[1.] The invitation to lecture extended to me by the Law Society was the more binding as it gave expression in strong terms to a conviction which, unfortunately, seems on the point of falling into abeyance. Proposals for a reform of legal studies have been heard (and they are even said to have proceeded from university circles) which can only mean that the roots of jurisprudence deeply implanted as they are in the spheres of ethics and national history may be severed, without the organism itself suffering any vital injury.
As regards history, this counsel is to me, I confess, utterly inexplicable; in respect of philosophy, I can excuse it only on the ground that the men who at present occupy the chairs in the legal faculty have taken a deep and gloomy impression of the mistakes of a period which has lately passed away. A personal reproach may therefore well be spared them. Yet indeed such suggestions were every bit as wise as would be the case if a medical faculty were to propose to erase from their plan of obligatory studies zoology, physics and chemistry.
If Leibnitz in his Vita a se ipso lineata, speaking of himself, says: “I found that my earlier studies in history and philosophy lightened materially my study of law,” and if, as in his Specimen difficultatis in jure, deploring the prejudices of contemporary jurists, he exclaims: “Oh! that those who busy themselves with the study of law would throw aside their contempt of philosophy and see that without philosophy most of the questions of their jus form a labyrinth without issue!” what indeed would he say were he to rise again to-day, to these retrograde reform movements?
[2.] The worthy President of the Society, who has retained such a lively and wide sense of the real scientific needs of his profession, expressed to me his own special wishes respecting the theme to be chosen. The question as to the existence of a natural right was, he said, a subject which enjoyed an exceptional interest with the members of the Law Society; and he himself was anxious to learn what attitude I would adopt with regard to the views there expressed by Ihering some years ago.[1]
I consented gladly, and have therefore designated as the subject of my lecture the natural sanction for law and morality, wishing thereby, at the same time, to indicate in what sense alone I believe in a natural right.
[3.] For a two-fold meaning may be associated with the term “natural”:—
(1) It may mean as much as “given by nature,” “innate,” in contradistinction to what has been acquired during historical development either by deduction or by experience.
(2) It may mean, in contradistinction to what is determined by the arbitrary will of a dictator, the rules which, in and for themselves and in virtue of their nature are recognized as right and binding.
Ihering rejects natural right in either of these meanings.[2] I, for my part, agree as thoroughly with him regarding the one meaning as I differ from him regarding the other.
[4.] I agree completely with Ihering when, following the example of John Locke, he denies all innate moral principles.