THE observation has often been made that in early moral codes the so-called negative commandments, which tell people what they ought not to do, are much more prominent than the positive commandments, which tell them what they ought to do. The main reason for this is that negative commandments spring from the disapproval or acts, whereas positive commandments spring from the disapproval of forbearances or omissions, and that the indignation of men is much more easily aroused by action than by the absence of it. A person who commits a harmful deed is a more obvious cause of pain than a person who causes harm by doing nothing, and this naturally affects the question of guilt in the eyes of the multitude. A scrutinising judge of course carefully distinguishes between willfulness and negligence, whereas, to his mind, a forbearance is morally equivalent to an act. The unreflecting judge, on the other hand, is much less concerned with the question of wilfulness than with the distinction between acting and not-acting. Even the criminal laws of civilised nations take little cognisance of forbearances and omissions;[1] and one reason for this is that they evoke little public indignation. Even if it be admitted that the rules of beneficence, so far as details are concerned, must be left in a great measure to {304} the jurisdiction of private ethics, the limits of the law on this head, as Bentham remarks, seem "to be capable of being extended a good deal farther than they seem ever to have been extended hitherto." And he appropriately asks, "In cases where the person is in danger, why should it not be made the duty of every man to save another from mischief, when it can be done without prejudicing himself, as well as to abstain from bringing it on him?"[2] [Footnote 1: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_, ii. 113. Hepp, _Zurechnung auf dem Gebiete des Civilrechts_, p. 115 (Roman law).] [Footnote 2: Bentham, _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, p. 322 _sq._ To a certain extent, however, this has been admitted by legislators even in the Middle Ages. Frederick II.'s Sicilian Code imposed a penalty on persons who witnessed conflagrations or shipwrecks without helping the victims, and a fine of four augustales on anyone who, hearing the shrieks of an assaulted woman, did not hurry to her rescue (_Constitutiones Napolitana sive Siculæ_, i. 28, 22 [Lindenbrog, _Codex legum antiquarum_, pp. 715, 712]). Bracton says (_De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ_, fol. 121, vol. ii. 280 _sq._) that he who could rescue a man from death and did not do it, ought not to be exempt from punishment. It was a principle of the Canon law that he who does not prevent the infliction of an injury upon his neighbour when it lies in his power to do so, is to be regarded as an accomplice in the offence (Geyer, _Lehre von der Nothwehr_, p. 74. Gregory IX. _Decretales_, v. 12, 6. 2: "Qui potuit hominem liberare a morte, et non liberavit, eum occidit").]