ecclesiastical laws in accordance with
the ideas of the average modern man. In 1791 nearly all the ancient laws
against immorality, which had proved so ineffectual, were flung away,
and when in 1810 Napoleon established the great penal code which bears
his name, he was careful to limit to a minimum the moral offences of
which the law was empowered to take cognisances, and--acting certainly
in accordance with deeply rooted instincts of the French people--he
avoided any useless or dangerous interference with private life and the
freedom of the individual. The penal code in France remains
substantially the same to-day, while the other countries which have
constructed their codes on the French model have shown similar
tendencies.

In Germany, and more especially in Prussia, which now dominates German
opinion, a very different tendency prevails. The German feels nothing of
that sensitive jealousy with which the French seek to guard private life
and the rights of the individual. He tolerates a police system which, as
Fuld has pointed out, is the most military police system in the world,
and he makes little complaint of the indiscriminating thoroughness, even
harshness, with which it exercises its functions. "The North German," as
a German lawyer puts it, "gazes with sacred respect on every State
authority, and on every official, especially on executive and police
functionaries; he complacently accepts police inquisition into his
private life, and the regulation of his behaviour by law and police
affects his impulse of freedom in a relatively slight manner. Hence the
law-maker's interference with his private life seems to him a customary
and not too injurious encroachment on his individuality."[197] It thus
comes about that a great many acts, of for the most part unquestioned
immoral character--such as incest, the procuring of women for immoral
purposes, and acts of a homosexual character--which, when adults are
alone concerned, the French leave to be dealt with by the social
reaction, are in Germany directly dealt with by the law. These things
and the like are viewed in France with fully as much detestation as in
Germany, but while the German considers that that detestation is itself
a reason for inflicting a legal penalty on the detested act, the
Frenchman considers that to inflict a punishment upon such acts by law
is an inadmissible interference of the State in private affairs, and an
unnecessary interference since the soc