and self-controlled citizen exerted an increased influence on the public discussion.Many debaters meant that free inquiry was considered to be a better means for promoting a good society than the traditional acceptance of dogmatic truths delivered from above. On the legal level, general principles of this kind were transformed into freedom of contract, property, mobility and trade. Released from state intervention, every man should be capable of being the architect of his own fortune at the same time as he could rely on that “an invisible hand” directing society to general welfare. A just procedure and a law based on accepted values and formal equality of all men would release the citizen from the old, arbitrary, particular and unpredictable exercise of state power, which priests and learned jurists had disguised behind the smokescreens of natural law.The sense of moral obligation and the legitimisation of truth tended to switch from what Max Weber called “traditional power” to “rationality”.123 At the same time, the demands for formal freedom and equality were balanced or refuted by more conservative ideas. Representatives of romanticism (within art), idealism (philosophy) and the historical school (legal writing) elaborated arguments, which could support the protection of a well-established order of things.These movements strongly influenced the public debate in Europe for long periods and contributed to giving historical perspectives great attention within all scientific research, including social science. Legislators, as well as legal scholars, moved between these poles, one characterised by progressive ideas, freedom of contract and equality; the other of “back to basic” ideals and respect for traditional authority and institutions.When faced with the inevitable task of adapting the legal system to a rapidly changing society they showed considerable ambivalence and hesitation. c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 67 123 Weber 1947, pp. 328-329.
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