a higher intellectuality, we have comedy and romance—the contemplative and ideal.
Now the day is coming when law shall find wisdom in less learning; when from the mountains of ancient and accumulative legal lore, as from the Cretan labyrinth for the imprisonment of the Minotaurs, the thread of simple justice shall be followed until the searcher for the direct path shall be brought out into the clear light of open day. Then it will be manifest to all that between the natural rights of man as arrived at by the gold-diggers," and right as proclaimed by the law and taught by tribunals, the difference is less real than pretended; that the justice of the miners, like their gold, though it had not the statutory stamp upon it was none the less pure metal.
Much truth is treasured up in proverbs and legal maxims, and yet what oceans of absurdities are swallowed when codified under the formulas of truth! There are few of them but would fit mankind as well reversed, that is, if made to say exactly the opposite of what they do say. I have often followed as a pastime this reversing of maxims, and the effect sometimes is marvelous. What matchless subtlety of thought do we find in words thus broug-ht out, such as. An honest god the noblest work of man. Policy is the best honesty, and a host of others; while for the multitude of such meaningless expressions as "Live each day as though it were your last," we find by allowing the mind to dwell upon it for a moment that not the thing said was meant at all, but something else. No one could make a greater mistake than by following literally such injunctions. But they are not intended to be taken literally; all that is nuant is to live well every day. Then would it not be better to say so, and not to elevate into a maxim, and immortalize in the name of golden truth, brazen absurdity. Better the sage remark of the crank, Don Quixote, "Everyone is like everybody else, only a great deal
