JURISPRUDENCE is the name given to those studies, researches and speculations which aim primarily at answering the plain man's question : What is Law? But because the law is a thing of so many aspects, those inquirers who keep that object foremost do not necessarily come quickest at the answer. Indeed the more promising the method pursued, the farther the goal re cedes. Thus at the head of English jurisprudence stands ad mittedly Sir Henry Maine. He more than others kept his purpose vividly in mind, yet when at last he came to lay aside his pen whole sciences had been generated, and all their paths diverged. Should however the inquirer turn first to what the bookseller's catalogue knows as jurisprudence his expectations will again be defeated. He will certainly come upon a definition, clear, logical and precise, but plain man or philosopher, it will have no meaning for him until he has himself become a master of the law. This perhaps comes nearer to the kind of study the Roman jurists de noted by the name, "Juris prudentia est divinarum atque human arum rerum notitia, iusti atque iniusti scientia" ; though this promise of connecting the lawyer's daily task with the true in wardness of all things human and divine was hardly fulfilled. The Roman jurists perhaps, marvellous science though they had, lacked the philosophic mind. Whatever the explanation, their work was done when they had given to the practical rules they employed a formal perfection; a perfection, be it added, that is still the envy of civil law and common law alike. Such elegantia was for them the last word in jurisprudence. Between these greatly opposing conceptions lie a number of methods which have all in one way or another enriched the study of the subject. There is pure philos ophy on the one hand, political theory on the other. There is the study of comparative institutions, the history of moral ideas. These and more border upon or overlap the jurist's field. But jurisprudence has an individuality of its own. The methods of social theory are not those of juristic speculation. There is more than political wisdom enshrined in the thought of Burke, but he does not speak the language of Blackstone. Nor does Savigny speak quite with the voice of Kant. And if such has been the case in the past, how much more is it true to-day. The inter relation of the relevant sciences is now so intricate that no gen eral statement can hope to give an adequate conception of the subject as a whole. Nor will any such statement be even at
tempted here. It is as a guide to the present position, an indica tion of the trend of interest, a suggestion of the more hopeful lines of inquiry that this sketch had best be regarded.