92 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. sold to pay the salary of the pastor is of interest to lawyers and ministers alike. So, too, is the little dissertation upon justice contained in the opinion of the court. After expressing the view that if any debt ought to be paid it is one contracted for the health of souls, and if any class of debtors ought to pay, the good people of a Christian church are of that class, the learned judge continues : " The study of justice for more than forty years has impressed me with the supreme importance of this grand and noble virtue. Some of the virtues are in the nature of moral luxu- ries, but this is an absolute necessity of social life. It is the hog and hominy, the bacon and beans, of morality, public and private. It is the exact virtue, being mathematical in its nature. Mercy, pity, charity, grati- tude, magnanimity, etc., are the liberal virtues. They flourish partly in voluntary concessions made by the exact virtue, but they have no right to extort from it any unwilling concession. A man cannot give in charity, or from pity, hospitality, or magnanimity, the smallest part of what is necessary to enable him to satisfy the demands of justice. It is ignoble to indulge any of the liberal virtues by leaving undischarged any of these imperative demands against us. . . . We think a court may well constrain this church to do justice. In contemplation of law, justice is not only one of the cardinal virtues, it is the pontifical virtue." THE LAW SCHOOL LECTURE NOTES. [These notes were taken by students from lectures delivered as part of the regular course of in- struction in the School. They represent, therefore, no carefully formulated statements of doctrine, but cnly such informal expressions of opinion as are usually put forward in the class-room. For the form of these notes the lecturers are not responsible.] Contributory Negligence. — Causation. — {From Professor Smith s Lectures.) — The expression "contributory" negligence is inaccurate and misleading. It suggests that a penalty attaches to a man's failure to exercise due care in his own behalf. Such, however, is by no means the case. No one owes to himself a duty of care, and a penalty can only attach where there has been a breach of duty. Further, negligence may be contributory in any one of several ways. i. It may be contributory in the sense of being an element in the chain of antecedents of which the injury complained of is the consequent. 2. It may be contributory in the sense of operating simultaneously and concurrently with the defendant's negligence to produce the injury complained of. 3. It may be contribu- tory in the sense of calling into actual existence the cause itself of the in- jury. It is in this last sense that it is generally used and understood in the law. But " causative " or " decisive " negligence would much better ex- press the meaning of the doctrine. As Mr. Beven, in his work on Negli- gence, says, contributory negligence is really only a special application of the law of negligence. What he really means is, that contributory negligence is only a special application of the doctrine of causation. " The true ground of contributory negligence being a bar to recovery is that it is the proximate cause of the mischief" (Pollock on Torts, 2d
