45. But even if international legislation attains the degree of success suggested, there still remains another great difficulty which must indirectly influence legislation itself, and that is the interpretation of international statutes once they have been enacted. It is notorious that no generally received rule of the law of nations exists for the interpretation of international treaties. Grotius and his successors applied thereto the rules of interpretation adopted in Roman law, but these rules, despite their aptness, are not recognized as international rules of construction. It can scarcely be said, however, that insurmountable difficulties have arisen hitherto out of this situation, for the majority of treaties have been between two parties, and the interpretation thereof is the affair of the contracting parties exclusively, and can be ultimately settled by arbitration. But in the case of general or universal international enactments we have to deal with conventions between a large number of states or between all states, and the question, accordingly, now becomes acute. [Sidenote: International differences as regards interpretation.] 46. The difficulty of solving this question is increased by the fact that jurists of different nations are influenced by their national idiosyncrasies in the interpretation of enactments, and are dependent on the method of their school of law. Here are contrarieties which must always make themselves powerfully felt. The continental turn of mind is abstract, the turn of the English and American mind is concrete. Germans, French, and Italians have learnt to apply the abstract rules of codified law to concrete cases; in their abstract mode of thought they believe in general principles of law, and they work outwards from these. English and Americans, on the contrary, learn their law from decided cases--'law is that which the courts recognize as a coactive rule' is an accepted and widely current definition of law in the Anglo-American jurisprudence; they regard abstract legal rules, which for the most part they do not understand, with marked distrust; they work outwards from previously decided cases and, when a new case arises, they always look for the respects in which it is to be taken as covered by previous cases; they turn away as far as possible from general principles of law, and always fasten on the characteristic features of the particular case. If continental jurists may be said to adapt their cases to the law, English and American jurists may be said to adapt the law to their cases. It is obvious that this difference of intellectual attitude and of juristic training must exercise a far-reaching influence on the interpretation and construction of international enactments. [Sidenote: Different nations have different canons of interpretation.]