoff, _Common Sense in Law_. Home University Library, Williams &
Norgate.

Vinogradoff, _Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe_. Harper's Library of Living
Thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: Sophocles, _Antigone_, 449-57 (Jebb's translation).]

[Footnote 23: Herodotus, iii. 38.]

VI

THE COMMON ELEMENTS IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART

For some hundred years past it has been common to lay great stress upon
the importance of national characteristics in art. This has been very
natural, for they represent one main aspect and justification of the
revolt against the conception of the one permanent and immutable
standard of perfection of the Neo-classicists of the Renaissance.
Lessing and Herder, who were the critical protagonists of the new world,
had indeed a knowledge and admiration of ancient art which was probably
superior to that of the classicists, but they refused to admit that art
was bound to follow the forms of antiquity, and maintained rather that
its forms would necessarily change with the changing conditions of the
world, and with the varying characteri