Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/305

 identity, it has to develop new branches or systems of law, or to borrow them ready-made from nations whose polity is in advance of its own, who have made themselves representative nations in the particular branch of sociology in which it desires to regulate itself. Hence, in England, on the original superstructure of ancient popular law is superinduced, in the age of the Conquest, the jus honorarium of the royal courts; and, when the royal courts have become the courts of common law, on their rigour is superinduced the moderating influence of Equity and Appeal: on the conversion of the nation to Christianity a religious discipline is a necessity, and on that religious discipline, as the framework of the Church is built up, there is based a canonical jurisprudence; if the nation is in close communication with foreign churches or a great Catholic religion, it naturally adopts, from them or it, its religious legislation; if not in such close intercourse, it develops a system of its own, and, when the intercourse becomes closer, modifies its own until it is more or less in harmony with that of the nations round it, always retaining more or less of its own home growth. Or again, still as the philosopher, I might say: Religion, Law and Morality cover the area of human action with rules and sanctions, and, with different origins, motives, and machinery, regulate regions of common energy, a number of acts that fall within reach of each or all. The fact that they spring from different sources necessitates the formation of distinct systems; the fact that they cover the same ground accounts for the possibility of conflicting operation; the fact that, whilst they overlap one another, their proper areas nowhere coincide, necessitates some sort of definition and limitation of the scope and system of each, which definition and limitation must be supplied either by a concordat between them or by the subordination of one to the other. And once more: within the region of religious activity itself there are provinces which demand varying degrees of distinctness in definition and graduation of discipline; there are matters of doctrine, of discipline proper, of property and of judicature; there are legislation, jurisdiction, administration; there are