Without acknowledging it to themselves, the chiefs of the contending parties were each obeying a political impulse. Savigny was by his birth and his tastes carried into the camp of conservatism; Thibaut, led by his convictions, into the liberal ranks. Nevertheless, the natural elevation of their genius preserved them from all exaggeration. The glorious defender of tradition preserved a liberal spirit, and the ardent advocate of reform desired no upheaval. In what more nearly concerns the question with which we are now occupied, Savigny—while he maintained that law was something contingent, human, national; and while he brought out into relief the practical and exalted character of its successive developments which introduced reform and guarded against revolution—developments which, not confiding in the letter of the written law, unceasingly feed the living and created law, that law called in the energetic language of a great jurisconsult, a law _écrit es coeurs des citoyens_—is far from denying the importance of a high and healthy philosophy which directs man in the uninterrupted labor to which he is called, in the sphere of jurisprudence. Men can no more renounce law than language, the forms of which last they have gradually modified in order to better translate their thoughts into words. The legislator’s task is the successive elaboration of obligatory provisions. He will sometimes oppose and sometimes second the natural progress of law; but, in doing so, it will ever be necessary for him to ascend to the nature of things, and grasp their relations, if he would not go astray in practice, or lose himself among the successive and partial changes to which the illustrious Berlin professor would confine the legitimate ambition of legislative power. To go beyond this, in an age like ours, seemed to him to be a work of destruction. However, far from denying the influence of thought, and therefore of philosophy, acting within its sphere, Savigny invokes its fertile aid. Thibaut, on the other hand, with more confidence in the powers of the spirit of modern times, did not believe a good codification to be impossible. His starting point had been a cry for national independence. He well knew how much veneration was due those institutions which were the slow and progressive work of national genius, and what was the power they possessed. He wished, therefore, to reform, not to abolish them. He well understood that the greatness of the _Code Napoléon_ itself, and the respect which it inspired were due to the fact that its roots ran deep into the soil of the past, even while the modern idea it contained shone like a bright light in the world of things. Hence, without contesting the value of history, he refused to acknowledge its right to exclusive reign.(18)