Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet

The doctrine of evolution is nothing else than the historical method applied to the facts of nature; the historical method is nothing else than the doctrine of evolution applied to human societies and institutions.

Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet PC FBA (10 December 1845 – 18 January 1937) was an English jurist best known for his History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, written with F. W. Maitland, and his lifelong correspondence with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles.

Quotes

• From an early time, again, we have had a central and powerful legislature which, as it represents the estates of the whole realm, has made statutes binding on the whole, and knows no legal bounds to its competence. Thus our laws have been eminently national and positive, and our particular legal habit of mind is perhaps the most insular of our many insular traits. Our long standing apart from the general movement of European thought has had its drawbacks; but I think it the better opinion that both in jurisprudence and in the not wholly dissimilar case of philosophy the gain has outweighed them.
  • 'The Methods of Jurisprudence', an introductory lecture delivered at University College, London (31 October 1882), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), p. 25

• The doctrine of evolution is nothing else than the historical method applied to the facts of nature; the historical method is nothing else than the doctrine of evolution applied to human societies and institutions.
  • 'English Opportunities in Historical and Comparative Jurisprudence', an inaugural lecture delivered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (20 October 1883), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), p. 41

• When Charles Darwin created the philosophy of natural history (for no less title is due to the idea which transformed the knowledge of organic nature from a multitude of particulars into a continuous whole), he was working in the same spirit and towards the same ends as the great publicists who, heeding his field of labour as little as he heeded theirs, had laid in the patient study of historical fact the bases of a solid and rational philosophy of politics and law. Savigny, whom we do not yet know or honour enough, and our own Burke, whom we know and honour, but cannot honour too much, were Darwinians before Darwin. In some measure the same may be said of the great Frenchman Montesquieu, whose unequal but illuminating genius was lost in a generation of formalists.
  • 'English Opportunities in Historical and Comparative Jurisprudence', an inaugural lecture delivered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (20 October 1883), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), pp. 41-42

• Since the classical period of Roman law there has never been a constitution of affairs more apt to foster the free and intelligent criticism of legal authorities, the untrammelled play of legal speculation and analysis, than now exists in the States of the American Union, where law is developed under many technically independent jurisdictions, but in deference and conformity to a common ideal.
  • 'English Opportunities in Historical and Comparative Jurisprudence', an inaugural lecture delivered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (20 October 1883), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), pp. 48-49

• So venerable, so majestic, is this living temple of justice, this immemorial and yet freshly growing fabric of the Common Law, that the least of us is happy who hereafter may point to so much as one stone thereof and say, The work of my hands is there.
  • 'Oxford Law Studies', a public lecture delivered in the University of Oxford (22 May 1886), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), p. 111

• Our Constitution is popular in that the life of the English people, from the greatest to the least, has gone to make it what it is; and it has at almost all times combined the tenacity of tradition with a great power of assimilating fresh elements, and of adapting existing organs to new purposes. For some considerable time our national institutions and our national character have been confirming one another in this habit.
  • 'Sir Henry Maine and His Work', a public lecture in the University of Oxford (10 November 1888), quoted in Frederick Pollock, Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses (1890), pp. 162-163

• Our lady the Common Law will note other people's fashions and take a hint from them in season, but she will have no thanks for judges or legislators who steal incongruous tags and patches and offer to bedizen her raiment with them. Assimilation of foreign elements, we have already seen, may be a very good thing. Crude and hasty borrowing of foreign details is unbecoming at best, and almost always mischievous. When you are tempted to make play with foreign ideas or terms, either for imitation or for criticism, the first thing is to be sure that you understand them.
  • The Genius of the Common Law (1912), p. 116

Quotes about Frederick Pollock

A short time after my father's death I was surprised, indeed a little staggered, to hear an accomplished Oxford professor call him "the most learned man since Bacon." ~ John Pollock

• Equally at home in the Inns of Court and in the Universities, he was for sixty years at the heart of the law. A brooding presence near the Bench, he might have supplied the answer to the question, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Rooted in the virtues that have come, with whatever truth, to be called Victorian, the fruits of his scholarship were harvested by men who were themselves the products of a new legal education.
  • C. H. S. Fifoot, Judge and Jurist in the Reign of Victoria (1959), pp. 136-137

• Pollock was not only a scholar versed in the lore of the ages, but also a constant and eager observer of the modern world, sensitive to its trends of thought and conversant with its larger movements. To the solution of some of its most difficult legal and political problems he devoted his remarkable abilities as a lawyer-statesman. In these and many other ways Pollock proved himself to be one of the leaders of thought in the national and international life of his times. In the breadth of his knowledge, however, which was not confined to any one branch of learning, he stood out from our over-specialized age, and was far more like a man of the Renaissance than a modern. It is this humanistic outlook and culture which give character to all his writings on the subject-matters that chiefly engaged his attention.
  • Harold Dexter Hazeltine, 'Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. 1845–1937', Proceedings of the British Academy 1949 (n.d.), p. 233

• All his books, essays, notes, and reviews upon matters legal are marked by a clarity and a felicity of expression which is the touchstone of a master of his craft; and there are one or two passages in some of his essays which reach a high level of eloquence and beauty. The literary quality of his work is due to the extent and variety of his learning in many other subjects besides law. He was an accomplished linguist who could write verses in Latin, Greek, French and German; he knew something of Eastern languages; and he was a philosopher, an historian, and something of a mathematician. He bore his great learning lightly, and, having a subtle sense of humour, he used his literary gifts to produce the witty parodies and other humorous verses which are published in Leading Cases done into English, and in the volume entitled Outside the Law.
  • William Searle Holdsworth, Some Makers of English Law (1938), p. 281

• A short time after my father's death I was surprised, indeed a little staggered, to hear an accomplished Oxford professor call him "the most learned man since Bacon."
  • John Pollock, Time's Chariot (1950), p. 62

• He had read almost every important book on these subjects and, although he had not Acton's miraculous visual memory for books, he never forgot what he read and always had the facts ready in his mind. His Introduction to Political Science has remained what it was on publication, the best book on the subject. Though not a professed Shakespearean scholar, he had the bulk of Shakespeare's plays so incrusted in his memory that he hardly ever had need to refer to the text and was the originator of more than one illuminating emendation. His knowledge of mediæval and of classical history was complete: it was superior to Acton's in that to him they were always living subjects... On balance, and saving alone modern history in its fullest sweep, I am driven to the conclusion that my father's learning was barely, if it all, less than that of so renowned a man as Acton and in some respects greater.
  • John Pollock, Time's Chariot (1950), pp. 63-64

• Pollock was perhaps the last representative of the "old broad culture." To take only his literary recreations, he easily and habitually wrote verse in Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian, he was a brilliant parodist of the English poets from Chaucer down to his friend Swinburne (as in his well-known Leading Cases), and he had quite a fair acquaintance with Persian and Sanskrit. He was an active and prominent member of the Rabelais Club. In addition he was well read in philosophy, and was a respectable mathematician. He was more of a celebrity in Europe and in the United States than here.
  • 'Sir Frederick Pollock, K.C.', The Times (19 January 1937), p. 14