Note 46 — A LECTURE

(p. 29). That a law, which in and for itself is bad and contrary to nature, however condemnable from an ethical point of view, and its modification urgently necessary, may yet in many cases receive a provisional sanction from the reason, this has long been recognized and made clear, as e.g. by Bentham in his Traités de Législation civ. et pén. In antiquity Socrates, who deemed himself worthy to be feasted in the Prytaneum, died for the sake of this conviction. The positive legal code, despite all its defects, creates a condition of things which is better than anarchy, and since each act of insubordination to the law threatens to injure its force in general, so in those circumstances brought about by the law itself, it may be that provisionally and for the individual a mode of action even from the rational standpoint is right, which, apart from this, would be in no way justifiable. All this results without doubt from the relativity of the secondary ethical rules, which will be treated later.

It may be added that errors respecting the laws of positive morality (a point shortly to be discussed in the lecture) in a similar way demand, under certain circumstances, to be taken into account.

It dare not, on the other hand, be overlooked that there are here limits, and that the saying: “We ought to obey God rather than man,” may not, in its free and sublime range, be allowed to suffer injury.