stematic and formal improvement, the theory of
lawmaking in the maturity of law was negative. It told us chiefly how
we should not legislate and upon what subjects we should refrain from
lawmaking. Having no positive theory of creative lawmaking, the last
century was little conscious of requiring or holding a theory as to
the end of law. But in fact it held such a theory and held it
strongly.

As ideas of what law is for are so largely implicit in ideas of what
law is, a brief survey of ideas of the nature of law from this
standpoint will be useful. No less than twelve conceptions of what law
is may be distinguished.

First, we may put the idea of a divinely ordained rule or set of rules
for human action, as for example, the Mosaic law, or Hammurapi's code,
handed him ready-made by the sun god, or Manu, dictated to the sages
by Manu's son Bhrigu in Manu's presence and by his direction.

Second, there is an idea of law as a tradition of the old customs
which have proved acceptable to the gods and hence point the way in
which man may walk with safety. For primitive man, surrounded by what
seem vengeful and capricious powers of nature, is in continual fear of
giving offence to these powers and thus bringing down their wrath upon
himself and his fellows. The general security requires that men do
only those things and do them only in the way which long custom has
shown at least not displeasing to the gods. Law is the traditional or
recorded body of precepts in which that custom is preserved and
expressed. Whenever we find a body of primitive law possessed as a
class tradition by a political oligarchy it is likely to be thought of
in this way just as a body of like tradition in the custody of a
priesthood is certain to be thought of as divinely revealed.

A third and closely related idea conceives of law as the recorded
wisdom of the wise men of old who had learned the safe course or the
divinely approved course for human conduct. When a traditional custom
of decision and custom of action has been reduced to writing in a
primitive code it is likely to be thought of in this way, and
Demosthenes in the fourth century B. C. could describe the law of
Athens in these terms.

Fourth, law may be conceived as a philosophically discovered system of
principles which express the nature of things, to which, therefore,
man ought to conform his conduct. Such was the idea of the Roman
jurisconsult, grafted, it is true, on the second a