232 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



upwards to the very nature of God, the other 

 sounds all the depths and shoals of human selfish- 

 ness and vice. The one is as a golden net let 

 down from heaven ; the other like some huge 

 structure built upon the earth. Law deals with 

 things which perish in the using ; Theology with 

 truths which cannot pass away. 



I. But such superficial contrasts will not satisfy 

 us. There are strange marks of kinship in these 

 different, and sometimes rival, systems : points of 

 resemblance which are the more remarkable when 

 contrasted with that knowledge of nature, which of 

 late years has almost monopolized the name of 

 Science. 



(i.) Of these points of resemblance the first is this. 

 Law, like Theology, is a " derived science," and not 

 a science of discovery. We do not live in hope or 

 fear of some new facts which will revolutionize 

 our legal system. Law is essentially derived. It 

 glories in the fact. Its principles lie back, far 

 back in a pre-historic time. With all its minute 

 and complex adjustments to modern civilization 

 and modern life, it can say with one of old, " It 

 was long ago that men found out what is right, 

 and we must learn from them." What was implicit 

 in the principle may be now explicit in the Law, 

 but the principle has not changed. This is why 

 Law is, perhaps inappropriately, said to be con- 

 servative. It has its roots in the past, not in the 



