CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 563 



by an enlightened internal evidence to our mind, with solutions 

 valuable for all the world we are not able to establish anything 

 firmly. Who will deny that the surest and most durable political 

 creations are just those which were more distant from dogmatism, like 

 your constitution, the result of transitions and compromises between 

 different tendencies, imposed by the necessity of facts, with absolute 

 abstraction from all idealism whatsoever? * Nevertheless we do 

 not wish to deny, therefore, the existence of the moral law; 2 we may 

 also admit a certain ideal even in the constitution, until it remains 

 lively and concrete and the ideal may be rooted in the reality, may 

 be as the synthesis of the noblest aspirations of the people, and may 

 correspond to its history, its temperament, and its needs. 3 



The juridical method has had in Italy illustrious precursors who 

 had but a vague idea of it, as G. Romagnosi, but it was specially 

 proclaimed, affirmed, and pushed to its utmost exaggerations in 

 Germany. The state in relation to the law, the Rechtsstaat, is a 

 German result tending to exclude politics or to limit them to the 

 totality of offentlichenrechtlicher Verhdltnissen, never losing the recht- 

 liche Natur, going ever upwards towards allgemein Rechtsbegriffe. 

 For this method the constitutional law, the political regime, is a vast 

 juridical system, a totality of relations, rights, obligations, domi- 

 nated by essentially juridical principles. Promised the analysis 

 der offentlichcnrechtlichen Verhdltnisse, this method is looking for 

 die Feststellung der juristischen Natur derselben and goes afterwards 

 surely zur Auffindung der allgemeineren Rechtsbegriffe denen sie unter- 

 geordnet sind to return from this ascending generalization, to deduce 

 from the principles regulating the natural consequences die aus den 

 gefundenen Principien sich erzdhlenden Folgerungen. Thus Paul 

 Laband, Georg Meyer, Philips Lorn, A. Gerber, and other German 

 writers are proceeding, 4 guided from pure reason and moreover from 

 logic with a firm faith in the existence of general juridical conceits, 

 believing it impossible to create in any other way, eines neues Rechts- 

 institut, wie die Erfindung einer neuer logischer Kategorie oder die 

 Entstehung einer neuern Naturgraft. 



Such a method is leading to consequences which are possible only 

 in Germany, and by chance in vain are invoked in France and in 

 Italy. Germany has not the science of constitutional law, or rather 



1 Rousseau, J. J., Contrat Social; Condorcet, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique 

 des Progres de I' esprit humain, (Euvres, vr, p. 186; Vacherot, E., La Democratic; 

 Bouald, de, Theorie du pouvoir politique et religieuse; Brunialti, II Diritto Cos- 

 tituzionale e la Politica nella Scienza e nelle Istituzioni, vol. i, chap, iii; Klein- 

 wachter. Die Staatsromane, Wien, 1891; B. von Mohl, Geschicht und Literatur der 

 Staatswissenschaften in Monographien dargestellt, Erlangen, 1855-58. 



2 Secre"tan, C., Les Droits de I'Humanite; Cournot, Considerations sur la Morale 

 des Idees, n, pp. 86, et seq. 



3 Fouillee, A., L'ldee du Droit, Paris, 1883; Secr&an, op. cit., in Deslandres, 

 op. cit. xv, pp. 425, et seq. 



4 Laband, P., Die Staatsrecht des deutschen Reichs, and others. 



