CHAPTER VI. EARLY NAMES OF LAW: RIGHT AND WRONG. I FIND it necessary to complete my consideration of the unconscious definitions of law contained in its early names by some notice of two well-known words belonging to the Teutonic group of language—Right and Wrong. They claim our attention, partly because, as I have said above, the former was once with ourselves, and still is elsewhere, used in the sense of law; partly because a most misleading explanation of both is bound up with Austin's definition of law. Austin's Right and Wrong. Of Right in general, right the adjective, or Right the substantive without an article, Austin says, it is true, very little. He generally means by the word right, when he does use it without an article, an abstract expression embracing all rights, or, a right defined in the most general manner1. But in one very short fragmentary note, for the number and magnitude of moral problems involved, he derives rectum from rego, recht from “rechten or richten (dirigo),” right from "some Anglo-Saxon verb which comes with dirigo from a common root," just from jussum2. Just and right, according to the same note, signify that which is commanded; aequum and Sikalov that which conforms to a law or rule. Wrong is wrung, the opposite of rectum. = 1 Austin 16, p. 408; 17, p. 412; 18, p. 419. 2 Id. 18, p. 421, note 68. Some expressions, for instance the words last quoted, point to the truer view of these words wrong and right: but, on the whole, Austin evidently takes right, in point of derivation, to be that which is commanded. And, in this way, he in fact accounts for an occasional confusion in the use of the word, between the something commanded, i.e. the obligation incumbent upon the party obliged, and the more ordinary sense in which a right, from his point of view, is used, to denote the position of the party towards whom that something is commanded3. Blackstone's Commentaries contain little attempt either to define Right or to trace the origin of Rights. Almost the only passage where he speaks of Right in the abstract is the definition of "municipal law" as commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. As to the origin, therefore, of Right, he appears to agree with Austin: but he practically drops the subject, and speaks only of particular rights and wrongs without further definition, except stray statements to the same effect as that just quoted". Perhaps the main practical objections to Austin's theory of law and right in general, lie in the absurd logical results at which he arrives with reference to Constitutional Law and the somewhat parallel case of International Law. The meaning, too, of particular rights and wrongs, and the deduction of the ideas thus indicated from that of right and wrong in general, has, in its correct or incorrect apprehension, a practical bearing upon the desirability of this or that classifi cation or subdivision of law. Such classifications are nugatory if merely depending on the speculations of philosophers: they 3 L. c. in last note and Lect. 24, page. 481, note. 4 Int. § 2, p. 53. 5 E. g. Comm. 1. 1, p. 122. So too Markby, § 104, p. 49, passes by right in the abstract as highly difficult to define, and confines himself to rights in particular. derive their utility solely from squaring with the beliefs and expressions of ordinary men, as expressed in their more abstract or metaphysical terms. I must not, however, anticipate the more detailed treatment of particular rights and wrongs, into which I shall have to enter when I come to speak of the subdivisions of law. At present I propose to consider what is the original idea expressed by the two words right and wrong in general, and where, if at all, the notice of command or authority comes in; to add a brief notice of some Romance equivalents to the words now under consideration; and to conclude by enquiring how right and its equivalents come, in some languages, to mean law. These do not appear to me questions of mere abstract psychology, nor of mere historical or antiquarian interest, because they are directly connected with the present acceptation of words, from which their original meaning is seldom, if ever, entirely lost. Derivation of "Right." To say, as Austin says in the note above quoted, that right is derived from directum is a mere lax statement which the author himself corrects, and which I need not therefore notice, further than by way of caution that compounds, such as dirigo, can be allowed little or no weight, in explaining the simpler forms rego, &c. The antithesis RIJU and VRIJINA, RIGHT and WRONG, is as old as the Vedic hymns. The root of the first appears in the Latin rectus, the Gothic raihts, the Saxon riht, modern German recht and English right. To each of these words, 6 "Uralter Gegensatz," Curtius Grundz. p. 181, § 142. I owe to Prof. Cowell's kindness the following quotation (with translation) from the Rig-Veda (iv. 1, 17) : â sûryo brihatas tishthad ajrân riju marteshu vṛijinâ ca paçyan. The sun stood above the broad fields, beholding the rights and the wrongs (right and wrong actions) among mortals. which must, I think, in some cases have been formed independently of each other from their common root, there were attached all the meanings of physical straightness, truth, and moral rectitude still to be seen in the English word right. For the Indian languages, of which I have no direct knowledge, I give Curtius' authority'. For similar meanings in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon or old English, and later English, Bosworth's Gospels will supply us at once with clear in stances. I have used the term moral rectitude; but what is the peculiar form or basis of approbation involved in the idea to which this name is given, I cannot here venture to determine. Without entering into the question of Intuition or Utilitarianism (either in the wide or narrow sense of the latter), I shall merely assume that there is a specific feeling called moral approbation that when even ordinary people say "this is right" : 7 Grundzüge, p. 185, § 153. Skt. rj-u-s, gerade, recht, aufrichtig. Zd. erezu, gerade, recht, wahr. Root, Skt. ar-j, erlangen, whence r-n-j-e, strecke mich, and, besides the words above quoted, rj-ra-s, Führer. I have for intelligibility to the English reader replaced the German philologer's ý by j. 8 Luke 3. 4. Gothic: raihtos waurkeith staigos is. A.-S.: doth his sithas rihte. Wiclif: make ye his pathis right. Tyndale: make his pathes straight. Luke 10. 28. Gothic: raihtaba andhoft. A.-S.: rihte thu andswarodest. Wiclif: thou hast answerid rightly. Luke 1. 75. Gothic in sunyai yah garaihtein. Matthew 5. 20. Gothic: izwaraizos garaihteins. A.-S.: eower rihtwisnys; &c. &c. they mean or think they mean something different from its being pleasant or profitable. As to the metaphor, which I think I can shew to be involved in these words, it may be that the straightness predicated of human conduct indicates its being regular or uniform; and here lies the one approach to Austin's notion that their meaning is conformity to a standard or rule"-but the approach is really quite as near to the idea and fact of custom. Right, in this sense of approval, however arrived at, is common enough both as a substantive and adjective in our earliest specimens of English, notably in the laws which have already been so often quoted1o. We find it used, as an adjective, to qualify customs and "kingly dooms" themselves" so that it evidently indicates some standard, which, though it may possibly have arisen from use or custom, has come to be different either from that or from positive institution. With all of the group of words that I have been considering there is evidently connected an earlier verbal root signifying to stretch or extend 12. This may, I think, be 9 Compare his note to p. 276 (Lect. 6), on justice, with what he says in the note above quoted (Austin 18, p. 421) on aequum and dikalov. For the Stoic comparison of justice to the straight line see Diogenes Läertius 7. 1 (Zeno), § 127. Thorpe, 1. p. 30. Thorpe, 1. 60. 10 riht is. Hlothhaere and Eadric, 6. 11 Ine, pr. (probably not so old as the domas themselves). riht aw and rihte cyne-domas. 12 The Sanskrit RIJU comes from RAG, through arj or raj meaning to go, to reach but the original root signified to be or make straight. See Corssen 1. 448. The Gothic RAIHTS is from the base of RAKYAN (modern German recken, English rack to stretch), the existence of which is proved by UFRAKYAN, Mat. 8. 3; Mark 1. 41. The A. S. RIHT may, similarly be derived from the base of RECCAN, for which word Grein gives the meanings C. 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