ABSTRACT
The coercive operation of external sanctions is of course specially necessary in the case of a citizen of bad disposition. The law and the social will respectively are imperative by virtue of these sanctions. Whatever be the precise scope of a particular sanction, and whether it be legal or social, its essential characteristic is that it is a probability, rather than a certainty, of evil consequences in the case of wrongdoing. To take one illustration, manslaughter is prohibited by the law of this country. The sanction of this prohibition is any term of incarceration up to that involved by a life sentence. The effective sanction is necessary to the maintenance of order not only in any society of individuals but also in the great society of states. Latent in the society of states there must necessarily be the force sufficient to inflict evil upon a state which opposes the general will.
