The Struggle for Law
the interests in question have assumed the form of vested rights. Here we find two parties opposed each to the other, each of which takes as its device the sacredness of the law; the one that of the historical law, the law of the past; the other that of the law which is ever coming into existence, ever renewing its youth, the eternal, primordial law of mankind. A case of conflict of the idea of law with itself which, for the individuals who have staked all their strength and their very being for their convictions and finally succumb to the supreme decree of history, has in it something that is really tragic. All the great achievements which the history of the law has to record—the abolition of slavery, of serfdom, the freedom of landed property, of industry, of conscience, etc.—all have had to be won, in the first instance, in this manner, by the most violent struggles, which often lasted for centuries. Not infrequently streams of blood, and everywhere rights trampled under foot, mark the way which the law has traveled
12
