Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/52

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Author's Preface


rights nugatory by an objection, a stratagem so contemptible that it is worthy of no serious attention. Is there any flesh without blood? The judge who accorded Shylock the right to cut a pound of flesh out of Antonio’s body accorded him, at the same time, the right to Antonio’s blood, without which flesh cannot be. Both are refused to the Jew. He must take the flesh without the blood, and cut out only an exact pound of flesh, no more and no less. Do I say too much when I assert that here the Jew is cheated out of his legal right? True it is done in the interest of humanity, but does chicanery cease to be chicanery because practised in the name of humanity?

RUDOLPH von JHERING.

Göttingen, Feb. 24, 1877.

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