thought of as a normal case. It is true that in experience we find individuals and bodies who vindicate their right to issue laws in quite another way, preferably by a supersensuous ordering of things (Jus divinum). But experience teaches also that legislations of this kind aim far more at maintaining given conditions and habits, than at free, purposive, conscious innovations. They invariably belong to that form of the social will which we have called popular belief. This is indeed—even in its relation to customary language—formally free to create and to shape; but it is avowedly and essentially prejudiced in favour of the old, as that which is approved and consecrated, without reflecting upon its utility with reference to particular ends. Even the speech of religion is archaic, and not seldom uttered in language which is comprehensible only to the initiated and learned. Such is the language of the sacred art of pious song; elsewhere the development of language, as of all sign-systems, aims at abbreviations, but here preference is intentionally given to long stretched-out forms as to those which are traditionally solemn. Speaking generally, the “legislation” which is accredited in this way extends more to the forms than to the content of life. It is thus in close contact—and this is entirely true of popular belief—with convention, so that the conventional is often “only” another name for that which is held to be sacred. Convention also is primarily, and to a certain extent always remains, “conservative,” hence the “stiffness” of “etiquette,” the circuitous, ceremoniously solemn form of the language of old-fashioned courtesy, epistolary style, etc. But it is also natural to it to break away and to become a capriciously mutable, novelty-seeking “fashion”. Law, again, as practised and spoken, taught and explained, on the basis of customary law, moves between popular belief and convention with a much stronger preponderance of that preference for the old. So too the special language of law, which as technical approaches to learned and sacred language, but then as the language of a caste (of an order or faculty) is appropriated and transformed in a more free, i.e., more conventional way. Then too conscious legislation deals with it quite arbitrarily—this we already presupposed—as it does with the law itself and in close connexion with it. We have said that in its free handling of the given material of thought and speech science resembles convention and legislation. Here again, as with legislation and strictly speaking with convention also, it is our concept of science of which we are speaking. That which in customary language is called so (at any rate in
