ich is regarded as right and proper in the circumstances. Law
makes this rule of action explicit. Law grows up, however, out of a
distinction between this rule of action and the facts. Custom is bound
up with the facts under which the custom grew up. Law is the result of
an effort to frame the rule of action implicit in custom in such general
terms that it can be made to apply to new situations, involving new sets
of facts. This distinction between the law and the facts did not exist
in primitive society. The evolution of law and jurisprudence has been in
the direction of an increasingly clearer recognition of this distinction
between law and the facts. This has meant in practice an increasing
recognition by the courts of the facts, and a disposition to act in
accordance with them. The present disposition of courts, as, for
example, the juvenile courts, to call to their assistance experts to
examine the mental condition of children who are brought before them and
to secure the assistance of juvenile-court officers to advise and assist
them in the enforcement of the law, is an illustration of an increasing
disposition to take account of the facts.

The increasing interest in the natural history of the law and of legal
institutions, and the increasing disposition to interpret it in
sociological terms, from the point of view of its function, is another
evidence of the same tendency.

II. MATERIALS

A. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

1. Control in the Crowd and the Public[261]

In August, 1914, I was a cowboy on a ranch in the interior of British
Columbia. How good a cowboy I would not undertake to say, because if
there were any errands off the ranch the foreman seemed better able to
spare me for them than anyone else in the outfit.

One ambition, and one only, possessed me in those days. And it was not
to own the ranch! All in the world I wanted was to accumulate money
enough to carry me to San Francisco when the Panama exposition opened in
the autumn. After that I didn't care. It would be time enough to worry
about another job when I had seen the fair.

Ordinarily I was riding the range five days in the week. Saturdays I was
sent on a 35-mile round trip for the mail. It was the most delightful
day of them all for me. The trail lay down the valley of the Fraser and
although I had been riding it for months it still wove a spell over me
that never could be broken. Slipping rapidly by as though escaping to
the