error of the schools, but it is not confined to them. I once heard a
very eminent judge say that he never let a decision go until he was
absolutely sure that it was right. So judicial dissent often is blamed,
as if it meant simply that one side or the other were not doing their
sums right, and if they would take more trouble, agreement inevitably
would come.

This mode of thinking is entirely natural. The training of lawyers is
a training in logic. The processes of analogy, discrimination, and
deduction are those in which they are most at home. The language of
judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical
method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which
is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose
is not the destiny of man. Behind the logical form lies a judgment as
to the relative worth and importance of competing legislative grounds,
often an inarticulate and unconscious judgment, it is true, and yet the
very root and nerve of the whole proceeding. You can give any conclusion
a logical form. You always can imply a condition in a contract. But why
do you imply it? It is because of some belief as to the practice of the
community or of a class, or because of some opinion as to policy, or,
in short, because of some attitude of yours upon a matter not capable
of exact quantitative measurement, and therefore not capable of founding
exact logical conclusions. Such matters really are battle grounds where
the means do not exist for the determinations that shall be good for all
time, and where the decision can do no more than embody the preference
of a given body in a given time and place. We do not realize how large
a part of our law is open to reconsideration upon a slight change in the
habit of the public mind. No concrete proposition is self evident, no
matter how ready we may be to accept it, not even Mr. Herbert Spencer's
"Every man has a right to do what he wills, provided he interferes not