De la description des lois ; des effets qu’elles produisent ; des vices qui s’y rencontrent, et des

CHAP. 12: > Of the description of laws; of the effects they produce; of the vices found therein, and of the interpretations to which they give rise. Of the legislator's thought. Whether it is good to consult this thought.

The general laws according to which peoples live and reproduce themselves existed long before anyone thought of describing the various ways in which they act. There are even today numerous and civilized populations that do not possess an exact and complete description of the dispositions of those that govern them. Before the French Revolution, there were, in France, about one hundred and forty-four provinces, each having its particular customs; these customs had only begun to be described in the time of Charles VII; and at the end of the reign of Louis XII, the description of only sixteen was possessed. Thus, from the instant there existed peoples on our territory, until the beginning of the sixteenth century, the greatest number of these peoples was subject to laws whose description was to be found nowhere. France was, however, one of the most civilized countries of Europe, or, if you will, one of the least barbarous.

For the different ways in which these laws acted to be described, it was necessary not only that they exist, but that there be found men endowed with sufficient sagacity to observe them. It is not enough, in effect, for laws to be established, for one to know how to observe their nature and their results. Peoples obey them by a sort of instinct, without taking the trouble to reflect on their existence, and often without knowing them. This is little in conformity with the systems that have been made on laws; but it is no less exact for that; and we should even be surprised if it were otherwise. Men speak correctly, without ever having read a grammar, and without having studied the rules of language; they acquire ideas, think, reason, without having reflected on the faculties of the human understanding, and without knowing the writings of the metaphysicians; they cultivate the earth and gather its fruits, without knowing any principle of physics; they make instruments, without having reflected on the laws of mechanics; they make bread, wine, prepare their foods, without knowing any principle of chemistry; finally, they are sick, recover, or die, without ever having observed the symptoms of a disease. They reflect no more on the laws that govern the social order than on the principles of the arts or sciences; and that does not prevent them from conducting themselves in a more or less regular manner; they make and execute, at every moment of their lives, sales, exchanges, loans, donations, deposits, and a multitude of other contracts, they marry, take care of their children, receive and divide successions, respect the properties of their neighbors, without ever having thought of the laws, without having read a book of jurisprudence, and even without troubling themselves as to whether any exist.

There often arise, between men, discussions on the subject of their transactions, or of their respective claims, and then they are forced to reflect on their acts and on their proceedings. In such a case, they feel the necessity of resorting to men who have studied the manner in which things happen in society. But, if one compares the number of affairs that are handled regularly and without giving rise to the slightest discussion, among a civilized nation, to the number of those where the common rules are violated or contested, one will find that the number of the latter is excessively small. If one likewise compares the mass of properties or riches whose owners enjoy them without trouble and without anxiety, to the riches that are ravished by violence or by fraud, or that give rise to disputes, one will find that, comparatively to the former, the quantity of the latter is reduced to almost nothing. Finally, one will arrive at the same result, if one compares the number of persons whose conduct is sheltered from all legal prosecution, to the number of those whose actions need to be repressed. One lets oneself be directed by social laws, as by the principles of hygiene, without having studied them and without consulting them; which does not prevent a host of people from being in good health.

To observe and to describe the laws according to which nations are governed, one needs no less penetration, no less patience, no less justness of mind, than is needed to describe the organization of animals or plants. Thus, it is only very late, and after the art of observation has been perfected and applied to all the other sciences, that one has begun to describe the dispositions of laws with some exactitude. The Roman jurisconsults who have given us the description of the various contracts in use among their fellow citizens came only long after these contracts were put into practice; for one will not claim, doubtless, that before them, there were made in Rome no sales, no exchanges, no kind of transactions. The modern descriptions that we possess in this regard are, for the most part, only the reproduction or the development of those that the Romans have transmitted to us, and they do not go back to a very remote time. Finally, these descriptions are still unknown among many nations that perform the same acts as we do, and that follow the same rules.

A law, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is not a simple and unique fact; it is a power that, in a given case, always produces a similar result; but this power is composed of a multitude of forces that concur to produce the same action. It would therefore be necessary, to give the complete description of a law, to describe first each of the forces that is one of the elements of which it is formed; it would be necessary to describe next the action that these forces produce, and finally the consequences that result from this action or from this fact. When one studies legislation as a science, it is only by thus decomposing a law that one can succeed in knowing it; but governments do not give and do not need to give such complete analyses: they confine themselves to describing the material action that must be executed; this is what is called the disposition of the law, or the manner in which the law disposes. They never concern themselves with all the forces that must concur to produce it, and rarely do they expound all the effects that must result from it; and this is not necessary for the goal they propose for themselves.

