Nearly all the Teutonic languages (including the Anglo-Saxon) pos ses. some form of the word reek, with a double sense equivalent to the Latin jigs, namely, law and faculty. The modern English uses right in the sense of faculty alone. The High German has gads (from adzno, " to place," like IlecAhr and faun), for a written law equivalent to kr. The Low German language. have, instead of gesetz, a word formed (ruin lege"), to lay down, which in Anglo-Saxon is loge or tog, in modern English taw. The word law, however, in modern English, has not the limited sense of peed: but is coextensive with the Latin jar, when the latter does not faculty. We do not wish to dwell unnecessarily on these etymologies, but we will shortly notice that, besides apt, the Dutch language has the word meet in the sense of law. This word is derived from the ancient 'dawn, Gothic, "to bind," and is equivalent etymologically to the Latin ubligatio. The English verb to wed is the same wonL Lite, which signifies marriage in modern German, originally meant law or ordinance (` Nibelungen Lied,' v. 139, 5061); so that the Dutch art and the English wed stand to one another in the same relation as the ancient and modern senses of ehe.
2. Proper and improper Meanings of the word Law.—A law, in the strict sense of the word, is a general command of an intelligent being to another intelligent being.* Laws established by the sovereign government of an Independent civil society are styled positire, as ex isting by ?calk [Sovnsrmc:rre.] When law is spoken of simply and absolutely, positirelaw is always understood. Thus in such phrases as "A lawyer," student of law," " legal," " legality," "legislation," " legislator," &c., positive law in meant. Positive law is the subject, matter of the science of jurisprudence. [JUItlarlitDEXCE.] Every general command of a sovereign government to its subjects, however conveyed, falls under the head of positive laws. The general com mands of God to man (whether revealed or unrevealed) are called the lawn of God, or the Divine law : they are sometimes also known by the name of " natural law," or " law of nature." The Divine law (accenting to the phraseology just explained) is the standard to which all human laws ought to conform. On the mode of determining this standard some remarks be made lower down.
Besidespositive law, which is known to be a command enforced by a sanction,t and the Divine law, which is ()reamed to be so, there are scene elan.e• of laws which are not commands, though they bear an analogy, more or lens remote, to laws properly so called. Thus by the term " law of nations," or " international law," are signified those maxima or rules which independent political societies observe, or ought to observe, In their conduct towards one another. An inde pendent political society is a society which is net In the habit of rendering obedience to • political superior; consequently, an lode.
political society cannot receive a command or be subject to a w properly so called. !tut Inasmuch as the maxim of international morality are genera], and determine maxis wills by the fear of pro voking the hostility of other independent societies against their own country, there is a close analogy between the so-called " law of nations" law.
clam. of laws not imperative, but having as close an analogy to laws proper as the maxims composing international law, are time ‘' law of honour " and the " law of fashion ; " the laws of certain sports and gismos also stand in a similar predicamenL The term taw 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 population," the " laws of human the "law of a mathematical series." In laws of this class (which may be styled "metaphorical laws ") there is no com mand and no intelligence to work npon • nothing more is signified than that there is a certain uniformity of phenomena, analogous to the uniformity of conduct produced in men by the operation of a law properly so called. ANALO6V.1 3. ,pecies of l'osihre Law.—The positive laws of any country, con sidered as a system, may be divided with reference to their sources (or the modes by which they become laws) into written and unwritten. This division of laws is of great antiquity ; the expression unwritten lases occurs in Xenophon's ' Memorabilia,' in a conversation attributed to Socrates (iv. 4, 19), in the ' Antigone' of Sophocles (v. 450-7, comp.
' Aristot. 13, 2), in the Republic and Laws of Plato' (v. 563 and 793, ed. Steph.), and in Demosthenes (' Aristocrat.; p. G39, ed. Reisk.). In these passages it appears to signify those rules of law or morality which (being founded on obvious dictates of utility) are nearly common to all countries. Unwritten law, in this sense, corre sponds with the jus naturalc of the Roman lawyers. In the language of the Digests and the Institutes, the terms written and unwritten law (" jus quad constat ex scripto ant ex non scripto") are used in a more precise manner, to signify those laws which had been promulgated by the Roman legislature in writing, and those rules of law which had been tacitly adopted by the same legislature from usage.' For (as it is stated in a passage of the Digests) " since the laws derive their binding force from nothing but the decision of the people, it is fitting that those rules which the people have approved of without reducing them to writing should be equally obligatory. For what difference is there whether the people declares its will by vote, or by its conduct 1" (Dig.