DEVELOPMENT DURING PAST CENTURY 481 



was a marvel of egotism and self-conceit, and his reasoning powers 

 were far from sound. He seems to have been incapable of under- 

 standing the nature of law. " If," he said, " we ask who it is that 

 the common law has been made by, we learn to our inexpressible 

 surprise that it has been made by nobody; that it is not made by 

 King, Lords and Commons, nor by anybody else; that the words 

 of it are not to be found anywhere; that, in short, it has no existence; 

 it is a mere fiction; and that to speak of it as having any existence 

 is what no man can do without giving currency to an imposture." 

 Employing the same reasoning he would have concluded that jus- 

 tice, not being made by King, Lords or Commons, nor by anybody 

 else, had no existence; that truth, since the words of it are not to 

 be found anywhere, is a mere fiction. But these defects are too 

 often found in reformers. The humanitarian age brought enormous 

 benefits to the world, but its ideas were often ignorant, crude, and 

 impracticable, and needed to be modified by the better instructed 

 minds of the present constructive age. While Bentham was at 

 the height of his power, the historical school of jurists in Germany 

 was beginning its great work. Savigny was already preaching the 

 necessity of understanding the history of law before it was reformed. 

 Mittermaier and Brunner were to follow and carry on the work of 

 the master. The unity of the past and present, and the need of 

 conforming the law of a people to its needs were among their funda- 

 mental principles. Bentham had said, " If a foreigner can make 

 a better code than an Englishman, we should ad'opt it." Savigny 

 said, with greater truth and knowledge of human nature, that " no 

 system of law, however theoretically good, could be successfully 

 imposed upon a people which had not by its past experience become 

 prepared for it." 



The impulse given to legal study by the work of Savigny and his 

 school has in the last generation spread over the civilized world and 

 profoundly influenced its legal thought. The Italians, the natural 

 lawyers of the world, have increased their power by adopting his 

 principles. In England a small but important school of legal thinkers 

 have followed the historical method, and in the United States it has 

 obtained a powerful hold. The spirit of the age here too has supported 

 it. We are living in an age of scientific scholarship. We have 

 abandoned the subjective and inductive philosophy of the Middle 

 Ages, and we learn from scientific observation, and from historical 

 discovery. The newly accepted principles of observation and in- 

 duction, applied to the law, have given us a generation of legal 

 scholars for the first time since the modern world began; and the 

 work of these scholars has at last made possible the intelligent 

 statement of the principles of law. 



