These little traits, these concessions to personal demands, which to a coarse mind do not seem obviously justified, go to prove that positive Law continues to grow beyond the bounds of its unavoidably crude materialism, and strives to rise into the regions of the unwritten law of the Peripatetics, where ideal possessions are of more importance than those which have traditionally come within the scope of criminal and civil Law. Law and Custom have a natural tendency to approach more and more nearly to one another, to become merged in one another where the line that divides them is but faintly indicated. The closer the union between them, the more perfect is the Morality of a society. Absolute perfection would be reached if Law, which has been derived by differentiation from Morality, should, after a protracted period of development, return to its source and be completely merged again in Morality. But that is a dream which can never be realized as long as man is constituted as he is at the present time. Enthusiasts have dreamed of it, and in their imagination have seen an anarchical and lawless society in which no positive Law, no sanctions of force were needed, and in which the understanding and conscience of individuals would suffice to ensure the rule of good faith and goodness, and the curbing of selfishness. As far as man can tell we shall never attain this Utopia. We shall never be able to do without positive Law, not only on account of undeveloped and perverse natures, in which animalism has the upper hand of humanity, and which must be kept under strict discipline, but because a sure guide is needed in cases of doubt and irresolution which confuse even the good, nay, the best, men when passion and violent desire, with their heavy thunderclouds, darken the outlook of Reason, and judgment wavers amid the hurly-burly of a spiritual tempest. All that we may hope for and should desire is that Law should be filled with the spirit of Morality and embrace as many moral ideas as possible. It lies in the nature of the thing that Morality was never clearly and definitely formulated, for as soon as this was done it assumed the character of Law. It remained general and slightly vague, it spoke to men in such indefinite terms as "good," "virtue," "duty," "love of one's neighbour," "unselfishness," "patience"--terms into which everyone can read the meaning which suits his thoughts and feelings. Mankind has never lacked moral teachers. The Indian Shastras and the Chings, Confucius and Meng Tse, the prophets of Israel and Ben Sirach, Plato and the wise men of the Stoics, the Zend Avesta, Jesus and Paul, the platonic ethics of Nicomachus, those of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, thousands of years ago preached the principles which exhaust the whole field of Morality, and beyond the essentials of which none of the later moralists have gone; neither the "Imitation of Christ" nor Ibn Bachia, Spinoza, the Scotch school and Kant, up to Wundt and Guyau.