ABSTRACT
Before the mores of the United States Supreme Court cut him off from public utterance, Holmes was greatly in demand as an after-dinner speaker, and several times he spoke upon receiving an honorary degree. He admitted to having once had his doubts whether the narrowing effects of the law could be avoided. The law is made by the Bar, even more than by the Bench. The world has its fling at lawyers sometimes, but its very denial is an admission. The law is not the place for the artist or the poet. The law is the calling of thinkers. The law, so far as it depends on learning, is indeed, as it has been called, the government of the living by the dead. An ideal system of law should draw its postulates and its legislative justification from science. The Italians have begun to work upon the notion that the foundations of the law ought to be scientific.
