Evening star., 1936-11-29

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must be respected, etc. We march up
q conscript with bayonets behind him
to die for a cause he doesn't believe
in. And I feel no scruples about 1t.
Our morality seems to me only
check on the ultimate dominance of
force. just as our politeness Is check
on the impulse Of every pig to put his
feet In the trough"
In the same letter, and following
out the same trend of thought, he ex-
pressed some Of his philosophy Of the
law. to the study and Interpretation
OF which he had devoted his life. He
found in it no "ultimates."
When it comes to the development
OF q corpus juris," he wrote WI. "the
ultimate question Is what do the
dominant forces Of a community want
and do they want it hard enough to
disregard whatever inhibitions may
stand in the way. If given COM
munity has a definite ideal, for in
stance, to regulate itself so as to pro-
duce a certain type of man, other
communities would have a different
one - and that community might
change in hundred years. But sup
pose the ideal accepted, there would
be infinite differences of opinion as
to the way in which it was to be
achieved, and the law of a given mo-
ment would represent only the domi-
nant will Of the moment, subject to
change on experiment or for deeper
reasons.
You assume body of law in force,
and start to formulate principles of
juristic development I should think
the only principles worth talking
about were the existing notions of
public policy. How those notions have
changed and still change I don't need
to illustrate to you"
Thoughts Turn to War.
DR.. WI was living in a land torn
by revolution and months elapsed
when the old man in the street
study got no word from his young con-
f1dante. He worried about his safety
a great deal and his thoughts turned
at times to the subject OF war, with
its tragedies and its place in human
relations. He saw no peace. He wrote
WI:
By q coincidence. the moment I
came upstairs to my library had been
talking about war with q guest who
served In France. I am afraid that
my talk was little more skeptical
than you would approve, perhaps be-
Ald n
wars. 1t Is, shortly, this. We all try
to make the kind of a world we should
like. What we like lies too deep for
argument and can be changed only
gradually, often through the expert
ence Of many generations. II the diff
ferent desires of different people come
in conflict in region that each wishes
to occupy, especially if it is a physical
region, and each wishes it strongly
enough, what is there to do except to
remove the other If you can?
Il hate to discourage the belief Of a
young man in reason. I believe in it
with all my heart. but I think that
its control over the actions Of men
when it comes against what they want
Is not very great. A century ago NAL
thus ran his sword through fallacies
that one would have thought must die
then and there. but men didn't like to
believe him, and the humbugs that he
killed are as alive as ever today"
Easy to Talk High Talk.
Again on the same subject he wrote:
''The test Of an ideal. or rather of an
idealist, is the power to hold to it and
get ones inspiration from it under diff
culties. When one is comfortable and
well on, 1t Is easy to talk high talk.
remember just before the battle of
Antietam thinking and perhaps saying
to brother officer that it would be
easy after q comfortable breakfast to
come down the steps of ones house,
pulling on ones gloves and smoking q
cigar. to get on to horse and charge
battery up Beacon street, while the
ladies wave handkerchiefs from a bal
cony But the reality was to pass q
night on the ground N the rain with
your bowels out Of order, and then,
after no particular breakfast. to wade
q stream and attack the enemy. That
Is life.
Il hope that your interest in phi
losophy land philosophy wisely under
stood is the greatest interest there Isl
will not lead You too far from the con-
crete. My notion of the philosophic
movement is simply TO see the univer-
sal in the particular, which perhaps Is
commonplace, but the best of COM
monplaces If you realize that every
particular is as good as any other to
illustrate it, subject only to the quail
ncation that some can see it in one,
some in another matter more readily,
according to their faculties. The artist
sees the line Of growth in a tree, the
business man an opportunity in q
muddle, the lawyer a principle in lot
OF dramatic detail.'
Holmes Was Realist.
Justice Holmes was realist. He be-
lieved that space and time and eternity
were things that had a real existence
outside his own mind, and that they
constituted q vaStnesS in which his
mind and all it contemplated consti-
tuted the pettiest of details. He wrote
WI on the subject which has stirred
SO many arguments:
Il don't believe or know anything
about absolute truth. I noticed once
that you treated it as a joke when I
asked you how you knew you weren't
dreaming me. am quite serious. We
begin with an act of faith, with decid-
ing that we are not God, for If we were
dreaming the universe we should be
God, so far as we knew.
"You never can prove that you are
awake. BY an act Of faith I assume
that you exist in the same sense that
I do, and by the same act assume that
am in the universe and not it in me.
regard myself as cosmic ganglion-
part Of an unimaginable-andd don't
venture to assume that my can't helps