But it is not thus when one is occupied with legislation as a science: one must then describe the elements of force of which the law is composed, the material fact that is its immediate result, and which is called the disposition of the law, and the consequences that result from this fact, whether for men, or for the things that are for their use. If one neglects to concern oneself with the various forces destined to produce the action or the disposition of the law, one often exposes oneself to taking for a law a vain declaration. If one does not describe or if one describes badly the manner in which the law disposes or acts, it is very difficult to form exact ideas of the effects that its action produces. Finally, if one does not describe each of these effects, it often happens that one establishes bad laws, in believing one is establishing good ones.

I have been occupied with the effects produced by complete descriptions, which are proper to science: it is a question here only of the descriptions that governments give, whether when they wish to make known laws already established, or when they wish to establish new laws themselves.

Jurisconsults sometimes describe the dispositions of the laws that already exist in a country, with a view to facilitating their study for those who are destined for the practice of jurisprudence. They then confine themselves, like governments, to expounding the material facts that occur, without concerning themselves either with the forces that produce them, or with the effects that result from them. One can apply to the latter a great part of the observations that relate to the former.I have previously remarked that the laws that govern a people result from the needs, faculties, enlightenment, and position of the individuals of which this people is composed, and from many other circumstances. I remarked, at the same time, that there exist in man two tendencies: one that leads him to constrain his fellows to regulate their conduct by his own, if he believes them inferior to him; the other that leads him to imitate those who seem to him to conduct themselves better than he. It is this double tendency of the population that establishes uniformity in the various ways of proceeding, even among peoples whose parts have not all acquired the same civilization or the same development. But, as long as no written communication exists, this action of one part of the population on the other can be exercised only insofar as men find themselves in immediate contact with one another. Thus, we see that, throughout Europe, peoples have been divided into a multitude of infinitely small fractions, each of which had laws that were its own. Each city, whose position was determined by the configuration of the soil, by the course of the waters, by the nature of the terrain, formed a particular republic. If one counted one hundred and forty-four customs in France before the Revolution, that would prove the existence of one hundred and forty-four independent states; but I am very disposed to believe that the number had already been reduced by conquests. In Switzerland, not only does each canton have its laws, but, in some cantons, each small city had its own. Neither the conquests of the Romans, nor the despotism of their emperors, nor the conquests and ravages of the barbarians, nor the power of kings, could erase in France the laws that belonged to each people. It took the printing press to carry the same ideas into all minds, and a terrible revolution to pass its level, in a way, over the soil, to reduce this multitude of diverse peoples to a uniform legislation.

One must not believe, however, that this multitude of peoples, each of which had its particular laws, had in every point different laws. Nations are susceptible to improvement and degradation, and consequently, they must often differ from one another; but, on the other hand, all men being organized in the same manner, are subject, for their existence, to conditions from which they cannot escape, under penalty of perishing. In all countries, parents must take care of children, if one wishes them to be preserved; the husband must join his efforts to those of the wife, if one does not wish the family to fall into decline; properties must be respected, if one does not wish them to be dissipated; contracts must be executed, if one does not wish to lack everything; finally, children must succeed fathers, if one does not wish them to perish from misery, and for fathers to consume or destroy their riches before dying. Laws can therefore differ from one country to another only by more or less pronounced nuances, or by the ways by which one tends to obtain a similar result.

A small people, confined within the walls of a city, or within the limits of a small territory, having made little progress in civilization, and having few relations with its neighbors, has little need for the various ways in which its laws dispose to be described. Everything moves at a roughly equal pace, and the relations that exist between persons are so uncomplicated that, to know them, the slightest attention suffices. If a part of the population attempts to change its way of being, it either carries the other parts with it, or it is stopped by them. Each change is a simple fact that can be perceived and appreciated by all minds, and that is imitated or repressed, according as it seems favorable or baneful to the most influential part of the population. The republic of Sparta did not have a tenth of the laws that exist in the republic of Geneva, and a tribe of Arabs, living by pillage or the product of its herds, has fewer than Sparta had. Such a people needs neither public registers nor libraries to teach it how things happen in its midst, to know its usages or the dispositions of its laws.

