Volume 1

Universities and their sons : history, influence and characteristics of American universities, with biographical sketches and portraits of alumni and recipients of honorary degrees / editor-in-chief, General Joshua L. Chamberlain ; introduction by W.T. Harris.

Date:
1898-1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Universities and their sons : history, influence and characteristics of American universities, with biographical sketches and portraits of alumni and recipients of honorary degrees / editor-in-chief, General Joshua L. Chamberlain ; introduction by W.T. Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/774 (page 16)
    Let each one act so that his deed will not be self-destructive if adopted by all men. This is the Kantian formula for free moral activity. Man is placed in this world as a race, and is not complete as a single individual. Each individual is a fragment of the race, and his solu- tion of the problem of life is to be found in a proper combination with his fellow-men, so as to avail himself of their help, theoretical and practical. Theoretically they will help by giving him the results of their experience in life; of their pains and pleasures; of their mistakes and successes; of the theoretical inventory which they have taken of the world in its infinite details; and of the principles they have discovered as the units which reduce those details to a system. Without this combination with his fellows he remains an outcast, a mere rudimentary possibility of man. How important, then, is this invention of the civil forms which make possible this combina- tion and co-operation ! Other people, before the Romans or contemporary with them, may lay claim to this invention of the civil code. But their claims cannot be sustained. Moral and ethical forms, in sufficiency, they have; but the civil form which gives and secures to the indi- vidual the circle wherein he shall exercise supremely his free will, and beyond the limits of which he shall submerge his individuality utterly in that of the State — the supreme civil institution — such a civil form elaborated into a complete code of written laws, we do not find elsewhere. It is, moreover, a settled fact in history that modern nations have received their jurispru- dence from the Roman peoples, modifying the same, more or less, to accommodate it to the developed spirit of the Christian religion. It is essential for a correct view of this subject to consider carefully the nature of the forms of expression which must be used in order to define the limits of the free will. The code which expresses such limits must deal with prohibitions only, in so far as it defines crime. But it must furnish positive forms in which all agreements and contracts are to be defined. The full exercise of free-will within the sphere allotted to the individual is accomplished only by means of the institution of property. The complete idea of property renders necessary the possibility of its alienation, or transference to others. Con- tract is the form in which two or more wills combine, constituting a higher will. The Roman law furnishes the varied forms in which this higher will, essentially a corporate will, is realized. This is the most important contribution of Rome to the civilization of the world. So important is contract to the Roman mind, that, it deifies soulless abstractions in which it sees incorporated civil powers. Its Jupiter, Mars, Juno, Venus, each personifies Rome. The word rcligio (bind- ing obligation) etymologically e.xpresses the highest spiritual relation as conceived by the Roman. He makes a vow, proposes a contract to his gods, and the gift of the god being obtained he will faithfully fulfil his vow. The Roman people possess, as individuals, a sort of double consciousness, as it were a consciousness of two selves, a private and a public self: first, the self as supremely free within the circle of what it owns as its personal property, its “ dominium; ” second, the self as utterly