above, but they are of general application. They do not merely
require that every man should get as near as he can to the best
conduct possible for him. They require him at his own peril to
come up to a certain height. They take no account of
incapacities, unless the weakness is so marked as to fall into
well-known exceptions, such as infancy or madness. [51] They
assume that every man is as able as every other to behave as they
command. If they fall on any one class harder than on another, it
is on the weakest. For it is precisely to those who are most
likely to err by temperament, ignorance, or folly, that the
threats of the law are the most dangerous.

The reconciliation of the doctrine that liability is founded on
blameworthiness with the existence of liability where the party
is not to blame, will be worked out more fully in the next
Lecture. It is found in the conception of the average man, the
man of ordinary intelligence and reasonable prudence. Liability
is said to arise out of such conduct as would be blameworthy in
him. But he is an ideal being, represented by the jury when they
are appealed to, and his conduct is an external or objective
standard when applied to any given individual. That individual
may be morally without stain, because he has less than ordinary
intelligence or prudence. But he is required to have those
qualities at his peril. If he has them, he will not, as a general
rule, incur liability without blameworthiness.

The next step is to take up some crimes in detail, and to
discover what analysis will teach with regard to them.

I will begin with murder. Murder is defined by Sir James Stephen,