It is not concerned with analytical jurisprudence as a theory of legal thought, or an encyclopaedic introduction to legal teaching. Jurisprudence in such a philosophic or pedagogical sense has certainly to reckon with the methods and results of a comparative study of law,
but its aims are distinct from those of the latter: it deals with more general problems. On the other hand, the comparative study of law may itself be treated in two different ways: it may be directed to a comparison of existing systems of legislation and law, with a view to tracing analogies and contrasts in the treatment of practical problems and taking note of expedients and of possible solutions. Or else it may aim at discovering the principles regulating the development of legal systems.
In the first sense, comparative jurisprudence resolves itself into a study of home and foreign law. In the second sense, comparative jurisprudence is one of the aspects of socalled sociology, being the study of social evolution in the special domain of law.
It is only natural, however, that early periods and primitive conditions have attracted investigators in this field more than recent developments. This peculiarity is easily explained if we take into account the tendency of all evolutionary investigations to obtain a view of origins in order to follow up the threads of development from their initial starting-point.
The idea that the legal enactments and customs of different countries should be compared for the purpose of deducing general principles from them is as old as political science itself. It was realized with especial vividness in epochs when a considerable, material of observations was gathered from different sources and in various forms.
there is no determined line of division between ancient and modern comparative jurisprudence in so far as both are aiming at the study of legal development.
The law of Islam or, for that matter, the German civil code, may be taken up as a subject of study quite as much as the marriage customs of Australian tribes.
The fact that the comparative study of legal evolution is chiefly represented by investigations of early institutions is therefore a characteristic, but not a necessary feature in the treatment of the subject. But it is essential to this treatment that it should be historical and comparative.
The immediate incitement for the formation of comparative jurisprudence was given by the great discoveries of comparative philology. When the labours of Franz Bopp, August Schleicher, Max Muller, W. D. Whitney and others revealed the profound connexion between the different branches of the Indo-European race in regard to their languages, and showed that the development of these languages proceeded on lines which might be studied in a strictly scientific manner, on the basis of comparative observation and with the object of tracing the uniformities of the process, it was natural that students of religion, of folk-lore and of legal institutions took up the same method and tried to win similar results.
It is desirable, in conclusion, to review the entire domain of comparative jurisprudence, and to formulate the chief principles of method which have to be taken into consideration in the course of this study.
It is evident, to begin with, that a scientific comparison of facts must be directed towards two aims - towards establishing and explaining similarity, and towards enumerating and explaining differences. As a matter of fact the same material may be studied from both points of view, though logically these are two distinct processes.
