be fully comprehended and appreciated by the student, must be arrived at by a process of induction from concrete applications of them, applications which in our law are found largely in the form of decided cases. On the other hand, the concrete details of the law are more fully understood, and their content better remembered, if they are seen and recognized as interrelated parts of a general system, a system based on certain fundamental principles. Some background of legal theory and legal history, slightly sketched at first but gradually growing in elaborateness, is at least highly desirable as a preparation for any really scientific study of law; and it is even more important that the student should seek from the first to cultivate as a habit of mind the consideration of the social origin and purpose of the rules and principles of law which he learns, and their relation with each other as parts of the legal system.

2. The meaning of law. The law with which lawyers deal is concerned with the control of men's conduct. Law in this sense is thus readily distinguishable from the figurative use of the word "law," common in the natural sciences, for instance, in the phrase "the law of gravitation." But it is harder to distinguish the law, as lawyers use the word, from the laws of etiquette, morals, and religion, all of which alike provide standards to which men's actions are conformed. In primitive societies, indeed, these various influences moulding men's conduct are not at all distinguishable. The fear of social disapproval, of the armed vengeance of the

tribe, or of the individual or group their acts may injure, and the dread of the wrath of offended gods,all combine to keep men in the path which custom has marked out as safe. Gradually, however, the means by which conformity to these different standards is secured are differentiated. The pressure of social opinion, the dictates of a man's own conscience, or the teaching and influence of religious authority, are relied on to secure conformity to those rules of social conduct which are not regarded as law in the stricter sense of the word; while those which are so regarded find recognition and, in the course of time, enforcement, in definitely organized public tribunals, the courts of the state. Laws, then, are the rules of conduct which are recognized and enforced in courts of law.1

An important distinction is, however, to be taken between "a law" and "the law." A law is a rule which forms a part of the law; but the law is not merely the sum of these rules. It is rather a system composed not solely of rules, but also of general principles derived from judicial experience and reflection, and bringing the mass of separate rules into a unified whole-a system for the guidance and ordering of men's conduct in their relations with each

1"A law, in the proper sense of the term, is therefore a general rule of human action, taking cognisance only of external acts, enforced by a determinate authority, which authority is human, and, among human authorities, is that which is paramount in a political society. More briefly, a general rule of external human action enforced by a sovereign political authority.

"All other rules for the guidance of human action are called laws merely by analogy; and any propositions which are not rules for human action are called laws by metaphor only." Holland, Elements of Jurisprudence, chap. 3.

other. Laws in this concrete sense of individual rules are in general the product of legislative enactment, and are spoken of collectively as statute law. But the principles which have been gradually evolved out of juristic experience, and which form the most important and basal elements of the system we call the law, are generally spoken of collectively as the common law.2

To the lawyer the law which is the field of his professional study and practice is based on and derived from both these elements. The law to him is a system for the just regulation of men's conduct in relations with each other, with the community, and with the state. Its contents are rules laid down by the state through its law-making organs, and traditional principles derived from the experience of the judicial profession in the administration of justice. The former he is used to call the written, the latter the unwritten law-a pair of phrases somewhat confusing but signifying to the lawyer that in the statutory rule the very words, but in the judicial decision the embodied principles rather than any written phrases, constitute the law.

This recognition of the two-fold character of law is fundamental in obtaining any adequate conception of the nature of law. As a system by which justice is administered, it is a composite of definite rules and of principles of more general application, from which rules for dealing with new situations may be derived by the courts by processes of legal reasoning.

2 See for further discussion of this phrase, $ 30.

3. The administration of justice.-Law, then, is a system of rules and principles used by the courts in the administering of justice. The achieving of justice is its purpose and end-the establishment and maintenance, that is, of such relations between man and man, and between man and the community and the state of which he is a member, as in the opinion of the community will further social progress. This administration of justice by some recognized authority is a necessary step in the evolution of society. Social experience has demonstrated that man's natural sense of justice is inadequate permanently to secure such action on the part of all the members of a society as will assure the conditions of social progress. Some external authority must be provided, some means of social control over individuals, to adjust their conflicting interests. The arbiter may be priest or ruler, popular assembly or gild meeting; but some tribunal for the administering of justice is required, not only for the advancement of society but for its very existence. Private vengeance for wrong, private self-help in assertion of a claim of right, if left free to run their course, would disrupt and eventually disintegrate society. The substitution of civil justice for self-help and of criminal justice for private vengeance is an epochal event in the history of civilization.

4. The evolution of law. The judge precedes the law. A court may be a court of justice without being a court of law. The judgments of Solomon as recorded in the Old Testament settled disputes between litigants by means of the shrewdness and nat

ural sense of justice of the judge, unguided and also unhampered by any system of predetermined principles. So, too, the tribunals of our own Far West on the ranges and in the mining camps of half a century ago administered a justice which owed little if anything to Blackstone, or even to remembered rules of the common law, but much to the judge's sense of fairness and his knowledge of the equities of the particular case before him. It is, however, only in the simplest and most primitive social groups that the administration of justice can be permanently based on the wisdom and fairness of an individual judge. Such a plan, however effective it may be in adjusting disputes which have arisen, is ineffective in enabling men to avoid new ones. Men, especially when their judgment is warped by self-interest, are incapable of deciding for themselves whether or not a contemplated course of conduct will seem just to the court that may be called upon to pass upon it. The need of a formulated rule by which men can guide their future conduct is one of the basal causes for the administration of justice by law. Moreover, as the community grows in size and the activities. of its members become more complex, more calls for adjudication will arise than can possibly be met by a single tribunal. But similar cases should obviously be similarly decided by different judges; and, practically, a uniform course of decisions is possible only when the decisions follow some formulated principle or rule. Thus both the community and the tribunal inevitably come to recognize the need of settled principles and rules by which the admin