Frederick Pollock on Henry James Sumner Maine
← Back to Henry James Sumner Maine Profile
“Not only was he a humanist before he was a jurist, but he never ceased to be a humanist.”
“Having at his command wide and rich domains of literature, he took toll of them for his service, but did not levy nominal tributes for ostentation. Very little really extraneous ornament is to be found in his writings. And yet nothing ever came from his hand that was not visibly the work of an accomplished scholar.”
“Maine can no more become obsolete through the industry and ingenuity of modern scholars than Montesquieu could be made obsolete by the legislation of Napoleon. Facts will be corrected, the order and proportion of ideas will vary, new difficulties will call for new ways of solution, useful knowledge will serve its turn and be forgotten; but in all true genius, perhaps, there is a touch of art; Maine's genius was not only touched with art, but eminently artistic; and art is immortal.”
“At one master-stroke he forged a new and lasting bond between law, history, and anthropology. Jurisprudence itself has become a study of the living growth of human society through all its stages, and it is no longer possible for law to be dealt with as a collection of rules imposed on societies as it were by accident, nor for the resemblances and differences of the laws of different societies to be regarded as casual.”