Introduction
years, there is apparent a gradual declination in the sound value of their fruits. His posthumous writings are decidedly in contrast, and to their disadvantage, with the studies of his earlier years.[1] He rose up out of a national law to an universal law, but as his ideas became more general they also at the last became more tenuous. As a realist confining himself to facts which he apprehended with the intuition of genius, and dealing with “practica” he was incomparable; but when he attempted the flight into an alien country he left behind him the substantial products of a vigorous and fertile intellect to enter a domain as empty as the “Begriffshimmel” created by him for the Romanists.
Jhering’s claim to great distinction may be said to rest, in summary, on the following grounds:
1. He universalized Roman law, approving at once its reception, and the changes which had been made in it in the middle ages, and thus took a middle ground which compromised
- ↑ See. Posener, “Rechtslexikon,” i, s. v. “Jhering.”
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