Nearly all the Teutonic languages (in cluding the Anglo-Saxon) possess some form of the word recht, with a double sense equivalent to the Latin jus, namely, law and faculty. The modern English uses right in the sense of faculty alone. The High German has gesetz (from setzen, place," like Oetrabs and Oigis), for a written law equivalent to /ex. The Low German languages have, instead of gesetz, a word formed from le en, to lay down, which in Anglo-Saxon is laga or lug, in modern English law. The word law however, in modern English, has not the limited sense of gesetz, but is coextensive with the Latin jus, when the latter does not signify penny. We do not wish to dwell unnecessarily on these etymologies, but we will shortly notice that, besides refit, the Dutch language has the word wet in the sense of law. This word is derived from the antient withan, Gothic, "to bind," and is equivalent etymologi cally to the Latin obligati°. The Eng lish verb to wed is the same word. Elie, which signifies marriage in modern Ger man, originally meant law or ordinance (Nibelungen Lied, v. 139, 5061); so' that the Dutch wet and the English wed stand to one another in the same relation as the autient and modern senses of elte.
2. Proper and improper Meanings of the word Law.—A law, in the strict sense of the word, is a general command of an in telligent being to another intelligent being.* Laws established by the sove reign government of an independent civil society are styled positive, as existing by positio. [SOVEREIGNTY.] When law is spoken of simply and absolutely, positive law is always understood. Thus in such phrases as " a lawyer," "a student of law," "legal," "legality," "legislation," "le gislator," &c., positive law is meant. Positive law is the subject-matter of the science of jurisprudence. [JURISPRU DENCE.] Every general command of a sovereign government to its subjects, however conveyed, falls under the head of positive laws. The general commands of God to man (whether revealed or un revealed) are called the laws of God, or the Divine law : they are sometimes also known by the name of" natural law," or " law of nature." The Divine law (ac cording to the phraseology just explained) is the standard to which all human laws ought to conform. On the mode of de termining this standard some remarks will be made lower down.
Besides positive law, which is known to be a command enforced by a sanction,' and the Divine law, which is presumed to be so, there are some classes of laws which are not commands, though they bear an analogy more or less remote to laws properly so called. Thus by the term " law of nations," or " international law," are signified those maxims or rules which independent political societies ob serve, or ought to observe, in their con duct towards one another. An indepen
dent political society is a society which is not in the habit of rendering obedience to a political superior ; consequently, an independent political society cannot re ceive a command or be subject to a law properly so called. But inasmuch as the maxims of international morality are ge neral, and determine nien's wills by the fear of provoking the hostility of other independent societies against their own country, there is a close analogy between the so-called " law of nations" and posi tive law. We may here remark that the term " jus gentium," as used by the Roman lawyers, has a different mean ing from " law of nations," as used in modern times. According to their phrase ology, jus civile consists of those rules of law which are peculiar to any indepen dent state ; jus gentium consists of those rules of law which are common to all na tions. (" Quod quisque populus ipso sibi jus constituit, id ipsum civitatis est, voca turque jus civile, quasi proprium jus ipsius civitatis. Quod vero natura vel ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id spud omnes perwque custoditur, voca turque jus gentium, quasi quo jure omnes gentes utuntur." Inst , lib. i. t. 2, 5. 1, and Gains, i. 1.) In the language of the Roman jurists, jus naturale is commonly equivalent to gentium. (See e.g. Inst., lib. i. t. 2, 6. 11.) In some of the Roman historians Jus gentium has a meaning which at least approaches to the law of nations.' (Liv. ii. 4, vi. 1.) Concerning a peculiar meaning attributed tol us natu rale in a passage of Ulpian (Dig., lib. i tit. 1, fr. 1, s. 3; Inst., lib. i. tit. 2, ad. init.), see the remarks of Mr. Austin, in his' Province of Jurisprudence,' p. 108. Other classes of laws not imperative, but having as close an analogy to laws proper as the maxims composing international law, are the "law of honour" and the " law of fashion ;" the laws of certain sports and games, such as the laws of the turd the laws of whist, cricket, chess, &c., also stand in a similar predicament.
The term law is also employed in certain cases where the analogy to laws properly so called is much more remote. Instances of this usage are such expressions as the " laws of motion," the " law of attraction or gravitation," the "law of mortality" in a given country, the "law of popula tion," the "laws of human thought," the " law of a mathematical series." In laws of this class (which may be styled " me taphorical laws") there is no command and no intelligence to work upon; no thing more is signified than that there is a certain uniformity of phenomena, ana logous to the uniformity of conduct pro duced in men by the operation of a law properly so called.