But, when the progress of the sciences, arts, and commerce has multiplied the relations between individuals and nations; when there exists in society a multitude of different professions, each of which absorbs all the time of the persons who devote themselves to it; when a series of wars and conquests has placed under a single government a multitude of peoples each having its particular usages; finally, when discussions become so multiplied among men that it is necessary, to decide them, for persons to devote their lives to it, the various ways in which laws act need to be described in order to be known; it becomes necessary to describe not only the dispositions of those that have existed for a long time, but also the dispositions of all the laws that are established. The lack of description would suffice to throw their action into disorder, or to render their establishment impossible, or at least very difficult.

Let a discussion of interest arise in a State that has only a few thousand citizens practicing, in a crude manner, the arts most indispensable to life; it is enough to consult a few old men to know which of the two is sustaining an unjust claim. But if there exists in the State where the discussion arises a multitude of different professions foreign to one another, if social transactions multiply there infinitely, by variety as much as by number, it will no longer be so easy to find persons who have observed how things happen in all circumstances, and who are capable of rendering a just decision. This will become absolutely impossible if a multitude of peoples having different laws are united under a single government, and if the judges who must terminate the discussions that arise between private individuals are foreign to the country in which these discussions originated. How, for example, could a parlement, or a tribunal such as the Cour de cassation is today, have judged, in all cases, in a manner conforming to the numerous customary laws that governed France, before the dispositions of these laws had been described? One could have composed this tribunal of as many judges as there were customs, and taken one from each country; but the only advantage one would have obtained thereby would have been to possess a court which, out of one hundred and forty-four magistrates, would have counted, in each case, one hundred and forty-three who were completely ignorant [74].

If the progress of civilization, and especially the union of several peoples under a single government, has made necessary the description of the dispositions of ancient laws; if, in a great number of cases, this description has become the only means of knowing the laws of a country, the same causes have rendered no less necessary the description of the dispositions of new laws. The influence of facts or of example could never extend very far if knowledge of them were not spread by means of writing, and if the action of authority did not second the power of reason. Let us suppose that custom has established that, in a family, the first-born male child succeeds, to the exclusion of his brothers and sisters, to all his father's immovable property; let us suppose, moreover, that a part of the population has believed it has perceived that the exclusion of the other children was baneful not only to the family, but to the entire society; this law could be destroyed, and replaced by another, in two ways: by non-use, that is, by a contrary practice, or by a formal and sudden destruction. It will be destroyed by non-use if the one among the children to whom custom has granted everything voluntarily shares with his brothers; if the parents evade the law by ruses, by secret or feigned acts; if the most influential classes of society, if the magistrates themselves do not conform to the custom, or favor its abolition. The destruction of the old law, and the formation of the one that will replace it, will operate, in this case, in a slow, irregular, and almost imperceptible manner. These facts may take place only in a very limited territory, within a city, or in the jurisdiction of a court. In such a case, the new law will be described only when it is perfectly established. But if the most influential part of society, that which exercises the most direct and immediate action, finds the old law bad, it will begin by describing the dispositions of the law by which it claims to replace it; it will bring this description to the knowledge of all the persons by whom the law is to be executed, and particularly of the magistrates, and society will thus experience an immediate and sudden revolution.

By describing the new order of things one wishes to establish, and by constraining, by public force, all individuals to conform their actions to the description one has given them of it, one therefore destroys the order of things one judges bad in a prompter, more regular, more general manner; one leaves no uncertainty in minds; each one knows at once what he has to do. One operates, moreover, much more extensive revolutions: when old laws perish only by non-use, and new laws are established only by the violation of an old order, a system of legislation is destroyed in the same way as a forest that succumbs to the scythe of time; the branches wither and fall one after another, and centuries pass before the trunks have completely perished and been replaced. But, when the dispositions of laws are described at the very instant the laws are formed, and when one part of the population impresses a new movement upon the other, the old laws perish, and the new ones are established in their entirety. Those who are their authors proceed like architects who tear down old monuments, clear the ground, and build others on new plans.

