328 HISTORY OF ROMAN LAW 



tive and dishonest doctrine of caveat emptor, a doctrine which the 

 English law still unaccountably retains, point out lines along 

 which, I believe, our own law is bound to develop. 



Best of all, the comparative student will learn to distinguish 

 between that which is peculiar and therefore accidental in both 

 systems and that which is common to both and therefore presumably 

 universal. It has long been the hope of some of the greatest modern 

 jurists, both in English-speaking countries and in Europe, that by 

 strictly inductive study it may be possible to discover a real instead 

 of an imaginary natural law. The corresponding hope of the legal 

 historian, that it will in time be possible to formulate the great laws 

 that govern legal development, is not, I believe, an idle dream; and 

 I am sure that the minute comparative study of Roman and Anglo- 

 American legal developments will carry us further toward such a goal 

 than any other possible comparison. 



