ABSTRACT
The Law of a community consists of the general rules which are followed by its judicial department in establishing legal rights and duties. The task of an analytic student of the Law is the task of classification, and, included in this, of definition. It has been truly said that he who could perfectly classify the Law would have a perfect knowledge of the Law; but the besetting sin of the analytic jurist is the conviction that his classification and definitions are final. The Common Law has often been reproached with the lack of precision and certainty in its definitions, but, in truth, it is a great advantage of the Common Law, and of the mode of its development by judicial decision, that its definitions are never the matters resolved by the cases. The danger in dealing with abstract conceptions, whether in the Law or in any other department of human knowledge, is that of losing foothold on the actual earth.
