ABSTRACT
Mythology and religion are always supporters of the current morality. They contain the oldest and most trustworthy evidences of the ethical tendency in the human race; they are the most ancient language of the moral consciousness. All law is an expression of an ethical striving. It regulates human relations, even if these are only outward; it says what ought or ought not to happen, no matter whether or not the form, in which it makes its announcements, gives expression to the Ought. The "science" of law simply takes over this value as given. It is not its determinative concept that emerges, but merely the concept of the relations and consequences. In the moral consciousness the unactualized values appear as ideals; but ideals are dead so long as a creative form-giving hand does not set them vividly before the eye—and not only before the bodily eye. The history of the arts contains the history of moral ideas.
