Upon the great majority of people it is imposed from within—sometimes indeed by the fear of public opinion, but chiefly by a more or less effective social sense. We are free from the law not because we take care not to break it, but because a higher principle has lifted us outside and beyond its bounds. Our righteousness truly exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees, that is, of the legal mind; and that is because a higher principle of righteousness is at work within us. This higher principle of righteousness is of course no other than our own independent and energised sense of social obligation. The degree to which it is effectual may and does vary in different persons; but it is not to be questioned that democracy exists because of the increasing efficiency of the inward sense of social obligation in its members. Its further development is contingent upon the measure in which this inner constraint supersedes coercive machinery as the organ of social justice. It is, of course, better for men to live under law than in anarchy. What we have to understand concerning law and its machinery is that it is a stage in the evolution of social order and in our education into true freedom. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the law itself may become a real hindrance to this process. Just because law is a _definition_ of obligation, it tends to be regarded as fixing the outmost limits of social duty; and whatsoever we do beyond these limits ranks as work of supererogation. That is bad enough; but worse may happen. One may suppose that outside these limits, any kind of conduct is admissible; and law, despite its intention, may therefore arrest the growth of the social sense. The social sense, that is, is expected to operate up to frontier line defined by the law; beyond that point, it is not called upon to act. We require to introduce into men’s minds a different conception of law from that popularly current. It is the office of the law to make itself superfluous; and its administration requires not a superstitious veneration of its majesty or a pedantic respect for its letter, but humanity and common sense. The law is overmuch conceived as our gaoler; properly understood, it is, as St. Paul said of the Mosaic Law, our “schoolmaster.” But so long as we talk about “vindicating” the law more than reclaiming the offender—as the legal mind is apt to do—so long will men tend to regard the law not as a stepping-stone to higher things, but as an irksome restraint; and while we indulge in tall talk about the majesty of the law, we make law-abidingness “the law and the prophets,” and jeopardise our chance of effecting that increasing enfranchisement of the social sense in which alone is the hope of the democratic ideal.