And it is
from this science that the immutable principles of all positive
legislation must be derived by practical jurists and lawgivers.
B. What is Right?
This question may be said to be about as embarrassing to the
jurist as the well-known question, "What is truth?" is to the
logician. It is all the more so, if, on reflection, he strives to
avoid tautology in his reply and recognise the fact that a reference
to what holds true merely of the laws of some one country at a
particular time is not a solution of the general problem thus
proposed. It is quite easy to state what may be right in particular
cases (quid sit juris), as being what the laws of a certain place
and of a certain time say or may have said; but it is much more
difficult to determine whether what they have enacted is right in
itself, and to lay down a universal criterion by which right and wrong
in general, and what is just and unjust, may be recognised. All this
may remain entirely hidden even from the practical jurist until he
abandon his empirical principles for a time and search in the pure
reason for the sources of such judgements, in order to lay a real
foundation for actual positive legislation. In this search, his
empirical laws may, indeed, furnish him with excellent guidance; but a
merely empirical system that is void of rational principles is, like
the wooden head in the fable of Phaedrus, fine enough in appearance,
but unfortunately it wants brain.
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