compositions, which we call organic life, makes them seem different in kind from the elements out of which they are made, when set opposite to them in direct contrast.
In a book which I printed a good many years ago I tried to establish another example of the development and transformation of ideas. The early law embodied hatred for any immediate source of hurt, which comes from the association of ideas and imperfect analysis, in the form of proceedings against animals and inanimate objects, and of the noxæ deditio by which the owner of the offending thing surrendered it and was free from any further liability. I tried to show that from this primitive source came, in part at least, our modern responsibility of an owner for his animals and of a master for his servants acting within the scope of their employment, the limited liability of shipowners under the law which allows them to surrender their vessel and free themselves, and that curious law of deodand, under which a steam engine was declared forfeited by the Court of Exchequer in 1842.[1] I shall have to suggest later that it played a part also in the development of contract.
Examples like these lead us beyond the transformations of an idea to the broader field of the development of our more general legal conceptions. We have evolution in this sphere of conscious thought and action no less than in lower organic stages, but an evolution which must be studied in its own field. I venture to think that the study is not yet finished. Take for instance the origin of contract. A single view has prevailed with slight modifications since Sohm published "Das Recht der Eheschliessung" in 1875. But fashion is potent in science as well as elsewhere, and it does not follow because Sohm smashed his predecessor that there may not arise a later champion who will make some impact upon him. Sohm, following a thought first suggested, I believe, by Savigny, and made familiar by Maine in his "Ancient Law," sees the beginning of contract in an interrupted sale. This is expressed in later law by our common law Debt, founded upon a quid pro quo received by the debtor to the creditor. Out of this, by a process differently conceived by different writers, arises the formal contract, the fides facta of the Salic law, the covenant familiar to us. And this dichotomy exhausts the matter. I do not say that this may not be proved to be the final and correct
- ↑ Regina v. Eastern Counties Railway Co., 10 M. & W. 59.