The description of the dispositions of already existing laws, and that of the dispositions of the laws one establishes, have great advantages; they serve as a rule for those who do not know how to observe things for themselves, or who have no other means of knowing them; they give to the elements of force of which the law is composed a more regular and more uniform action; they operate all at once and make general changes that are often useful. But they are not without disadvantages; they sometimes even have very grave ones that it is important to observe.

It is easier to study things by reading the descriptions that have been given of them than by subjecting the things themselves to observation; if, then, it happens that an observer describes the dispositions of laws that have been long established, everyone feels disposed to consider the description as the exact expression of the truth. The obscurity that the scholar has put into his expressions, the contradictions into which he has fallen, the ambiguity of his language, the facts he has affirmed without having well ascertained them, those that existed and that he observed badly, or to which he paid no attention, give rise to a multitude of disputes and commentaries. One does not then seek to enlighten oneself by subjecting the facts to new observations, as is practiced in other sciences; one comments on phrases with other phrases, on words with other words. It has been remarked that the description of the dispositions of the custom of Paris gave rise to some twenty commentaries: which proves either that the authors had not expressed themselves clearly, or that they had left their description very incomplete, or that they had described things otherwise than they were. In legislation, a false description has much more extensive effects than those it can have in other sciences. The false description of a plant can deceive those who study it; but it does not change the nature of the thing described; a better-made observation suffices to destroy the error. It is otherwise with the false description of the dispositions of a custom or a law: it misleads those who consult it, and determines their conduct or their judgment; it makes things happen, not in a manner conforming to what usually happens, but in a manner conforming to the description. This is sometimes a good thing; but it can also be a bad one.

The description of ancient laws has two remarkable consequences: it gives to peoples whose laws are defective the knowledge of other laws that are better, and consequently enables them to correct those to which they are subject; but it gives at the same time to the most influential part of the population the means of infringing upon the laws of other peoples, to make them adopt its own. If, for example, the customary laws of Paris had not been described, the population to which these laws were particular would never have had the means of carrying them into all the provinces of France. It could have exercised no other influence than that which results from example and the force of reason. But these laws having been described, and those who found them conformable to their habits having been in the majority in the councils, nothing was easier for them than to present them to the provinces that had different laws or habits, and to consider them as the droit commun of the nation. We can apply to all French laws, in general, the observation I have just made with regard to the customary laws of Paris. Supposing the dispositions of the former of these laws were followed, executed, confounded with national morals, but being no more described than were, in the fifteenth century, the various customs that governed France, never would the imperial government, with all its power, have dared to attempt to carry them beyond the territory in which they would have been confined; it would have been obliged to respect the laws of the peoples its armies had submitted to it, just as the Romans, and the barbarians who succeeded them, were obliged to respect the customs of the nations they did not wish to exterminate. I do not have to examine, at this moment, whether this transplantation, more apparent than real, was useful or baneful to the nations that experienced it; I propose only to have one observe the power that a government finds in the simple description of the dispositions of a people's laws, and the inclination that this description gives it to use violence to establish the described laws.

When two contemporary peoples are placed beside one another, when they have made the same progress in the arts and sciences, when they speak the same language and have the same religion, there can exist in their morals and in their laws only very slight nuances. To attempt then to transport to one the laws that exist in the other is hardly more than to substitute new descriptions, classifications, and denominations for old descriptions, classifications, and denominations; it is to reform the language much more than the ideas. If some real differences exist in the dispositions, these differences bear, in general, on ways of proceeding, and the substance remains the same; one arrives at the same result by diverse means. But it is not always to making the laws that govern one part of a nation common to the entire nation that governments limit themselves; possessing descriptions of laws particular to peoples who have disappeared from the earth, they sometimes imagine that it is in their power to re-establish these laws, for the reason that they have the power to remake their description; they then employ all the force at their disposal to give to existing generations the ideas, the passions, the prejudices of generations that are no more. Sometimes also, instead of taking for a model the laws of a contemporary people, or the laws of a people of another age, they form an ideal world, trace the rules according to which this world must live; and, giving these rules the name of laws, they order peoples to modify their ideas, their passions, their existence, in such a way that they resemble in everything the imaginary world they have conceived [75].Possessing the description of a multitude of dispositions of laws, being able to describe an even greater number of imaginary ones, and taking for laws what is only their description, governments end by persuading themselves that nothing is easier than to modify the nations subject to them, and that they have only to speak for them to think, act, and feel as suits their interests or their desires. It is then no longer books that must represent the tableau of the social order, or contain the methodical description of the laws by which peoples proceed when they tend toward their prosperity: it is, on the contrary, peoples who must represent what is found in the books, and the books must represent what has occurred in the minds of those who had them written. Nothing is so common as to see ministers, princes, and even philosophers, who believe that the human race must be the exact representation of what is happening in their own brains. Montesquieu, in expounding what has been at all times, and in all countries, the spirit of the laws, has proven that such has always been the thought of governments. Rousseau had the same idea that Montesquieu attributes to governments, when he wrote that he who dares to undertake to institute a people, must feel himself able to change human nature, that is to say, to fashion it in such a way that it is no more than the expression of his thought. Finally, the jurisconsults, almost without exception, are of the same belief; there is almost none who does not imagine that, to determine how one must act in a doubtful case, one must consult, not the nature of man, but the thought of the legislator; the conduct and morals of nations must be the expression of this thought, even if it were conceived by an imbecile like Claudius, or by a ferocious beast like Nero. That, it is said, is what makes for the happiness of States, the greatness and dignity of peoples [76].

