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The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'. In the field of jurisprudence this legendary individual occupies the place which in another science is held by the Economic Man, and in social and political discussions by the Average or Plain Man. He is an ideal, a standard, the embodiment of all those qualities which we demand of the good citizen. No matter what may be the particular department of human life which falls to be considered in these Courts, sooner or later we have to face the question: Was this or was it not the conduct of a reasonable man?
Though any given example of his behaviour must command our admiration, when taken in the mass his acts create a very different set of impressions.
He is one who invariably looks where he is going, and is careful to examine the immediate foreground before he executes a leap or bound;
who neither star-gazes nor is lost in meditation when approaching trap-doors or the margin of a dock;
who records in every case upon the counterfoils of cheques such ample details as are desirable, scrupulously substitutes the word 'Order' for the word 'Bearer', crosses the instrument 'a/c Payee only', and registers the package in which it is despatched;
who never mounts a moving omnibus, and does not alight from any car while the train is in motion;
who investigates exhaustively the bona fides of every mendicant [beggar] before distributing alms, and will inform himself of the history and habits of a dog before administering a caress;
who believes no gossip, nor repeats it, without firm basis for believing it to be true;
who never drives his ball till those in front of him have definitely vacated the putting-green which is his own objective;
who never from one year's end to another makes an excessive demand upon his wife, his neighbours, his servants, his ox, or his ass;
who in the way of business looks only for that narrow margin of profit which twelve men such as himself would reckon to be 'fair', contemplates his fellow-merchants, their agents, and their goods, with that degree of suspicion and distrust which the law deems admirable;
who never swears, gambles, or loses his temper;
who uses nothing except in moderation, and even while he flogs his child is meditating only on the golden mean.
Devoid, in short, of any human weakness, with not one single saving vice, sans prejudice, procrastination, ill-nature, avarice, and absence of mind, as careful for his own safety as he is for that of others, this excellent but odious character stands like a monument in our Courts of Justice, vainly appealing to his fellow-citizens to order their lives after his own example.
