Importance to National Life
nothing of the ideal damage which he suffers in his person and his honor, inasmuch as he abandons his rights, because he loves his ease; who was accustomed, in legal matters, to employ only the measure of material interest, be expected to employ a different measure and to feel differently when there is question of the right and the honor of the nation? Whence could that idealism of feeling suddenly proceed which had thus far never shown itself? No! The battler for constitutional law and the law of nations is none other than the battler for private law; the same qualities which distinguished him struggling for his rights as an individual accompany him in the battle for political liberty and against the external enemy. What is sowed in private law is reaped in public law and the law of nations. In the valleys of private law, in the very humblest relations of life, must be collected, drop by drop, so to speak, the forces, the moral capital, which the state needs to operate on a large scale, and to attain its end. Private law, not public law,
99