This system is nothing but that of slavery reduced to its simplest expression, and carried as far as it can extend: the most docile slave, he who is endowed with the most flexible constitution, cannot nullify himself more completely than by becoming the expression of his master's thought; and the most despotic master could demand nothing more from the most submissive slave. It is so true that this system is but that of limitless slavery, that it suffices to substitute the word master for that of legislator to no longer perceive a difference: this substitution changes nothing in the substance of things, since both words designate a man. This system could only be born and propagate itself among nations long accustomed to slavery, among nations that have rejected the words proper to servitude, yet have preserved its customs. It is natural that, among such peoples, some should aspire to be masters and proclaim the maxims of despotism under the name of legislators, while others see in their own persons only slaves under the name of subjects or citizens; that the former should claim that their thoughts are the model according to which nations must be fashioned, and that the latter should accept such a claim as a rule of conduct.

It is doubtless indispensable that citizens conform to the dispositions of the laws; to do so, they need to know them; they can often know them only through the description that is given of them; and this description can be nothing other than the expression of the thought of its author. But, if the description is only an intermediary between the individual who consults it and the thought of the legislator, the thought of the legislator itself can only be a fleeting intermediary between the nature of things and the description. A painter fixes his gaze on a landscape; the idea of it is immediately traced in his mind: he takes up his brushes, and renders on the canvas the impression he has received; in other words, he expresses his thought. What will people who wish to know the same landscape do now? They will study the painting that has been made of it; and if that is not enough for them, if they find the representation incomplete or inaccurate, they will study the very object that the painter claimed to represent. Will they seek to know what the painter's thought is? That would be a folly; this thought was but a modification of the individual; this modification can be erased by oblivion, or even by the death of him who experienced it. There remains, therefore, between the thing described, and the individual who wishes to know it, only the painting, or the description that represents it; there is nothing left in the world that is the painter's thought. But do the thoughts of a man who describes facts or actions have more duration than the thoughts of a man who describes landscapes? Are the thoughts of the one less susceptible than the thoughts of the other to being modified, erased, destroyed? Does anything else remain to us of the Roman jurisconsults, for example, than the descriptions they have left us? If we find these descriptions obscure, false, or incomplete, do we have any other means of enlightening ourselves than to proceed as they themselves proceeded, that is, to study the nature of things? Would there remain, on earth, a being that is their spirit, their thought, and that we could question as the Greeks questioned their oracles? If this mysterious being that is called their thought exists somewhere; if it has been preserved whole and invariable for two thousand years, who has made it a duty for us to consult it and to model ourselves upon it?

