OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 233 



struction of a contract ; the revolution of a comet or the circulation of 

 the blood ; the working of a steam-engine, or a machine for the manu- 

 facture of a pin. 



This great faculty of perceiving and developing the principle of 

 everything brought within the range of his intellectual vision, was the 

 foundation of his imposing mental power ; and had it stood alone, and 

 been exercised and expended in abstract research and the develop- 

 ment of systems, embodied in scientific treatises, there can be no doubt 

 that it would have ranked him among the men of genius of his day, 

 and transmitted his name to posterity with a more dazzling diadem 

 than ever rests upon the brow of those whose lives and powers are de- 

 voted to the service of man in the daily walks of life. 



But happily for our Commonwealth, and happily, I may safely 

 say, for the jurisprudence of our country, this was but one, though 

 the most conspicuous, of the many talents with which he was gifted, 

 and which enabled him to extend broadly and deeply the foundations 

 of jurisprudence in its adaptations to the ever-changing phases of human 

 life in the progress of civilization, and the ever-novel and multifarious 

 developments of industrial skill and enterprise. To this great power 

 were added the willing capacity for long-continued labor in details ; an 

 earnest love and curiosity for the application of principles to practice ; 

 a ready faculty for subtile logic, rejoicing in the play and conflict of 

 polemic discussion ; a marvellous faculty of individualization, from 

 which nothing escaped ; a comprehensive, tenacious memory ; and, per- 

 haps above all, a great heart filled with generous dispositions and 

 kindly emotions, an incarnation of the sentiment, " Homo sura, humani 

 nihil a me alienum puto," ever impelling to the use of all his facul- 

 ties and attainments for the service of his fellow-men in all that was 

 nearest to their interests and their affections. 



Human law is but the reflex of the habitual feelings and opinions 

 of the people. The law of causality is as strictly applicable to hu- 

 man actions as to the world of matter. Law is therefore in the 

 strictest sense a science, whose fundamental principles are to be found 

 in the construction of human nature and civil society ; and he only 

 can be esteemed a scientific lawyer whose studies and reflections 

 extend beyond the learning of books and the authority of precedents 

 — essential instruments and guides though they be in his daily 

 work — to the sources of individual and social, intellectual and moral 

 life. 



VOL. V. 30 



