Introduction
the learned public, but with the unorganized and unthinking masses in issues more stirring than the unemotional materials of legal science. At a hospitable juncture he might have created or subverted a dynasty. The literary quality of Jhering’s writing is well shown in the opening lines of his “Geist,” which might be mistaken for the stately measures of a sonorous epic. Another phase is exhibited in the address here published. Never before has a moral duty been asserted with such eloquence; never before has a “lay sermon addressed to the conscience”[1] been more spontaneously and widely accepted. Within two years this address went into twelve editions, and although first published in German more than forty years ago, it is still being republished, the last German edition being the eighteenth. At this time
- ↑ Munroe Smith, “Four German Jurists,” Pol. Sc. Q., xi, 301. Prof. Smith heard Jhering lecture on Roman law, and his able essay therefore sounds an intimate note which adds to the value of his analysis. This study also shows the dominating importance of Jhering, and Prof. Smith’s essay might well have been entitled “Jhering and Three other German Jurists,” for the others are only as foils in the play.
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