Within its jurisdiction the State maintains order and law and in this way makes life worth living for its subjects.  Order and law are the necessary conditions of men’s normal activities, of their industry, of their ownership of whatever the State allows them to possess—­for outside of the State there is no ownership—­of their leisure and of their freedom to enjoy it.  The State is even the basis of men’s characters, for it sets up and establishes a minimum standard of conduct.  Certain acts are defined as unlawful and punished as crimes.  Other acts, though not criminal, are yet so far subject to the disapproval of the courts that the man who does them may have to compensate those who suffer injury or damage in consequence of them.  These standards have a dual origin, in legislation and precedent.  Legislation is a formal expression of the agreement of the community upon the definition of crimes, and common law has been produced by the decisions of the courts in actions between man and man.  Every case tried in a civil court is a conflict between two parties, a struggle for justice, the judgment being justice applied to the particular case.  The growth of English law has been through an endless series of conflicts, and the law of to-day may be described as a line passing through a series of points representing an infinite number of judgments, each the decision of a conflict in court.  For seven hundred years, with hardly an interruption, every judgment of a court has been sustained by the force of the State.  The law thus produced, expressed in legislation and interpreted by the courts, is the foundation of all English conduct and character.  Upon the basis thus laid there takes place a perpetual evolution of higher standards.  In the intercourse of a settled and undisturbed community and of the many societies which it contains, arise a number of standards of behaviour which each man catches as it were by infection from the persons with whom he habitually associates and to which he is obliged to conform, because if his conduct falls below them his companions will have nothing to do with him.  Every class of society has its notions of what constitutes proper conduct and constrains its members to carry on their lives, so far as they are open to inspection, according to these notions.  The standards tend constantly to improve.  Men form an ideal of behaviour by observing the conduct of the best of their class, and in proportion as this ideal gains acceptance, find themselves driven to adopt it for fear of the social ostracism which is the modern equivalent of excommunication.  Little by little what was at first a rarely attained ideal becomes a part of good manners.  It established itself as custom and finally becomes part of the law.