are the product of such subtlety--the provision of a superfluous logical
apparatus, which, while it gives scope for ingenuity, distracts the mind
from the ends for which it is ostensibly designed. I have quoted enough
to show the intensity of his longing for broad, general, common-sense
principles, which was, indeed, his most prominent intellectual
characteristic. Now a code should, as I take it, like the scientific
classification of any other subject-matter, combine this with
intellectual excellence at the opposite pole. The scientific
classification, when once made, should appear, as the botanists say, to
be natural, not artificial. If fully successful, it should seem as if it
could not but have been made, or as if it made itself. Every subdivision
should fall spontaneously into its right place without violence or
distortion. The secret of achieving such a result is, I suppose, the
selection of the right principles of division and subdivision from the
first. When it appears that any given object refuses to fit itself
conveniently into any one of our pigeon-holes, its obstinacy may betray
a defect in the original system; and the code, like other artistic
wholes in which every part has some definite relation to every other,
may require a remanipulation throughout. Now, if I understand
Fitzjames's intellectual temperament rightly, this indicates the point
at which his patience might begin to fail. When he met with some little
specimen which would not go of itself upon any of his previous
arrangements, he would be apt to treat it with disrespect, and possibly
to jam it in with too rough and ready a hand into the nearest
compartment. In so doing he might really be overlooking the indication
of a fault in the system, reaching further than he suspected. An
apparent subtlety may really correspond to an important distinction, and
an outward simplicity be attained at the cost of some internal discord.
In short, the same kind of defect which prevented him from becoming an
accurate classical scholar, or from taking a sufficient interest in the
more technical parts of his profession, would show itself in the
delicate work of codification by a tendency to leave raw edges here and
there in his work, and a readiness to be too easily satisfied before the
whole structure had received the last possible degree of polish. Thus I
find, from various indications which I need not specify, that some of
his critics professed to have discovered