of influence and action which are in his nature and can be thoroughly known from no book sacred or profane, but are discovered and understood by means of experience alone: he will be a poor practitioner in any fine or mechanic art whose accomplishments are derived wholly from books or theories. . . Men who go directly from the divinity school to the pulpit are necessarily deficient, for many years at least, in this indispensable qualification for their office. Were you now, sir, to enter upon the profession of divinity, the time you have devoted to the civil law will have been well spent. . . . You would be peculiarly able to render great service to the Christian cause."

...

"You

ought to follow the dictates of your own heart: your inclination should be your rule of duty: you would be most useful in the employment with which you are most delighted."

"1

A man must look into his own heart, before he chooses his profession. "Know thyself" is the first and great commandment, at such a time. As Ruskin has said:

'We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all."

The law is not an easy profession. Its field is constantly enlarging. If any one can feel that he has mastered it as it stands to-day, he is far from having mastered what it will be ten years from to-day. The period of legal education never ends. The frontier recedes before each new step in advance.

1 Beers, Biographical Sketch of Roger Minott Sherman, p. 32,

Hard work is the condition of all real success. Preeminently it is so to both the student, and the practitioner of law. It is not the object of this book either to induce any man to take it up as his life calling, or to dissuade him from it. It is its object to state fully and plainly both the advantages and disadvantages of the legal profession in the United States, the opportunities which it offers and the risks which it involves, the conditions of success, and the chances of failure. The general scheme of arrangement which has been followed is to consider first the attractions of the profession; then the main objections to engaging in it; then the personal qualities requisite for success in it; then the proper education for it; and finally its great ideals.

CHAPTER II

ATTRACTIONS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION

1. The Majesty of the Law, and the Lawyer as its Minister

Relation of law to morals. Natural Law, as defined by Cicero. Custom the source of most law. Functions of Courts and lawyers, respectively, in determining the law. Law reports. The right of parties to suits to employ lawyers. Lawyers are officers of the court. Lawyers prevent many law suits. To bring suit, sometimes a duty. Spinoza's view. Law, our best inheritance. The lawyer as an amicus curiæ.

THE word Law is sometimes used to denote both that law which organized society enforces, and those rules of morals which find their support only in what we call the conscience of the individual or the conventions of unorganized society.

Cicero, in a lofty passage, describes law in this last aspect. "It is," he says, "not only older than peoples and commonwealths, but of equal age with that God who guards and rules heaven and earth. No law was ever written down that one man should contend with a great hostile force upon a bridge, and bid it to be destroyed behind him, yet none the less shall we judge that Cocles acted in that noble way under the law and empire of fortitude; nor if, in the reign of Tarquin,

there was no written law of Rome against adultery, did he nevertheless break an eternal law when he offered violence to Lucretia. For there was a reason proceeding from the nature of things, impelling to the right and dissuading from the wrong, which in fine begins to be law not when it is written, but when it originates. But it originates simultaneously with the divine mind. Wherefore the true and chief law apt for commanding and obeying is the unswerving reason of highest Jove.” 1

Law as administered by lawyers, is something narrower than this. It consists of rules of human conduct which organized political society recognizes and undertakes to enforce. But the soul of this law is not force but right. Law in human society is made for man. It is made for beings having in every country - considered as a mass - certain general notions of moral justice. These notions are the unwritten constitutions no positive law violating which can long endure.

The same thing is true of custom, and of judicial decisions supporting custom. If they are contrary to moral justice, the day will come when they will be abrogated, if not by legislation nor by disuse, then by the courts themselves.

Standards of social approval, in respect to law in all its senses, may change from age to age. If antiquated morality and antiquated law do not disappear together, one does not long survive the other. As Sir Frederick Pollock has remarked, "Legal justice aims at realizing

1 Cicero, De Legibus, Lib. II, Cap. 4. Cf. ibid. Lib. I, Cap. XV, quoted infra, on page 147.

moral justice within its range, and its strength largely consists in the general feeling that this is so. Were the legal formulation of right permanently estranged from the moral judgments of good citizens, the State would be divided against itself.” 1

The power of recognizing and enforcing law in the United States is vested in the courts. Our legislatures make part of this law; the customary rules of conduct approved by the community, and accepted by the judicial authority, make another and greater part. For ascertaining what it is at any particular time and how it applies to any particular case, the decisions of the courts are the ultimate authority. The more important of those rendered in each State and in the United States are officially published from time to time, under the name of "Reports." They constitute in each case the ground of a judgment which secures the termination of a controversy in a particular manner ordered by the courts, after hearing from lawyers representing each of the opposing parties. They are often substantially an adoption of the line of reasoning presented at the bar on one side or the other. It is the function of lawyers to put their clients' cases before the court, and that of the judges to dispose of them according to law.

Human experience has shown that judges need the help of lawyers to aid them in coming to just conclusions. Hence in most of the United States there is no right to practice law except by a grant or license from

1 Pollock, First Book of Jurisprudence, London, 1896, p. 31.