To the succeeding ages, it will be a flaming beacon, and everywhere men, who are confronted with the acute problems of this complex age, can take encouragement from the fact that a small and weak people, when confronted with similar problems, had the strength and will to impose restraint upon themselves by peacefully proclaiming in the simple words of the noble preamble to the Constitution: 

“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Note the words “ordain and establish.”  They imply perpetuity.  They make no provision for the secession of any State, even if it deems itself aggrieved by federal action.  And yet the right to secede was urged for many years, but Lincoln completed the work of Washington, Franklin, Madison and Hamilton by establishing that “a government for the people, by the people and of the people should not perish from the earth.”

IV.  The Revolt Against Authority

“Where there is no vision, the people perish:  but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

PROVERBS xxix. 18.

One of the most quoted—­and also mis-quoted—­proverbs of the wise Solomon says, as translated in the authorized version:  “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  What Solomon actually said was:  “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.”  The translator thus confused an effect with a cause.  What was the vision to which the Wise Man referred?  The rest of the proverb, which is rarely quoted, explains: 

“Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint:  but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

The vision, then, is the authority of law, and Solomon’s warning is that to which the great and noble founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, many centuries later gave utterance, when he said: 

“That government is free to the people under it, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; and all the rest is tyranny, oligarchy and confusion.”

It is my present purpose to discuss the moral psychology of the present revolt against the spirit of authority.  Too little consideration has been paid by the legal profession to questions of moral psychology.  These have been left to metaphysicians and ecclesiastics, and yet—­to paraphrase the saying of the Master—­“the laws were made for man and not man for the laws,” and if the science of the law ignores the study of human nature and attempts to conform man to the laws, rather than the laws to man, then its development is a very partial and imperfect one.