THE GREATNESS OF JUSTICE HOLMES
Otto, Max C.
The Greatness Of Justice Holmes THE MIND AND FAITH OF JUSTICE HOLMES. Selected and Edited by Max Lerner. Little, Brown and Company. $4. Reviewed by Max C. Otto OLD WINE they say is best. You...
...And no one can read his court decisions without recognizing that he aimed to perpetuate a free field and no favors for competitors to fight it out...
...Life," as Mr...
...He seems, as they, to have been curiously insensitive to the crushing effect of sufficiently unfavorable conditions on individuals and groups...
...He was a great spokesman of our Constitutional tradition because he was a great enough conservative to stretch the framework of the past to accommodate at least some of the needs of the present...
...And from the first page to the last what you read is authentically American and human and realistic...
...But there are exceptions to all rules, and I gladly make an exception of this particular publication...
...Selections," as a rule, do not appeal to me...
...for those educated in the schools and no less for the thoughtful man or woman whose knowledge has been gained in the give and take of daily occupation...
...Although the book is of exceptional excellence throughout, different readers will naturally pick their own portions of it as meaning more to them than others...
...He will probably leave a greater effect on English style and on what the young men dream and want than upon American constitutional law...
...It would be selected for its substance, its literary form, and its power to stimulate heart and mind...
...No one can examine his life and fail to discover that he lived up to his faith with frankness and courage...
...Like other progressive minded youths of the time he accepted the Darwinian theory as the ultimate law of life...
...Lerner says of Justice Holmes, "even in his moments of anger or near despair, an assurance in the midst of scepticism...
...He was at once buoyant and unfooled...
...But as I have suggested, the book is a unit from the "Personal History" at the beginning, to the short piece called "Death Plucks my Ears," at the end...
...The reading of these Selections revived a tantalizing problem for me concerning the meaning of democracy for this eminent jurist...
...And the sketch ends on this note: "Unlike Marshall, Holmes is a great man regardless of whether he was a great justice...
...Marshall's reputation stands or falls with the vested interests he defended...
...This harsh fact, which Justice Brandeis came to see early in his career and thereafter never lost sight of, remained mostly hidden from Justice Holmes...
...He was "skeptical of the reformist tinkering with what was an inherent part of human society," says the editor...
...Lerner puts it, "was a struggle for existence, and Holmes had a healthy respect for the survivors, whether men or institutions...
...Fifty introductory pages are given over to a biographical sketch called, "Holmes: A Personal History...
...It will stand up as long as the English language stands up, as long as men find life complex and exciting, and law a part of life, and the sharp blade of thought powerful to cleave both...
...The story is for the old and the young...
...I'll cut myself slices as I'm ready for them...
...The result is that this is not, in the ordinary sense, a collection of bits at all, but an integrated book...
...Men, however, are not only born unequal, they are born and cannot escape...
...If some one else prefers a basket of crumbs advertised to contain all the vitamins, what of it...
...He had serenity," Mr...
...I'll take the book just as it is...
...a coherent, dramatic unfolding of the story of a great life...
...You read these pages and think of fruit ripened in sun and wind, of the immensity of nature, of the great universe in which our planet is a grain of sand...
...My own selection would be the 45 pages on "Law as Civilization," and I would not feel greatly deprived if I had to get on without the section, of about the same length, headed "Letters...
...Journalist, historian, critic, social philosopher, and humanist, he has just the combination of talents needed for doing the thing superbly...
...It's uncanny what the right man can do with words...
...You can't prove it by me...
...The greatness of Holmes will survive the vested interests and their constitutional bolstering...
...Something like a miracle would happen to our common life if our lawyers, our judges, our men and women in the public service—not to speak of anyone else—were to read and meditate on a little of it at the beginning of every day, and translate their acquisition of wisdom into practical behavior...
...And were I to select a list of best books—which heaven forbid I ever do— this one would be among the number...
...Wine is not in my line...
...It was a characteristic of the class among whom he grew up to look upon democracy as a form of government which provided the best opportunity for the well endowed...
...The biographer is the man for the job...
...He even tended to regard survival as conclusive evidence of superiority...
...I know a little about them...
...That's one reason why I go all out for this book...
...Conflict, warfare, the struggle for supremacy, endorsed by the cosmos, appeared to him in romantic and glamorous colors...
...The speeches, essays, judicial opinions, and letters drawn upon are of course nutritious in themselves and they are enriched by the editor's comments, elucidations, and summaries, always vividly expressed, and all of them rooted in acquaintance with American history and responsive to the many-sided struggle of men for a better chance at life...
...And ideas about life are better for being ripened in experience...
...It belongs most decidedly with the few rare ones of its kind...
...This is not merely a record of events, but an unsentimental, though warmly appreciative, analysis of an aristocratic, highly gifted, venturesome human being, finding himself and developing his powers in response to his country's- economic and industrial expansion...
...You are Dushed into the thick of life, into striving ambitions, warring interests, and meliorating idealisms...
...The whole loaf, if you please...
...You get more here of Justice Holmes and his philosophy than from any finished writings of his, provided only that you are willing to do your own mental chewing...
...It's different with ideas about life...
...They don't prove that nibbling is eating, do they...
...And that's that...
...You find yourself in cities, business houses, banks, factories, on ships and railroads...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 49
