ALBERlCtJS   GEKTILIS  143

more  or  less  fragmentary  ;  but  it  is  important  to  remember  that
the  work  of  the  former  was  a  later  publication  and  had  the  great
advantage  of  being  modelled  on  that  of  the  latter.  No  doubt
Grotius  is  superior  in  philosophic  grasp  ;  by  virtue  of  this  capacity
he  elaborated  a  magnificent  system,  parts  of  which,  however,
were  in  some  respects  retrograde,  in  others  alien  to  the  require-
ments and  circumstances  of  the  age.  Hence  at  times  his  work
presents  the  appearance  of  an  abstract  a  priori  treatise.  Gentilis,
on  the  contrary,  always  considered  actual  conditions  and  possi-
bilities, and  never  forgot  that  a  body  of  rules  governing  the  rela-
tionships between  men  or  between  States  is  necessarily  of  an
organic  nature  ;  hence  he  avoids  all  arbitrary  dogmatic  methods.
He  clearly  marked  out  the  respective  spheres  of  the  international
jurist  and  the  theologian  ;  he  carefully  differentiated  between  the
work  of  the  international  lawyer  and  that  of  the  civilian.  He  is
not  given  to  fallacious  presumptions  of  analogy  between  the  civil
law  and  the  law  of  nations — presumptions  which  govern  the
fundamental  classification  of  the  work  of  Grotius.
When  we  carefully  weigh  all  these  considerations,  and  bear  in
mind  the  differences  of  the  epochs  of  these  two  jurists,  the  greater
difficulties  attending  the  pioneer  work  of  the  earlier  writer,  the
remarkable  systematic  powers  and  enormous  European  influence
of  the  later,  we  can  readily  conclude  that  Gentilis  and  Grotius
are  the  two  greatest  contributors  to  international  law  ;  but,  not-
withstanding the  glorification  of  the  one  by  the  Italian  school
and  the  apotheosis  of  the  other  by  the  Dutch,  we  cannot  finally
decide  which  of  them  really  occupies  the  foremost  place.
