often and
indeed constantly is making trouble in detail without reaching the point
of consciousness. You can see very plainly that a bad man has as much
reason as a good one for wishing to avoid an encounter with the public
force, and therefore you can see the practical importance of the
distinction between morality and law. A man who cares nothing for an
ethical rule which is believed and practised by his neighbors is likely
nevertheless to care a good deal to avoid being made to pay money, and
will want to keep out of jail if he can.

I take it for granted that no hearer of mine will misinterpret what
I have to say as the language of cynicism. The law is the witness and
external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the
moral development of the race. The practice of it, in spite of popular
jests, tends to make good citizens and good men. When I emphasize the
difference between law and morals I do so with reference to a single
end, that of learning and understanding the law. For that purpose you
must definitely master its specific marks, and it is for that that I
ask you for the moment to imagine yourselves indifferent to other and
greater things.

I do not say that there is not a wider point of view from which
the distinction between law and morals becomes of secondary or no
importance, as all mathematical distinctions vanish in presence of the
infinite. But I do say that that distinction is of the first importance
for the object which we are here to consider--a right study and mastery
of the law as a business with well understood limits, a body of dogma
enclosed within definite lines. I have just shown the practical reason
for saying so. If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must
look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences
which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who
finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it,
in the vaguer sanctions of conscience. The theoretical importance of the
distinction is no less, if you would reason on your subject aright. The
law is full of phraseology drawn from morals, and by the mere force of
language continually invites us to pass from one domain to the other
without perceiving it, as we are sure to do unless we have the boundary
constantly before our minds. The law talks about rights, and duties, and
malice, and intent, and negligence, and so forth, and nothing is easier,
or, I