MATERIALS OF THE SCIENCE OF LAW. 603 



Dally characterized, affords a distinct congeries of logical subdivisions 

 which is invariably reproduced over and over again. 



It is, then, in this identity of structure of human society in every 

 state, that law discovers for itself the basis of its constantly-recurrent 

 methods of classification and its unchangeable conceptions. There 

 are, however, certain other more obvious grounds for the permanence 

 and invariability of legal ideas and methods which follow from the iden- 

 tity of man's physical, logical, and ethical structure in all times and in 

 all parts of the world, within the limits to which observation has hith- 

 erto extended. 



Law in its outward character consists of a body of commands ad- 

 dressed to individual members of the human race forming the compo- 

 nent elements of a state. The issuing of commands involves the pos- 

 sibility of obedience or of disobedience, and therein supposes the 

 presence of will, of liberty of action, and of the amount of intelligence 

 needed to understand the purport of the commands. Attention is 

 thereby compelled to the exceptional cases in which the terms of the 

 command cannot be understood, whether through temporary incapac- 

 ity, as infancy, error, or passing disease ; or through permanent inca- 

 pacity, as life-long insanity ; or in which the terms cannot be complied 

 with, through the pressure of external force, the interference of persons 

 actuated by fraudulent motives, or the obstruction of physical facts 

 creating the condition of impossibility. 



Supposing, however, that the command can be understood and can 

 be obeyed, there will be nevertheless cases presented in which the 

 question has to be decided whether, as a matter of fact, the command, 

 in a given case, was obeyed or not. Here are let in all the obstacles 

 inherent in human nature itself to acquiring a correct knowledge of 

 facts. All the current imperfections of human observation, all the in- 

 sufficiency of language and expression, all the chicanery and double- 

 mindedness, all the dullness of intellect, by which it becomes so hard 

 to pass truth on unimpaired from hand to hand, are present to hamper 

 the effort to apply and execute a single law. The several forms of 

 these obstacles, however, are not peculiar to any one state nor to any 

 one period, however their magnitude may vary. They are universally 

 present, and can be classified under a comprehensive scheme. 



But another and universal class of difficulties in executing a law 

 has yet to be mentioned. It may be uncertain what are the form and 

 intent of the law itself. If the law is written, the terms of the lan- 

 guage in which it is written may admit of all sorts of ambiguity or 

 vacillation in meaning, or, however certain the terms themselves, the 

 opposed disputants may insist on different senses being put upon the 

 whole text of the command. 



If the law is unwritten, and has to be gathered either from tradi- 

 tional report or by reference to the rules which have been laid down 

 on previous occasions in cases resembling the one now calling for de- 



