realize," says Holmes,[1] "how large a part of our law is open to reconsideration upon a slight change in the habit of the public mind. No concrete proposition is self-evident, no matter how ready we may be to accept it, not even Mr. Herbert Spencer's every man has a right to do what he wills, provided he interferes not with a like right on the part of his neighbors." "Why," he continues, "is a false and injurious statement privileged, if it is made honestly in giving information about a servant? It is because it has been thought more important that information should be given freely, than that a man should be protected from what under other circumstances would be an actionable wrong. Why is a man at liberty to set up a business which he knows will ruin his neighbor? It is because the public good is supposed to be best subserved by free competition. Obviously such judgments of relative importance may vary in different times and places. . . . I think that the judges themselves have failed adequately to recognize their
- ↑ "The Path of the Law," 10 Harvard L. R. 466.
