ient reasons to satisfy the
conscience. Lawyers, being attaches of courts of justice, regard
themselves as protectors of the people, when really they are the
plunderers of the people, and their business is quite as much to defeat
justice as to administer it. The evasion of law is as truly a lawyer's
work as compliance with law. Then our philosopher explains that if law
and justice were synonymous, this state of affairs would be most
deplorable; but as it is, no particular harm is worked, save in the
moral degradation of the lawyers. The connivance of lawyers tames the
rank injustices of law; hence, to a degree, we live in a land where
there is neither law nor justice--save such justice as can be
appropriated by the man who is diplomat enough to do without lawyers and
wise enough to have no property. Justice, however, to Kant is a very
uncertain quantity, and he is rather inclined to regard the idea that
men are able to administer justice as on a par with the assumption of
the priest that he is dealing with God.

Kant once said, "When a woman demands justice, she means revenge."

A pupil here interposed, and asked the master if this was not equally
true of men, and the answer was, "I accept the amendment--it certainly
is true of all men I ever saw in courtrooms."

"Does death end all?"

"No," said Kant; "there is the litigation over the estate."

Kant's constant reiteration that he had no use for doctors, lawyers and
preachers, we can well imagine did not add to his popularity. As for his
reasoning concerning lawyers, we can all, probably, recall a few
jug-shaped attorneys who fill the Kant requirements--takers of
contingent fees and stirrers-up of strife: men who watch for vessels on
the rocks and lure with false lights the mariner to his doom. But
matters since Kant's day have changed considerably for the better. There
is a demand now for a lawyer who is a businessman and who will keep
people out of trouble instead of getting them in. And we also have a few
physicians who are big enough to tell a man there is nothing the matter
with him, if they think so, and then charge him accordingly--in inverse
ratio to the amount of medicine administered.

And while we no longer refer to the clergyman as our spiritual adviser,
except, perhaps, in way of pleasantry, he surely is useful as a social
promoter.

* * * * *

The parents of Kant were Lutherans--punctilious and pious. They were
desc