tion, hygiene, and dietetics necessary to every human being. The law is the fundamental science which has more to do with our life, liberty, and happiness than any other influence. It has heretofore been considered sufficient that lawyers knew this science. But, in the rapid changes of the world, with the greatly augmented responsibilities of every individual, we have come to know that everyone should have a knowledge of the law which has upon his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness, an influence beyond our power to estimate. LAW ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT BY CHARLES A. HUSTON, A.B., J.D., J.S.D.* ELEMENTS OF LEGAL THEORY CHAPTER I. THE NATURE OF LAW. 1. Ways of beginning the study of law. There are two very distinct ways of beginning the study of law, ways which may roughly be distinguished as the practical and the logical. On the one hand, a start may be made with the separate rules of law which constitute a chief content of a legal system. Or on the other, one may begin with some consideration of the first principles which underlie the great mass of separate rules and make possible its organization into a system. This latter method has obvious logical advantages, but its practical disadvantages are equally obvious. First principles, to * Dean and Professor of Law, Leland Stanford Junior University Law School. Author: "The Law of Agency,'' in American Law and Procedure; "Business Corporation Law of the United States," in Commercial Laws of the World. be fully comprehended and appreciated by the stu dent, must be arrived at by a process of induction from concrete applications of them, applications which in our law are found largely in the form of decided cases. On the other hand, the concrete details of the law are more fully understood, and their content better remembered, if they are seen and recognized as interrelated parts of a general system, a system based on certain fundamental principles. Some background of legal theory and legal history, slightly sketched at first but gradually growing in elaborateness, is at least highly desirable as a preparation for any really scientific study of law; and it is even more important that the student should seek from the first to cultivate as a habit of mind the consideration of the social origin and purpose of the rules and principles of law which he learns, and their relation with each other as parts of the legal system. 2. The meaning of law. The law with which lawyers deal is concerned with the control of men's conduct. Law in this sense is thus readily distinguishable from the figurative use of the word "law," common in the natural sciences, for instance, in the phrase "the law of gravitation." But it is harder to distinguish the law, as lawyers use the word, from the laws of etiquette, morals, and religion, all of which alike provide standards to which men's actions are conformed. In primitive societies, indeed, these various influences moulding men's conduct are not at all distinguishable. The fear of social disapproval, of the armed vengeance of the |