GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

578
POLITICS
growth, and law is one of the expressions of that growth.
Law begins as custom, of which it is the natural and,
therefore, determined development; That which determines
its nature and development is the character of the
people from whose life it springs and whose conduct it
regulates. Society, in fact, and the laws and institutions
of society are living expressions of the characters of the
individuals who it. compose As these evolve, so does law
evolve, and the factors which determine the character
and behaviour of a people determine also the character
and provisions of the laws they obey. The inferences are
(t ) that society has a nature and a being of its own which
are not necessarily those of any of its members, although it
is brought into existence by the coming together
of its
members, and that law is an expression of this being:
(it) that the character of society cannot be suddenly or
artificially changed, any more than the character of a
person can be suddenly or artificially changed. These
conclusions belong, it is obvious, to the conservative
tradition represented by Burke. Re-inforced, as they
are, by the natural aversion of the lawyer from sudden
change, the tendency of his mind, accustomed to the slow
and gradual growth of statute law from precedent to
precedent, to assume that all social development must be
equally slow and equally gradual, and his distrust of
ad hoc legislation for special purposes the need for which
is deduced from a priori theories about the nature and end
of society, they constitute a sustained criticism of the
whole way of thinking exemplified by Social Contrast
and Natural Rights theories and a powerful impetus to the
general movement of thought which culminates in the
idealist theory of the State.
(3) Criticism of Representative Government.
A third source of idealist theory is to be found in the
criticism of representative government. This criticism,
which first appears in Rousseau's work, 1 was already
1 See Chapter XIII, p. 495.