Rudolf von Jhering, The Struggle for Law — Translator's Note (1872)
“ This law of custom is the natural form of all law, in the presence of which legislation is something artificial, mechanical, an encroachment into the order of nature. The legislator is, so to speak, to the law of custom what the physician is to nature. Nature should help itself; the physician should interfere as seldom as possible; for his very presence shows that the normal condition is disturbed and that disease exists. “Thus Savigny entirely reverses the true relation established by the old teaching between legislation and the law of custom. ”
