good word, although I think a good
deal of pretty poor stuff goes under that name. I mean the study of what
is called jurisprudence. Jurisprudence, as I look at it, is simply law
in its most generalized part. Every effort to reduce a case to a rule
is an effort of jurisprudence, although the name as used in English is
confined to the broadest rules and most fundamental conceptions. One
mark of a great lawyer is that he sees the application of the broadest
rules. There is a story of a Vermont justice of the peace before whom a
suit was brought by one farmer against another for breaking a churn. The
justice took time to consider, and then said that he has looked through
the statutes and could find nothing about churns, and gave judgment for
the defendant. The same state of mind is shown in all our common digests
and textbooks. Applications of rudimentary rules of contract or tort
are tucked away under the head of Railroads or Telegraphs or go to swell
treatises on historical subdivisions, such as Shipping or Equity, or are
gathered under an arbitrary title which is thought likely to appeal to
the practical mind, such as Mercantile Law. If a man goes into law
it pays to be a master of it, and to be a master of it means to look
straight through all the dramatic incidents and to discern the true
basis for prophecy. Therefore, it is well to have an accurate notion
of what you mean by law, by a right, by a duty, by malice, intent, and
negligence, by ownership, by possession, and so forth. I have in my mind
cases in which the highest courts seem to me to have floundered because
they had no clear ideas on some of these themes. I have illustrated
their importance already. If a further illustration is wished, it may be
found by reading the Appendix to Sir James Stephen's Criminal Law on
the subject of possession, and then turning to Pollock and Wright's
enlightened book. Sir James Stephen is not the only writer whose
attempts to analyze legal ideas have been confused by striving for a
useless quintessence of all systems, instead of an accurate anatomy of
one. The trouble with Austin was that he did not know enough English
law. But still it is a practical advantage to master Austin, and his
predecessors, Hobbes and Bentham, and his worthy successors, Holland and
Pollock. Sir Frederick Pollock's recent little book is touched with
the felicity which marks all his works, and is wholly free from the
perverting influence of Roman models.