But, whatever may be the opinions of governments, legislators, philosophers, and of nations themselves, on the flexibility, or, if I may so express myself, on the ductility of the human race, one must not believe that the laws of one people are transported to another, or that laws that have perished with the peoples to whom they belonged are resurrected, as easily as one can transport or remake their description. A government, persuaded that it is in its power to change nature, may attempt either to revive extinct laws, or to transplant the legislation of one people to another, as one transplants trees, or to create laws in order to realize an imaginary people that has formed in its mind. It can describe, with exactitude, the dispositions of the laws it proposes to transplant, resurrect, or create; it can then apply the power at its disposal to give reality to its descriptions, and to modify, by violence, the population subject to it. Its efforts serve for little more than to produce a few new words, more or less numerous acts of violence, and falsehood or hypocrisy with the jargon inseparable from them; but the substance of things remains the same, or is not long in re-establishing itself, if it has in fact been altered. To give a people laws that suit neither its customs, nor its ideas, nor the state of civilization it has reached, one must destroy its customs, its ideas, its civilization, and even the works that are either their expression or their cause. One must make oneself master of it by conquest, enslave the already formed generations, and seize control of the nascent generations, to fashion them at will. But, if some communication is allowed to exist between them, ideas and customs will pass from one generation to the next by tradition; actions will remain the same, and the government that believed it had changed a part of the human race will end by being overthrown, if it does not renounce its violence.

There exist, as we have seen previously, three kinds of descriptions. The first aim to make known the dispositions of long-established laws, and thus to facilitate their execution; such are those that contain the exposition of customary laws. The second aim to make known the dispositions of laws that are currently being established; these are the ones that governments ordinarily undertake. The third aim for the perfection of existing laws; these are the ones with which scholars concern themselves. All these descriptions are susceptible to the same vices; all can be obscure, incomplete, or false. I have shown, in the preceding book, the consequences of descriptions made by scholars, and of the vices found in them. We have seen, in this chapter, the general consequences of the other kinds of descriptions. I have only two reflections left to make on the descriptions that governments provide when they establish or claim to establish new laws.

It is not rare for public authority to imagine it is making new laws, when it is only describing the dispositions of already existing laws, or reproducing old descriptions. The code to which Napoleon had imposed his name, and to which has been restored the original name of Code civil, contains the description of almost no new disposition of law. Not only did most of the dispositions whose description it contains already exist, but almost all had already been described. What made this code popular was, first, that it established almost nothing new and respected national customs or habits; second, that the descriptions it gave were conceived in a language simpler, more concise, and more intelligible than the language of those that already existed; and finally, that it presented, in a small space and with method, descriptions that had been scattered throughout a multitude of volumes. But, if one excepts a very small number of descriptions of new laws and some forms that did not exist before, there is nothing in this code that could not have been accomplished by private persons just as well as by councilors in court attire. It was enough to know the existing laws, to know how to classify one's ideas, and to express oneself with precision.

The descriptions of the dispositions of existing laws, given by a scholar, do not have all the advantages of those given by a government; but neither do they have their dangers. A scholar is obliged to describe things as they really exist; if he is mistaken, his errors can be corrected; if he is willfully unfaithful, he falls into contempt and is soon forgotten. But a government that takes upon itself to make the general description of the dispositions of the laws that govern a country often profits from this occasion, either to destroy useful laws, or to establish baneful ones. In describing the disposition of a useful, long-established law, for which they claim the glory, they place beside it the description of a law they are establishing with a view to increasing their power, and the first description serves to pass the second. This practice is often used in times of trouble; Napoleon Bonaparte employed it not only to annihilate whatever was useful in the constitution he found established when he usurped public authority, but also to destroy almost all the guarantees that had been born of the Revolution.

It seems that a government can never give a completely false description, since, if the thing described does not yet exist, the description brings about its establishment. Nothing, however, is more common; and what is most astonishing is that those who make false descriptions are sometimes acting in the best of faith. If what I have said previously were not enough to demonstrate this truth, I would urge the incredulous to read all the constitutions that France has had since the beginning of the Revolution to this day, and to compare the beautiful descriptions they contain with the real state in which society found itself at all epochs; if they find no resemblance between these two things, they will have to admit that the descriptions were purely imaginary. The manner in which one proceeded made this almost inevitable: one began by describing the state of things whose establishment one desired, and when one possessed the description, one believed one had almost nothing left to desire. One said: individual liberty is inviolable, freedom of the press is guaranteed, ministers are responsible; and one believed that it was so. The legislators proceeded like the divinity: Fiat lux, et lux facta fuit. These declarations produced on the state of society an effect roughly similar to that which a declaration that all men are in good health, live in abundance, and are free from cares would produce on the well-being of citizens. These are very good things, doubtless; but it is not enough to say that they are or that they will be, for them to be realized.