ABSTRACT
An interestingly naive case of the use of ideas in social interpretation is to be found in Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society, a work highly valued because of the progress it marked in our knowledge of the structure of primitive communities. "A community endeavors to perfect its type in accordance with the prevailing conception of an ideal good". This position furnishes the basis for Giddings' "first law of social choices", in which he arranges the series of ideal goods that have been influential, as those of personal force; utilitarian ideals; integrity, and self-realization. This chapter shows that Dicey himself does not succeed in establishing clearly what these ideas are, that he produces no proof that they have causal working except by citing certain imperfect. Dicey holds that in England in the nineteenth century public opinion has been the great force in producing the laws. There are "tides of opinion" that swell till some other tides cross them and check them.
