Over against this " valid " mechanism, in some truer but vaguer region, Kant placed free will; and so left things.
This is a vaguer form of control than a protectorate, and frequently amounts merely to an agreement amongst civilized powers to respect the right of one of their number to exercise government within a certain area, if it should decide to do so at any future time.
Here we have a series of celebrations representing the occupations of the successive seasons, addressed sometimes to numina who developed later on into the great gods of the state, such as Jupiter, Mars or Ceres, sometimes to vaguer divinities who remained always indefinite and rustic in character, such as Pales and Consus.
The authority to grant such discharge was conceived to be included in the power of binding and loosing committed by Christ to His Church; and when in the course of time the vaguer theological conceptions of the first ages of Christianity assumed scientific form and shape at the hands of the Schoolmen, the doctrine came to prevail that this discharge of the sinner's debt was made through an application to the offender of what was called the " Treasure of the Church " (Thurston, p. 315).
Another such guarantee of a vaguer character is that which the North Sea powers recently entered into for the maintenance of the status quo of their respective North Sea territories; and the similar one entered into by the Mediterranean powers for the same objects in the Mediterranean.