ntly, that expense being
nowhere stated in their budgets; the cost of judgment, patiently,
(provided only it can be had pure for the money), because the science,
or perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a
noble profession and discipline; so that civilized nations are usually
glad that a number of persons should be supported by exercise in oratory
and analysis. But it has not yet been calculated what the practical
value might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence now
occupied in deciding, through courses of years, what might have been
decided as justly, had the date of judgment been fixed, in as many
hours. Imagine one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to
dispute by law, applied to the determination of physical questions in
medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the probable
results within the next ten years!

I say nothing yet of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, involved in
the use of purchased, instead of personal, justice--[Greek: "epakto par
allon--aporia oikeion."]

117. In order to true analysis of critic law, we must understand the
real meaning of the word "injury."

We commonly understand by it, any kind of harm done by one man to
another; but we do not define the idea of harm: sometimes we limit it to
the harm which the sufferer is conscious of; whereas much the worst
injuries are those he is unconscious of; and, at other times, we limit
the idea to violence, or restraint; whereas much the worse forms of
injury are to be accomplished by indolence, and the withdrawal of
restraint.

118. "Injury" is then simply the refusal, or violation of, any man's
right or claim upon his fellows: which claim, much talked of in modern
times, under the term "right," is mainly resolvable into two branches: a
man's claim not to be hindered from doing what he should; and his claim
to be hindered from doing what he should not; these two forms of
hindrance being intensified by reward, help, and fortune, or Fors, on
one side, and by punishment, impediment, and even final arrest, or Mors,
on the other.

119. Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two rights, it is clearly
needful that the _worth_ of him should be approximately known; as well
as the _want_ of worth, which has, unhappily, been usually the principal
subject of study for critic law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees
of de-merit, instead of merit;--assigning, indeed, to the _De_fic