Science and the Law material. I ask a peremptory charge for a verdict of not guilty upon this indictment. Apparently Mr. Spencer regards me as a sort of linguistic anarchist. My iconoclastic tendencies may remind him of the debate between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass."6 "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less!' "'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can makewordsmeandifferentthings.' "'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'" I would not identify my opinions of language with those of Humpty Dumpty. However, one who has observed the tyranny which linguistic forms com monly exercise over even keen intellects would lend a sympathetic ear to the sad untold history of Humpty Dumpty's previous intellectual experiences and secretly envy his attainment of an arrogantly asserted emancipation. At the same time he would have to recog nize the common sense of Alice's fem ininely conservative protest. With the limited capacity peculiar to mortals, each grasped tightly the fragment of truth which experience had allotted. We may avail ourselves of both fragments as suggestions to a broader view. We should be the masters of words and keep them in their proper place as pliable tools, but we should remember that their efficiency as tools depends entirely upon their capacity for carrying meaning with accuracy, economy, and distinct ness, and that to force them to carry • I am indebted to Mr. Joseph Osraun Skinner for reminding me of this passage by a reference to it in his interesting article on "Law and Philology; the Meaning of SS.," which appeared in the Febru ary, 1913, number of the Green Bag.
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other than the meanings sanctioned by usage, without an accompanying and clear definition of the new use, is to break down the train of adequate com munication at that point. On the other hand, it should be remembered that a similar result will be accomplished by a refusal upon the part of an interpreter to interpret intelligently and with the discrimination induced by knowledge that no word has a single stereotyped meaning and that even the various definitions in an unabridged dictionary are not necessarily exhaustive or accu rate — especially when the term is a technical one which is used with respect to a range of ideas that never have been analyzed thoroughly. I could establish by examples that all of the uses of the word "law" which I discriminated in my article — and several other uses — are quite common, although they rarely are clearly defined and differentiated and often are confused. I do not relish wars over words, however, and am not inclined to wage them. If any of my terms offend, no one will offer less objec tion than I to discarding them. There is nothing with which I can part more willingly than words. Over the sub stance of my argument, however, I stand ready to battle valiantly, not for the preservation of personal ideas, but for a general acceptance of a sane, progres sive, scientific attitude towards the law, based upon a clear comprehension of what it is and how it is made, and for direct forceful thinking on legal problems. "Legal science," says Mr. Spencer,7 "is concerned not with the delineation of external reality, but with an ideal material which offers a valuation rather than a description of human activity." I fear that this would make savory fodder for the Bull Moose. The most 7 25 Green Bag 75 (Feb. 1913).
