Geoffrey Samuef 154 bolic knowledge representation structure, which acts as the object of legal knowledge, all the hidden propositional knowledge. It is a matter of scientia iuris and ars hermeneutica. The great advantage of reducing the whole of legal knowledge to a symbolic representation, that is to say to propositional knowledge, is that harmonisation between legal systems becomes only a question of time; it is, at worse, a matter of encouraging a systemlike that of the common law or classical Roman law to move, no doubt gradually, from an inductive stage of legal science to a deductive, if not axiomatic stage.Indeed one might see the whole textbook tradition of Anglo-American lawas furthering this project since “if they are good they are more than mere guides, for they seek not only to arrange the cases systematically but to extract from them the general principles of the law and to show how those principles may be developed”." Viewed froma methodological standpoint, legal knowledge is a question of induction and deduction, where one moves from proposition to decision by means of what one English judge has called the complex syllogism.'- Such an approach would appear to be more or less in harmony with the approach of civilian judges in that they too have abandoned the formal syllogism in favour reasoning structures that are less simplistic. For, as Atias notes, “lepassage de la regie gériérale - ou de la décision antérienre - a la solution du cas concret ne saurait s'analyser en un simpleprocessus déductif d'application" 2. Symbolic and non-symbolic knowledge The question, of course, is whether structures that are primarily visual can be reduced to linguistic propositions without a significant loss of information. Can a hierarchical pattern be adequately captured by the words genus and species, or categories and sub-categories, or can the full knowledge value of a structure only be appreciated in terms of non-symbolic imagery? Does one need, in other words, the mental image of a hierarchical structure before one can have knowledge of its knowledge possibilities? Equally can the symmetry between property rights and obligation rights be encapsulated by propositional definition, or can the full knowledge essence only be captured by the image of a relationship {vinculumiuris) between person and thing and between person and person? Indeed is not the whole normative idea of a right founded on the image of a bond between right holder (subject) and right (thing)? In short, can patterns be captured by language? The point of asking these quesCf R. Blanche, L’épistémologie (Presses Universitaires de France, 3e. éd., 1983), p 65; Samuel, Foundations, op.cit., pp. 83-85. '■ H. F. Jolowicz, Lectures onJurisprudence (Athlone, 1963), p. 314-315. Lord Simon in FA & AB Ltd v Lupton [1972] AC 634 at 658. And Foundations, op.cit., pp. 143-145; G. Samuel, Entre les mots et les choses: les raisonnements et les methodes en tant que sources du droit [1995] Revue International de Droit Compare 467. C. Atias, Epistcmologte du droit (Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), p. 119. generally Samuel, see
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