But it is not only in the formal deliberations of the nation that internal organisation, resting on tradition, secures the predominance of the influence of the best and ablest minds. The same is true of all national thought and feeling. There exists in every great nation the vague influence we call public opinion, which is the great upholder of right and justice, which rewards virtue and condemns vice and selfishness. Public opinion exists only in the minds of individuals (for we have rejected, provisionally at least, the conception of a collective consciousness); yet it is a product not of individual, but of collective, mental life. And it has in any healthy nation far higher standards of right and justice and tolerance than the majority of individuals could form or maintain; that is to say, it is in these respects far superior to an opinion which would be the mere resultant or algebraic sum of the opinions of all the living individuals. In reference to any particular matter its judgment is far superior to that of the average of individuals, and superior probably in many cases to that which even the best individuals could form for themselves. How does public opinion come to be superior to individual and to average opinion? There seems to be something paradoxical in the statement. The fact is of the utmost importance; for public opinion is the ultimate source of sanctions of all public acts, the highest court of appeal before which every executive act performed in the name of the nation must justify itself. If public opinion were merely the immediate expression of the collective feelings and judgments of an unorganised mass of men, its verdicts would be (as we have seen) inferior to those of the average individuals, whereas, as a matter of fact, its expressions are much superior to those of the average individuals. The influence of public opinion is especially clear and interesting in its relations to law. In this country it is not made by law, but makes law. Where law is imposed and long maintained by the authority of despotic power, it will of course mould public opinion; but, in any progressive highly organised nation, law and the lawyers are always one or two or more generations behind public opinion. The most progressive body of law formally embodies the public opinion of past generations rather than of the generation living at the time.