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Unsystematic knowledge, an acquaintance with isolated legal truths without any com prehensive system in which each may find its proper place in making up a welldigested conception of the whole subject, is of little practical value. The student who has only such a knowledge of the law is lame and halting in all his judgments. His conclusions are often vitiated by partial

and one-sided views of the principle he is endeavoring to ap ply; and he enters upon the discharge of his duties as a prac titioner with sure dis appointment and per haps utter failure awaiting him. A subject so com prehensive, so com plex and subtle, as that of Jurisprudence can be reduced to a systematic form only by the most learned, laborious, and patient investigator; and even after he has done his best he is con fronted, as are men in every other branch of science, by an SELDEN "unclassified residu um " that baffles his severest efforts. At the present time there is no one com plete systematic classification of the whole science of the law. The most that can be done is to gather up the classifications as they are scattered throughout the various text-books on the different subjects, adjust them, and with the aid of the reports har monize them into a practical whole. To do this requires legal scholarship, methodical thinking, and the power of arrangement, such as the law student does not possess. For a student to accomplish such a task un-

aided, amid the confusions and interruptions of an office, is, in a great majority of cases, simply impossible. But the task, even the smallest part of it, is not accomplished by the acquisition of a systematic knowledge of the law. The office is not the best place to acquire mental dis cipline, which is one of the essential parts of a student's preparation. Its importance cannot be overesti mated. It cannot be attained by unregu lated effort. The wellregulated law school has that as one of the first objects to attain. MENTAL TRAINING. It is a law of man's being that he enjoys doing that best which he can do easiest, and also that he does easiest what he has habituated himself to do. The mathematician, the philosopher, the scientist, and the poet each thinks with ease and pleasure in the line of his particular BACON pursuit. The poet would find it irksome and quite impossible to think in lines and curves and angles, but no more so than would the mathematician to think in the figures of speech and the symbols of Nature. The philosopher's mind soars smoothly through the distant atmosphere of abstrac tion, but toils with difficulty amid the concrete phenomena of Nature; while the scientist delights in the latter, but finds no safety, ease, or pleasure in the former. So in the science of the law, by habit, and by habit only, can the mind find its greatest ease and efficiency in analyzing human