OF JURISPRUDENCE FOR STUDENTS OF THE COMMON LAW BY SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART. BARRISTER-AT-LAW M.A., HON. LL.D. EDIN., DUBLIN AND HARVARD CORPUS CHRISTI PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE London MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. 1896 All rights reserved PREFACE THIS book is not intended to lay out a general system of the philosophy of law, nor to give a classified view of the whole contents of any legal system, and it does not profess to compete with the many works which have aimed at one or both of those objects. It is addressed to readers who have laid the foundation of a liberal education and are beginning the special study of law. Such a reader finds, in the new literature he has to master, a number of leading conceptions and distinctions which are assumed to be familiar, and are so to lawyers, but which, for that very reason, are not often expressly stated, still less often discussed, and hardly ever explained. He has not only to discover for himself, often with much bewilderment, the actual contents of legal terms, but to realise the legal point of view and the legal habit of mind. Law seems to the layman, at first sight, |