It is opportune to remark here that moral legalism, which has hitherto alone occupied the attention of critics, is nothing but a particular case of general practical legalism, and if the particular and not the general case has been observed, this has depended upon the failure to recognize the economic form in its autonomy, so common with philosophers. But from the examples that we have given, it has clearly resulted that legalism is an error which embraces alike Economy and Ethic, introducing into both the philosophic absurdity of the _practically indifferent._ Even a man without moral conscience, or one deprived of it for a moment, if he conceive the guidance of his utilitarian action in the form of laws, loses the compass of his utilitarianism and falls into the arbitrary, which is the ruin of his own individuality. If (to resume the usual example) I impose upon myself the not drinking of wine as a hygienic law, and it happen to me to find myself at a certain moment in such physiological conditions that a glass of wine can accelerate the beating of the heart and restore to me the strength of which I am in need; and if, through faith in the established law, I forget that the law is conditional and not absolute and that the only absolute law is to do at a given moment what is useful at that moment; it is evident that by so reasoning and acting, I am substituting superstition and therefore the arbitrary for prudence and that I am causing injury to myself. [Sidenote: _Critique of the practically indifferent._] It is necessary to maintain against the morally and practically indifferent, that it is a concept altogether external to Ethic and Economic and devastates it terribly whenever it penetrates into it, or (what is worse) subtly corrupts it. In Economic as in Ethic, in the true and proper practical field, there is no _faculty_ that is not also _obligation_; there is no _right_ that is not at the same time a _duty;_ there is nothing _licit_ that is not _forbidden;_ nor _permitted_ that is not turned into a _command._ πάντα ἔξεστιν, ἀλλ' οὐ πάντα συμφέρει, said St. Paul,[1] in obscure but suggestive language that has been much discussed--all is allowed to us but we do not allow anything--we should say in explanation; everything can and should be spiritually elaborated by the will and receive the form of freedom. But in order to destroy that paradoxical concept at the roots, it is necessary to reach the point underground where the concept of _practical legalism_ is to be found, and to show, as we have done, its origin, in the confusion between _principles and laws._ [Sidenote: _Contests between rigorists and latitudinarians and their common error._]