differ from each other as the
conditions, the customs of each people differ from those of every other
people. But there has arisen in recent years quite a new and distinct
influence, producing legal enactment and furnishing occasion for legal
development. That is the entrance into the minds of men of the
comparatively new idea of individual freedom and individual equality.
The idea that all men are born equal, that every man is entitled to his
life, his liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the great declarations
of principle designed to give effect to the fundamental ideas of liberty
and equality, are not the outcome of the conditions or customs of any
particular people, but they are common to all mankind.

Before the jurists and lawyers of the world there lies the task of
adapting each special system of municipal law to the enforcement of the
general principles which have come into the life of mankind within so
recent a time, and which are cosmopolitan and world-wide and belong in
no country especially. These principles have to be fitted to your laws
in Mexico and our laws in the United States and to the French laws in
France and the German laws in Germany; and the task before the jurists
and lawyers of the world is to formulate, to elaborate, to secure the
enactment and the enforcement of such practical provisions as will weld
together in each land the old system of municipal law, which regulates
the relations of individuals with each other in accordance with the
time-honored traditions and customs of the race and country, and these
new principles of universal human freedom.

Now, that task is something that cannot be accomplished except by
scientific processes, by the study of comparative jurisprudence, by the
application of minds of the highest order in the most painstaking and
practical way. In the adaptation of these new ideas common to all free
people, the best minds of every people should assist every other people
and receive assistance from every other people. The study of comparative
jurisprudence, apparently dry, purely scientific, is as important to the
well-being of the citizen in the streets of Mexico or Washington, as
those scientific observations and calculations which seem to be purely
abstract have proved to be to the mariner on the ocean or the engineer
of the great works of construction which are of such practical value;
and we ought to promote by the existence of societies of this character
in e