not give the power to deduce abstract rules of conduct because the sense-interest dominates the thought-interest. The subject-matter of the physical sciences, furthermore, brings the student ever back to the immutable laws of nature, and so, like mathematics, it fails to aid him directly in studying the mutable conditions of human conduct. The interests involved are not human, the operation of natural laws is too unlike the collective effect of individual free will. The very statement of this fact ought to satisfy the reason upon this point and make applicable the legal maxim, res ipsa loquitur.

IV. Another important desideratum in the training of a lawyer is accuracy of interpretation. While one is studying Latin and Greek he is being trained in a method very like that which he must pursue in construing a law. Pick up a statute just enacted, and begin to study it carefully to find out what its full meaning and effect is, and you are doing precisely the same thing as when you take a passage of Livy or Tacitus and endeavor to find its exact meaning. Every word must be weighed, and the point of its position in the sentence determined. The effect of former laws in a case is like the effect of the preceding sentences or the context; and the meaning of that sentence as related to the following sentences, as to whether it makes a complete story, is like the consideration of the full meaning of the statue itself in connection with the rest of the substantive law on the question involved. This determination of the meaning of statutes is one of the most practical duties of a lawyer. It will hardly be maintained by anyone that, as a preparation for this sort of work, the natural sciences or mathematics will have a practical value in training equal to that of Greek and Latin.

I have not attempted to discuss those very important, but apparently less practical, sides of the question which are most often dwelt on at length-such as the development of the taste, the acquiring of elegance of expression, and the distinction of learning-which are so often urged in favor of the study of the classics, because, as a rule, in the discussion of this subject the force of such considerations is admitted by those who differ from us. I have felt the need of presenting this question in a practical and concrete way, because my experience in lecturing to law students has led me to believe that this is the line of argument most apt to be effective at the present day, or at least while the fever of hurry is still a distinguishing characteristic of the age.

Furthermore, that the argument in favor of classica study may be effective, it must be of a kind which will ordinarily be appreciated by young men about to begin the last stages of study before actually engaging in their work of life, and not of the kind which will appeal only to older men whose successes and failures have taught them to view these questions with a greater regard for the value of professional training as it fits into and becomes part of the experience of life than as a means of immediate financial return. Whichever class of argument may be the more effective, we shall all agree that the day has gone which could prompt the couplet of Edmund Waller:

Poets who would marble seek
Must come in Latin or in Greek.

Nevertheless, we cannot forget that, with very few exceptions, lawyers who have come to distinguish themselves in their profession and to be of use to the world have come through Latin or through Greek.

III. THE ANCIENT CLASSICS AS A PREPARATION
FOR THE STUDY OF LAW

DEAN (NOW PRESIDENT) H. B. HUTCHINS
University of Michigan

Aside from the elementary branches, no particular subject is absolutely essential as a basis for the study and practice of the law. In this respect the law occupies a place somewhat different from that of the other learned professions. The student and practitioner of medicine must of necessity get a substantial scientific foundation for his professional work. This for him is an absolutely essential prerequisite. For the professional courses in engineering a special and definite scientific preparation must be made; without it nothing but the most ordinary work in engineering can be accomplished. And it is probable that for theology, work along certain welldefined lines is desirable, if not essential. But it by no means follows that, because success in the study of the law or in the practice of it does not depend upon the mastery of particular subjects, a thorough preparation therefor is not necessary. The contrary is most emphatically true, particularly at the present time. The law is a practical subject, most intimately connected with the private interests of the citizen, and with questions affecting his public rights and obligations; but it is at the same time a science, the mastery of which requires a mental equipment above the ordinary. No one can hope for much success as a student of it without adequate preliminary training, or in its application as an art, without being prepared for the keenest kind of intellectual competition.

Upon the very threshold of his work the law student discovers that his success is to depend very largely upon

his equipment-not upon his having mastered any particular subject, but upon his having made himself master of his own mental processes to such an extent that he can do independent and original thinking. The fundamental principles of the different departments of the law must be mastered, and, that their full significance may be appreciated, their historical development through the successive decisions of the courts must be traced. But he soon discovers that his task embraces more than the memorizing of principles, and the study of their origin and growth. His eyes are soon opened to the fact that the serious business of the law student consists in the application of general principles to the solution of problems involving new conditions and varying statements of fact. And then, too, he discovers directly that, although the body of the settled law is large, there are continually arising questions upon which the law is unsettled, and whose solution requires the harmonizing, if possible, of conflicting decisions, or, where this is not possible, the determination as to the weight of reason and authority. He soon discovers that or every step taken and for every conclusion reached a logical and forceful reason must be assigned. It is needless for me to suggest that work of this nature, if successfully accomplished, calls for analytical power and constructive ability; it demands the informed and trained judgment of an educated man. While occasionally one having a natural aptitude for the law may be able, even with limited preparation, to master its principles and the art of its application, and to push to the front with apparent ease, the fact remains that, as a rule, the appreciative and successful study of jurisprudence demands preliminary training of a high order and of the thorough and rigorous kind.

And if such training is necessary for the student, it is certainly doubly so for the practitioner. He must be master, not only of legal principles, but also of the art of applying them to the actual affairs of life. The successful lawyer must not only have in mind and ready for immediate use the essential and fundamental doctrines of the law, but he must have his faculties so disciplined and under control that he is always prepared for emergencies. Men with ordinary equipment can do only ordinary things and fill the ordinary places, but the men who, through ability and training, are equal to the unexpected are bound to go to the front. More perhaps than the man in any other profession does the lawyer need a large range of general information. His work is so varied, and touches life at so many different points and frequently in so unexpected a way, that he will constantly find himself embarrassed and handicapped without the intellectual masterfulness that comes from thorough and vigorous preliminary study. Unless his attention is especially challenged to the fact, the layman rarely appreciates the extent and variety of learning, aside from the strictly professional, that the lawyer must from time to time summon to his aid in the course of a varied career at the bar. If he has been liberally and thoroughly trained, the knowledge necessary for the emergency may be his; but if it is not his, he has what is quite as useful -the ability to acquire at short notice and under pressure the necessary special information.

The notion that I seek to impress, that large success at the bar demands great versatility and thorough general training, may perhaps be made more apparent by illustration. The litigation in hand may require the examination, by the lawyer in charge, of learned experts in some