MAKING or finding law, call it which you will, presupposes
a mental picture of what one is doing and of why he is do-
ing it. Hence the nature of law has been the chief battle-
ground of jurisprudence since the Greek philosophers be-
gan to argue as to the basis of the law's authority. But the
end of law has been debated more in politics than in juris-
prudence. In the stage of equity and natural law the prevail-
ing theory of the nature of law seemed to answer the ques-
tion as to its end. In the maturity of law the law was thought
of as something self-sufficient, to be judged by an ideal form
of itself, and as something which could not be made, or, if it
could be made, was to be made sparingly. The idea of natural
rights seemed to explain incidentally what law was for and to
show that there ought to be as little of it as possible, since it
was a restraint upon liberty and even the least of such re-
straint demanded affirmative justification. Thus apart from
mere systematic and formal improvement the theory of law-,
making in the maturity of law was negative. It told us chiefly
how we should not legislate and upon what subjects we
should refrain from lawmaking. Having no positive theory
of creative lawmaking, the last century was little conscious
of requiring or holding a theory as to the end of law. But
in fact it held such a theory and held it strongly.

As ideas of what law is for are so largely implicit in ideas
of what law is, a brief survey of ideas of the nature of law

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