354 LAW -L A W
of organic to inorganic nature. He was probably the first to devote systematic attention to agricultural chemistry, and obtained the practical success of doubling the produce of a large farm owned by him near Blois. A striking proof of his disinterested humanity is afforded by a long and painful investigation of putrefying substances carried out solely with a view to averting accidents in sewers. Not the least notable of his achievements is that of having first formed a clear idea as to the nature of gases, and of matter generally in its relation to heat. He held that bodies exist in the solid, liquid, or gaseous states according as the attractive force of their particles is superior, equal, or inferior to the repulsive action of an universally-diffused, imponderable fluid which he called "caloric." Differences of specific heat he attributed to differences of inter-molecular space. The theory, put forward by him with due reserve, formed a useful if not indispensable preliminary to further progress. He was the inventor of the gasometer, and, jointly with Laplace, his coadjutor in a series of experiments on specific heat, of the calorimeter.
A complete edition of the writings of Lavoisier was issued in four vols. 4to by the Government of Napoleon III., under the title Œuvres de Lavoisier publiées par les soins de son Excellence le Ministre de l'Instruction publique, Paris, 1864-68. This publication comprises, besides the works already mentioned, Opuscules Physiques et chimiques (1774), a large number of memoirs from the Academy volumes (during the twenty years 1770-90 he contributed no less than fifty-eight), and numerous letters, notes, and reports relating to the various affairs in which he was engaged. At the time of his death he was preparing an edition of his collected works, and the portions ready for the press were published by his widow in 1805, in two 8vo vols. entitled Memoires de Chimie. The plates in the Traité elementaire were drawn and engraved by Madame Lavoisier. Biographical notices of Lavoisier are given in Fourcroy's Notice, and by Lalande in Scherer's Nachträge, Jena, 1796. For an account of his discoveries see Dumas, Leçons sur la Philosophie Chimique, and Bechamp, Lettres Historiques sur la Chimie. (A. M. C. )
LAW
THE present article will be limited to the consideration I of the phenomena presented for study by positive laws. The objects which laws ought to subserve, the principles of legislation, the sphere of law, the province of government, and other topics of a similar nature which are generally to be found in writings professing to treat of law in the abstract have been discussed under the heading GOVERN MENT and elsewhere. It will be convenient, and it will be following the lines of a very remarkable development of English thought, to take actual laws as positive facts, without reference to their goodness or badness, and examine, so far as it can be done within the limits at our command, the character which they present when looked at from different points of view. This conception of the science of law, which is closely related to the scientific ideas of the time, has been developed by the efforts of the modern school of English jurists. In former times the science of law meant anything but science as we have been taught to conceive it by physical philosophers. It meant if anything a philosophy of legal principles not necessarily related to any system of actual law. A philosophy of laws actually existing in fact is what we in England at least should now consider the science of law to be. By universal consent the somewhat shifting term jurisprudence has been limited to this meaning. Jurisprudence is the science of positive laws. The present article will attempt to present simply the leading principles and conclusions of juris prudence.
The human race may be conceived as parcelled out into a number of distinct groups or societies, differing greatly in size and circumstances, in physical and moral characteristics of all kinds. But they all resemble each other in this that they reveal on examination certain rules of conduct in accordance with which the relations of the members inter se are governed. Such rules we may for the present, without anticipating a somewhat difficult discussion, term laws. Each society has its own system of laws, and all the systems, so far as they are known, constitute the appropriate subject matter of jurisprudence. The jurist may deal with it in the following ways. He may first of all examine the leading conceptions common to all the systems, or in other words define the leading terms common to them all. Such are the terms law itself, right, duty, property, crime, and so forth, which, or their equivalents, may, notwithstanding delicate differences of connotation, be regarded as common terms in all systems. That kind of inquiry is what is known in England as analytical jurisprudence. It regards the conceptions with which it deals as fixed or stationary, and aims at expressing them distinctly and exhibiting their logical relations with each other. What is really meant by a right and by a duty, and what is the true connexion between a right and a duty, are types of the questions proper to this inquiry. Shifting our point of view, but still regarding systems of law in the mass, we may consider them, not as stationary, but as changeable and changing, we may ask what general features are exhibited by the record of the change. This, somewhat crudely put, may serve to indicate the field of historical jurisprudence. In its ideal condition it would require an accurate record of the history of all legal systems as its material. As yet the record is exceedingly incomplete, and the results are proportionately limited. But whether the material be abundant or scanty, the method is the same. It seeks the explanation of institutions and legal principles in the facts of history. Its aim is to show how a given rule came to be what it is. The legislative source – the emanation of the rule from a sovereign authority – is of no importance here; what is important is the moral source – the connexion of the rule with the ideas prevalent during contemporary periods. This method, it is evident, involves, not only a comparison of successive stages in the history of the same system, but a comparison of different systems, of the Roman with the English, of the Hindu with the Irish, and so on. The historical method as applied to law may be regarded as a special example of the method of comparison. The comparative method is really employed in all generalizations about law; for, although the analysis of legal terms might be conducted with exclusive reference to one system, the advantage of testing the result by reference to other systems is obvious. But, besides the use of comparison for purposes of analysis and in tracing the phenomena of the growth of laws, it is evident that for the purposes of practical legislation the comparison of different systems may yield important results. Laws are contrivances for bringing about certain definite ends, the larger of which are identical in all systems. The comparison of these contrivances not only serves to bring their real object, often obscured as it is in details, into clearer view, but enables legislators to see where the contrivances are deficient, and how they may be improved.
The "science of law," as the expression is generally used, means the examination of laws in general in one or other of the ways just indicated. It means an investigation of laws which exist or have existed in some given society in fact in other words, positive laws; and it means an examination not limited to the exposition of particular systems. Analytical jurisprudence is in England asso ciated chiefly with the name of JOHN AUSTIN (q.v.), whose Province of Jurisprudence Determined systematized and completed the work begun in England by Hobbes, and con tinued at a later date and from a different point of view by Bentham. The best view of the subject will be obtained by taking Austin's principal positions in outline, and con-
