[Footnote 1: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 9.]

[Footnote 2: Ashley, _op. cit._, p. 381.]

Let us say in passing that the assumption that the mediæval teaching
grew out of contemporary practice, rather than that the latter grew
out of the former, is one which does not find acceptance among the
majority of the students of the subject. The problem whether a correct
understanding of mediæval economic life can be best attained by first
studying the teaching or the practice is possibly no more soluble than
the old riddle of the hen and the egg; but it may at least be argued
that there is a good deal to be said on both sides. The supporters of
the view that practice moulded theory are by no means unopposed.
There is no doubt that in many respects the exigencies of everyday
commercial concerns came into conflict with the tenets of canon law
and scholastic opinion; but the admission of this fact does not at
all prove that the former was the element which modified the latter,
rather than the latter the former. In so far as the expansion of
commerce and the increasing complexity of intercourse raised questions
which seemed to indicate that mercantile convenience conflicted with
received teaching, it is probable that the difficulty was not so much
caused by a contradiction between the former and the latter, as by the
fact that an interpretation of the doctrine as applied to the facts
of the new situation was not available before the new situation had
actually arisen. This is a phenomenon frequently met with at the
present day in legal practice; but no lawyer would dream of asserting
that, because there had arisen an unprecedented state of facts, to
which the application of the law was a matter of doubt or difficulty,
therefore the law itself was obsolete or incomplete. Examples of such
a conflict are familiar to any one who has ever studied the case law