Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/92

 THEORY AND DOCTRINE OF TORT enter my neighbor's premises to rescue his beast from the mire; much more may I enter to save human life; to hold me responsible for harm done in the reasonable discharge of such a duty would be to find the existence" of a relation between my neighbor and me which would tend to anything but to bind us together in the organism of the State. Where moral (or indeed official) duty shades into pure voluntaryism, becoming imperti nence, may often be a difficult question; but such considerations cannot avail against the existence of the immunity. When it is said that privilege may grow out of interest, the word "interest" must

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be taken in the sense, it seems, of legal right, either in the higher or the lower con ception of the term. I may have a duty towards my neighbor as my neighbor, from an instinct of humanity; but I have no in terest in him simply as my neighbor, except, perhaps, the shadowy interest in his welfare as one of the multitude of men composing the State, and so sharing with me its burdens. The interest required must, at all events, rise higher than desire or even anxiety for an other's general welfare.1 1 See Sheckell v. Jackson, 10 Cush. 25. BOSTON, MASS., January, 1906.