Origin of the Law
with a thousand arms. Hence every such attempt, in natural obedience to the law of self-preservation, calls forth the most violent opposition of the imperiled interests, and with it a struggle in which, as in every struggle, the issue is decided not by the weight of reason, but by the relative strength of opposing forces; the result being not infrequently the same as in the parallelogram of forces—a deviation from the original line towards the diagonal. Only thus does it become intelligible, that institutions on which public opinion has long since passed sentence of death continue to enjoy life for a great length of time. It is not the vis inertiæ which preserves their life, but the power of resistance of the interests centering about their existence.
But in all such cases, wherever the existing law is backed by interests, the new has to undergo a struggle to force its way into the world—a struggle which not infrequently lasts over a whole century. This struggle reaches its highest degree of intensity when
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