Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

214 Legal History in the Making
he wrote, seemed to offer the prospect of bringing order into the mass of
impressions gained from contemplation of life in society. We may reasonably
attempt to distinguish between cultural types, to note recurring sequences of
development and to suggest reasons why these types and sequences present
themselves not on identical, but on parallel or divergent lines. 7 The early
positivists, Comte and Spencer, proclaimed the advent of a sociology destined
to encompass the whole range of natural sciences as the crowning effort of
human knowledge. Later thinkers in Vinogradoff s day, including Vinogradoff
himself, were not so optimistic but made many reservations and restrictions.
As he put it: The world of human relations does not have the same immutable
laws and ever-recurring sequences characteristic of natural sciences. Rather
they are like a stream, originating from inconspicuous sources, which flows
along various courses to an unknown sea. Social combinations, even when
similar, are never alike'. 8 The rules of conduct in a given society are usually
the result of converging ideas of various kinds, every single one of which would
be powerless to produce the effect required on its own. 'Neither the life of a
family nor that of a nation nor that of a state depends entirely or mainly on
the faultless regularity of its logical construction'. 9 In the case of the family,
for example, it is not the contract of marriage that ensures the happiness and
mutual devotion of the married couple. Marriage is a complex experience and
an institution to which many heterogeneous elements contribute. It may be
analyzed with regard to various component factors: sexual attraction, moral
sentiment, care for children, political utility, economic solidarity, traditional
habits, conventional habits, sacramental beliefs. Each of these factors in turn
may be subjected to separate observation and deductions. If we want to study
it as a living whole we are bound to speculate on the binding force or synthesis
which brings and holds together the various elements in the average case or
discloses dangerous centrifugal tendencies. This is a problem for a synthesizing
sociology and a synthesizing jurisprudence.
One of his contemporaries described Vinogradoff as the best known figure
in the learned world of the continent and his description was correct. Take, for
example, his activities in his capacity as university lecturer and popularizer of
the knowledge of history and legal science. From the memoirs of the Russian
academician Bogoslovsky, a pupil of Vinogradoff at Moscow University, may
be quoted a letter describing how the lex Salica was studied: 10
We were given the task of making ourselves acquainted with the text and with the
relevant literature and then commenting on certain articles of the law or presenting
one of the cases dealt with in complete and convincing form. . . . Pavel Gavrilovich
summarized the papers submitted after going through them thoroughly and then
started to interpret the most difficult passages with the students participating. He
7
Custom and Right (Oslo, 1925), 2, 8.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 12.
10
M.M. Bogolovsky, Istoriografiia, Memuaristika, Epistolariia (Moscow, 1987), 76-77.