Considering this purely external purpose of the law together with
the fact that it is ready to sacrifice the individual so far as
necessary in order to accomplish that purpose, we can see more
readily than before that the actual degree of personal guilt
involved in any particular transgression cannot be the only
element, if it is an element at all, in the liability incurred.
So far from its [50] being true, as is often assumed, that the
condition of a man's heart or conscience ought to be more
considered in determining criminal than civil liability, it might
almost be said that it is the very opposite of truth. For civil
liability, in its immediate working, is simply a redistribution
of an existing loss between two individuals; and it will be
argued in the next Lecture that sound policy lets losses lie
where they fall, except where a special reason can be shown for
interference. The most frequent of such reasons is, that the
party who is charged has been to blame.

It is not intended to deny that criminal liability, as well as
civil, is founded on blameworthiness. Such a denial would shock
the moral sense of any civilized community; or, to put it another
way, a law which punished conduct which would not be blameworthy
in the average member of the community would be too severe for
that community to bear. It is only intended to point out that,
when we are dealing with that part of the law which aims more
directly than any other at establishing standards of conduct, we
should expect there more than elsewhere to find that the tests of
liability are external, and independent of the degree of evil in
the particular person's motives or intentions. The conclusion
follows directly from the nature of the standards to which
conformity is required. These are not only external, as was shown