MR. JUSTICE HOLMES has suggested that most distinctions are distinctions of degree." The thought has frequently been echoed. Yet legal science in large part moves on its way dichotomizing. We classify the black and the white. We may recognize gray borderlines. But the idea is not that. The idea is rather of a continuous gradual deepening of the shading from top to bottom. For example we may classify human conduct into "offers for a contract" and "non-offers", admitting there are borderlines where classification is difficult. But expectation aroused by conduct, the most significant element of an offer, may range all the way-by minute gradations from complete assurance to faint hope. And so with other classifications. This holds significance for legal science. Every determination by court or jury involves the evaluation of the varying elements of harm, benefit, the intelligence, morality, and social desirability of conduct, and the relation of conduct to harm and benefit. Each of these elements in turn is made up of innumerable sub-elements, each with its infinity of shading. 2 The reaction of a judge or a juror to a human situation must be the resultant of all the pulls of these elements his way and that. 3 It is impossible

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