HABIT OF HA VI NG LA W MAKERS AND LA WYERS 9 1 



shared his god-like prestige. The habit of having a privileged priestly 

 class was never as distinctly helpful to the tribe as were the king habit 

 and the rules-of-conduct habit, and it was also, from the very nature of 

 its origin, inevitably touched with a power for harm which just as 

 inevitably increased as the social organism developed, expanded and be- 

 came more sophisticated. In so far, therefore, as the lawyer caste of to- 

 day takes its peculiar and exclusive powers from its direct precursor, the 

 priestly caste, so far is it predestined to harmfulness. 



And in so far, again, as it takes its special powers by direct inherit- 

 ance from a quasi-ecclesiastical source, so far is the habit of tacitly grant- 

 ing those powers guarded with a quasi-religious zeal by those, the 

 ignorant populace, who hold it. The divinity that was once of the very 

 essence of the tribal chief, hedges still the kingly majority of the present 

 social hierarchy and that majority's priest-born, privileged law exploit- 

 ers. The creed of the devout believer in the efficacy of the law in all the 

 aspects of it I have named — the law enforcer, the law maker and the law 

 exploiter — this creed includes by implication, if not in so many words, 

 an article declaring the divine origin of the power of those who give, 

 those who enforce and those who align the law. 



Inevitably, in view of its origin and character, the lawyer class forms 

 the most powerful and self-assertive of labor unions. It is the most 

 powerful, for it has behind it the authority of both the law-enforcing and 

 the law-formulating powers. Indeed, it is itself, as already shown, the 

 third in the trinity of powers which constitute to-day the whole of that 

 habit-of-having-the-law which was once the habit-of-having-an-autocrat. 

 A labor union, possessed of some of a ruler's supreme authority, of neces- 

 sity becomes, in accordance with well-known laws of human nature, 

 arrogant, overbearing and prone to serve its own personal ends at some 

 sacrifice of the ends for which it was constituted. For an example, one 

 may cite that habit of procrastination in which the caste still indulges in 

 the exercise of its functions, a habit the painful effects of which an 

 elaborate ritual and an esoteric terminology tend somewhat to mystify 

 but not at all to mitigate. 



Gaining its authority and its sanctity largely from a remote past, 

 being desirous of retaining both, and feeling that both are accentuated 

 by constant reference to their ancient and noble lineage, the lawyer caste 

 draws, constantly for its pronouncements not on the merits of the case 

 in hand, but on the whole body of ancient doctrine. Herein this caste 

 resembles its foster sister, the ecclesiastical group ; but while the latter is 

 moved constantly to look forward, if not by the good sense of its units, 

 then at least by the pressure of internal competition, the former is sup- 

 ported in its enjoyment of reminiscence and its scorn of evolution by 

 the whole law-having habit of which it is a part. 



In one aspect of the special powers of the lawyer class we find an 



