Austin's great merit consists in the remarka ble clearness and penetration of his analysis of legal conceptions. He was the first English writer to attach precise and intelligible meaning to legal terms, as well as the first systematic writer on law in the English language. With an adequate knowledge of the principles and meth ods of Roman and English law, he combined an extraordinary talent for classification and defi nition. Fragmentary and incomplete as it was, his work revolutionized the science of jurispru dence and became the text-book of the school of analytical jurists, which has dominated the legal thought of the Nineteenth Century in Eng land and America. His doctrines have had but little influence elsewhere, however, the Conti nental jurists adhering with singular unanimity to the classification and conceptions of the Ro man law. Indeed, even in the Anglo-Saxon world, a reaction has lately set in against the Austinian conceptions of law and polities, owing to the en larged knowledge of human society and the his torical spirit which have so profoundly modified the thought of our generation. Austin's limita
tion of the conception of positive law to the com mands of a sovereign, and his restriction of sov ereignty to an external political authority, have been especially subjected to criticism. They are, however, reasserted and strongly defended by his most distinguished disciple, Prof. Thomas E. Holland, in the latest edition (1900) of his Ele ments of Jurisprudence. For the opposite view Sir henry S. Maine's works may be consulted, es pecially Early Law and Custom (London, 1883), and Early History of Institutions (London, 1875). The pathetic story of Austin's life is re lated by his widow in her introduction to the second edition of his Province of Jurisprudence Determined (London, 1861) ; and John Stuart Mill has included a sympathetic but just and dis criminating criticism of the man and his work in his volume Dissertations and Discussions (4 vols., London. 1875). See JURISPRUDENCE; LAW SOVEREIGNTY.