rules of general operation,[1] must contain within itself the seeds of fallacy and error. Analysis is useless if it destroys what it is intended to explain. Law and obedience to law are facts confirmed every day to us all in our experience of life. If the result of a definition is to make them seem to be illusions, so much the worse for the definition; we must enlarge it till it is broad enough to answer to realities. The outstanding truths of life, the great and unquestioned phenomena of society, are not to be argued away as myths and vagaries when they do not fit within our little moulds. If necessary, we must remake the moulds. We must seek a conception of law which realism can accept as true. Statutes do not cease to be law because the power to fix their meaning in case of doubt or ambiguity has been confided to the courts. One might as well say for like reasons that contracts have no reality as expressions of a contracting will. The quality of law is not withdrawn from all precedents, however well established, because courts
- ↑ Cf. Beale, "Conflict of Laws," p. 753, sec. 129.
