(2) Men generally are willing to bind themselves by law to higher codes than they will live up to if not bound.  In their reflective moments, when they are deciding how to vote, temptations are less insistent and ideals stronger than when they are confronting concrete situations.  To vote for a law which will restrain others, and incidentally one’s self, comes easier than to make a purely personal sacrifice that leaves general practice unaltered.  To realize that this is true, we need but look at the remarkable ethical gains made now year by year through laws voted for by many of the very men whose practice had hitherto been upon a lower moral level.  Very many evils that once seemed fastened upon society have been thus legislated out of existence.[Footnote:  For a vivid picture of earlier industrial conditions which would not now be tolerated, see Charles Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place.] And if the industrial situation still seems wretched, it is because, in our swift advance, new evils are arising about as fast as older evils are eradicated.  The law necessarily lags behind the spread of abuses, so that “there will probably always be a running duel between anti-social action and legislation designed to check it.  Novel methods of corruption will constantly require novel methods of correction . .  But this constant development of the law should make corrupt practices increasingly difficult for the less gifted rascals who must always constitute the great majority of would-be offenders.” [Footnote:  R. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life, p. 99.] The law can never, of course, cover the whole field of human conduct; it represents, in Stevenson’s phrase,” that modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of the rock of mankind.”  Unnecessary extension of the law is cumbersome, expensive, and provocative of impatience and rebellion.  Moreover, there is always some minimum of danger of injustice in attempting legal constraint; the law itself, as approved by the majority, may be unfair, or its application to the concrete case may be unfair.  The individualists are right in feeling that men must be left alone, wherever the possible results are not too dangerous.  But no hard-and-fast line can be drawn between activities that must be left free and those which must be regulated.  Such apparently personal matters as the use of opium or alcohol must be checked because the general happiness is, in the end, greatly and obviously enhanced by such restraint.  But there will always be, beyond the law, a wide field for the satisfaction of personal tastes and the practice of generosity.  There is no double standard; if an act is legally right and morally wrong, that simply means that it lies beyond the boundaries of the limited field which the law covers.  The extension of that field is a matter of practical expediency in each type of situation; beyond that field, but working to the same ends, the forces of education and public opinion are alone available.