John Henry Wigmore which, while generating enormous power, appears to be at rest. But now, why a personality? So much in justice can be said on this point that brevity must and will amply suffice. Mr. Wigmore with the histo rian's vision of the mutability of legal institutions, and of the persistence of well-defined cycles of development in social affairs, has recognized that our legal system is in a transitional stage of evolution, the embryotic course of which is mirrored in the legal history of Rome, and in other legal systems. He has sought to make provision for the problems now before us and still to be encountered by placing before the profession the necessary instruments of learning to probe out the difficulties. Mr. Wigmore was chairman of the learned committee which produced that valuable contribution to historico-Iegal knowledge, the Select Essays in AngloAmerican Legal History. He is chair man of the Continental Legal History series. He was chairman of the Criminal Law series. He is chairman of the Modern Philosophy of Law series. These staggering undertakings (which were authorized by, and are under the patron age of The Association of American Law Schools) have only to be casually exam ined to produce the belief that the impulse behind these monuments of distinguished scholarship is no ordinary force. It may be said without dis paragement to the able men associated with Mr. Wigmore in these various matters, that the bulk of the labor of the committees was his, as was a'so the moving idea. Mr. Wigmore has done other things involving extraordinary effort and capacity — he is doing some thing of the kind always — but his initia tive in making accessible to the American legal profession the great masterpieces of Continental legal science, history, and
philosophy, may be set down, perhaps, as his greatest achievement, the im portance of which will be better recog nized a century hence than now. The unsatisfactory and wholly un scientific conditions surrounding our treatment of criminals have long been deprecated, but it remained for Mr. Wigmore to attack the disease at its root. He was the founder and first president of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology which is bringing to bear enlightened, that is to say, scientific methods in the admin istration of criminal law. This organi zation now meets with the American Bar Association and publishes a journal which compares very favorably with anything on the European continent in the same field. Passing by Mr. Wigmore's important activities in the various bar associations and in other organizations, let us speak a word of something less known — the Gary Library. The stamp of Mr. Wig more's ripe scholarship is visible in this great mass of legal materials. There are legal libraries with more books, and excelling, perhaps, in this or that field, but on the scientific side of the law this is the most valuable collection in this country. The judgment, learning, and effort evident in this undertaking of making a great library eloquently pro claim capacities and abilities of the most enlarged type. Measured by what he has accom plished, by his influence on the form and substance of the law, and by what may be reasonably expected of his efforts, Wigmore is more than a personality, — he is an institution. That in a vague way this is widely appreciated in the hurry and combat of our social life, that in the same indistinct fashion Mr. Wigmore is regarded as a man of extraor dinary learning and a master in several
