 If these ceased to be enforced, it is likely that a different and more dangerous state-of-affairs would ensue; one might well say the original society had disintegrated. Hart can afford to concede this. Such a Hobbesian-Humean minimum is accounted for by the harm principle Devlin rejects. Devlin’s argument, however, needs the disintegration thesis to apply more widely, potentially to every crime of a community, be that to homosexuality, animal cruelty, bigamy, incest etc (to “every jot and tittle” as Hart puts it: Hart 1967 [1983: 258]). These need to be protected on pain of the disintegration of society. Since Devlin gives no empirical evidence linking the destruction of past societies with the non-enforcement of their rules, this appears not to be an empirical  claim.[9]  But as a conceptual argument it is highly dubious. For as Hart says