Laws which represent public opinion are no more than customs safe exponents of the moral ideas held by particular members of the society. But on the other hand, there are cases in which a law, unlike a custom, may express the ideas, or simply the will, of a few, or even of {168} a single individual, that is, of the sovereign power only. It is obvious that laws imposed upon a barbarous people by civilised legislators may differ widely from the people's own ideas of right and wrong. For instance, when studying the moral sentiments of the Teutonic peoples from their early law-books, we must carefully set aside all elements of Roman or Christian origin. At the same time, however, it should be remembered that the moral consciousness of a people may gradually be brought into harmony with a law originally foreign to it. If the law is in advance of public opinion--as Roman law undoubtedly was in Teutonic countries--it may raise the views of the people up to its own standard by awaking in them dormant sentiments, or by teaching them greater discrimination in their judgments. And, as has been already noticed, what is forbidden and punished may, for the very reason that it is so, come to be regarded as wrong and worthy of punishment. Finally, a law may enjoin or forbid acts which by themselves are regarded as indifferent from a moral point of view. This is, for instance, the case with the laws which require marriages to be celebrated at certain times and places only, and which forbid the cultivation of tobacco in England. Jurists divide crimes into _mala in se_ and _mala quia prohibita_. The former would be wrong even if they were not prohibited by law, the latter are wrong only because they are illegal.