Changing Legal Order

Authors

Floyd R. Mechem, University of Chicago Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

I must, I suppose, be considered a dull age which does not have its loyal chronicler who arises to affirm that it is the greatest and most important age in the history of the world. There have been many great periods. Some of them doubtless antedate historic times. Many of these ages doubtless were unconscious of their own importance. Picture to yourself the time when primitive man first learned to make and control a fire. How it differentiated him from all other animals! Not even yet, so far as I am aware, does even the most advanced non-human animal build a fire. Picture to yourself the time when man first learned to utter and understand other sounds than those few notes of call and warning which exhaust the repertory of the beasts. Think of the time when men first learned to use written symbols, and were thus enabled to leave upon the sands of time some less perishable evidence of their existence than their whitening bones. Which of the great epochs of the past was the greatest and most evgntful-the most potent in its influence upon man and his development, it is not easy to decide.

Recommended Citation

Floyd R. Mechem, Changing Legal Order, 15 Mich. L. Rev. 185 (1917).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol15/iss3/2