Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/94

90 greatly criticized therefor; whereas openly to condemn a judge, qua judge, shocks certain of our quasi-religious sensibilities.

This very ancient and now quite harmful habit of ascribing a certain sanctity to law makers means that we tend to look upon them with a certain religious reverence and submission. In further accordance with this habit we select our law makers primarily or largely for their adherence to a creed and for their activity in securing converts to that creed. The intrusion of those elements of religious enthusiasm, which make for the destruction of all judicious decision, into the work of selecting our law makers is alone sufficient reason for the conclusion that they must do us much harm.

The habit of having, in the alignment of the rules the king or the majority enforce an elaborate technique, practised by a privileged class, the lawyers, has a peculiar harmfulness.

The habit of having kings, or law-enforcers in any form, and the habit of having legislators or other kinds of law makers, are both survivals and both are doing injury through their failure to fit the more civilized communities which still retain them. But both were once quite essential to progress, and seem still to possess advantageous features, even to societies as advanced as our own. The tribal chief and abject obedience to him were once quite important factors in the struggle for tribal survival. In later forms of society it was as important that the elders of the tribe lay down rules adapted to changing conditions as it was that the grand chief enforce them. That is, the habit of having laws made, and the habit of obeying the one who was there to enforce them, were once quite markedly helpful habits and have some excuse for survival even down to our own day. But for the habit of having a privileged class in charge, as it were, of the technique of the distribution of the effects of the law, of this not so much can be said.

The origin of the lawyer-having habit at once discloses to us a sufficient reason for the power and persistence of the custom of making him a privileged member of society, and points also to its harmfulness.

The tribal chief of early days took on, from his earliest appearance, certain ecclesiastical trappings and powers. He was often a god himself, either during his life or immediately after his death. He was often chief priest as well as head man. The priestly class which grew up about him performed the accustomed sacerdotal rites, led the people through the mummeries of the tribal religion, took on much of the sanctity which custom gave to the head man himself, and, inevitably, became a specialized class with peculiar powers, immunities and dignities.

The fact of the descent of the lawyer class from this priestly class is familiar enough. The lawyer's special privileges have descended directly from those enjoyed by medicine men and priests who surrounded the tribal leader and helped him to exercise his more god-like functions and