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The Green Bag

institutions as manifestations of culture rather than factors molding it, and his preference of the Hegelian concept of the state as dominating society to the concept of society as dominating the state. But his leading principles are hard to class as Hegelian. This pseudo-idealism, perhaps better to be described as a vitalistic realism, is quite as one-sided and inadequate as

the old positivistic realism against which it protested. The new realism must pass beyond both transitory phases of doc trine and take a larger view of social science, and the new philosophy of law, resting on sociological foundations, must apply a more comprehensive and ade quate method than that which has been applied by either Positivists or NeoHegelians.

Circumstantial Evidence By Robert McMurdy of the Chicago Bar THE story of circumstantial evidence ent to two old friends by the names of Paine and Sourby who lived in different told in "The Upas Tree," the re cent lawyer's novel from my pen, is not places, had taken with him two tame prairie-dogs — a male intended for Paine more remarkable than many of the re corded cases. Indeed it seems impossible and a female for Sourby. Off the coast to invent a fiction plot not outrivaled of Newfoundland the ship gave a heavy by fact, and in every-day life we meet lurch which threw the male across the with incidents that would be counted deck into a watery grave. As near as overdrawn if found in a writer's tale. the time could be calculated, at that Every combination of circumstances very instant Paine fell over a precipice which seems to lead to a particular and was instantly killed. If both the actors in this tragedy had been persons, conclusion, nevertheless raises the ques tion whether it is not mere coincidence, one might conjure up a theory of occult and whenever the attention is habitually attraction or divine co-ordination be drawn to the frequency and strangeness tween lives intended to be intermolded, of the almost daily coincidences of life or the calamity might be conveniently one begins to question whether they are ascribed to predestination, but between not governed by some law which the prairie-dog and man it must be accepted psychologists and metaphysicians have as purely a freak of destiny unrelated to any law unless there be one governing entirely overlooked. mere coincidences. These odd happenings swear continu Numerous other incidents might be ally at the doctrine of chance and many are undeniably removed from any recounted out of my own experience, telepathic or other mental influence. and it has been no more extended than To illustrate from an incident which that of the average man. It is an inter arose in my own family: one of its esting experiment, which I have tried myself, to have each member of a fairtruthful members, on his way to Eng land, desiring to make an unusual pres sized company of credible people relate