Back of all laws and rules, as the fundamental consideration,
whether consciously expressed in laws or carried out instinctively,
lies the welfare of society. Among the wolves the pack that is
best disciplined by the strongest and most successful leader is the
one that survives. In the earlier savage groups the rules which
guided united action grew up as a result of successful experience
in securing food and warding off enemies. Among them the less
disciplined, the less intelligently directed groups perish.
Through his fear of the unknown, stimulated by the terrible
vindications of nature's laws, when poison and pestilence and
storms and floods do their deadly work, the savage feels the
presence of unknown forces that he calls gods, and he thus gives to
his rules of action the sanction of divinity. And as society
develops through the pastoral, agricultural and industrial stages
into the tribe and state, with the development of religion and the
growing sense of right and of responsibility to one's fellow men,
this religious sanction of the law still abides. In the earlier
days the sanction was due to fear of the vengeance of the gods. In
later society it is the sense of right and justice and love for
one's fellow men, springing from the firm belief in the divine
creation and direction of the universe and in God's care for men.
But as this sense of fear or right or justice or love, associated
with a Being felt to be divine, is not universal, inasmuch as many
members of society are found ready to act selfishly, taking the law
into their own hands, force is needed in all stages of society to
put the rules and laws into effect. With every law, as Austin
says, must go a penalty. But as society grows more and more humane
the sense of obligation of each individual for the welfare of his
fellows grows, until in the best society laws are made and obeyed
by most citizens, not from a sense of fear of punishment, but
mainly out of goodwill to others. A sense of justice prevails and
the sanction of law becomes not so much fear of the penalty
imposed, as the moral and religious sense of the individual and of
society. Why, for example, do you obey the law against stealing?