both rather vitiate what both often illustrate." The "metaphors from law," however, will doubtless long continue to furnish the most effective means for popular instruction in morals; and if the different senses of the term be carefully distinguished, perhaps no more useful term can be found for the ethical scientist.
In all the sciences of to-day the term 'law' plays an important part. While the one term is used with equal freedom in all, the corresponding concept takes on almost as many different forms as there are different sciences. We hear continually such expressions as laws of motion, laws of chemistry, laws of logic, laws of poetry, laws of the state, laws of etiquette, etc. Among all these various uses of the term we may distinguish two typical forms of the concept: (1) law in jurisprudence, (2) law in physics. The first is the original form of the concept, the second a derived form. All the other uses of the term are varieties of one or the other of these fundamental species of the concept, or else more or less confused combinations of the two. "The term law," says Zeller, "in all languages meant originally a rule of conduct established by some person, whether human or divine, with regard to the conduct of man; a law is what the community requires or the Deity commands."[1] It is precisely in this same sense that we use the term to-day in jurisprudence. Holland gives the definition: "A law is a general rule of external human action enforced by a sovereign political authority."[2] This form of the concept involves three essential elements. To see these clearly we may state the definition thus: A law is (1) a rule of conduct which (2) a will in authority imposes upon (3) a subject will.
(1) The essence of the first element, rule of conduct, is uniformity in action. Without prescribed rules one man may act in one way, another in another, or the same man in different ways at different times. Wherever uniformity is observed in the conduct of men, it is ascribed to laws of some kind, — as the laws of the state, laws of custom, laws of nature, etc. Thus the law is an expression of uniformity in action. (2) This rule
