What did Learned Hand mean by &#39;whether the best mood or habit is not that&#39; and &#39;all specific choices may be momentous&#39;?
<p>Source: <a href="https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0684194163" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>The Betrayed Profession</em></a> (1994), p. 238 Middle.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>  Judge Learned Hand was certainly right when he evoked 
  the commandment "Thou shalt not ration justice"; but it is not 
  quite that easy. The relationship between law and justice is 
  complex. Hand's contemporary Benjamin Cardozo noted: 
  "[W]hen we use the word <em>justice</em> the quality we most frequently have in mind is charity." Hand himself, speculating on the 
  lawyer's contribution, said, <strong>"I wonder whether the best mood 
  or habit is not that, forgetting for the time our job as lawyers, 
  we should think of human beings as a whole, we should look at 
  life <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_specie_aeternitatis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">sub specie aeternitatis</a></em> and yet believe that all specific 
  choices may be momentous."</strong> Justice, moreover, is not immutable; it changes with time. "Laws and institutions," Thomas 
  Jefferson wrote in a letter in 1816, "must go hand in hand with 
  the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more devel- 
  oped, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new 
  truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the 
  change of circumstances, institutions must advance also and 
  keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to 
  wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." <sup>10</sup> Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in one of his 
  devil's advocate moments, said that law was the governance Of 
  the living by the dead. 1</p>
</blockquote>

<ol>
<li><p>What's the emboldened quotation's source? <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&amp;dcr=0&amp;ei=CaLSWoesN-SE_QbJu5lY&amp;q=%22wonder+whether+the+best+mood+or+habit+is+not%22&amp;oq=%22wonder+whether+the+best+mood+or+habit+is+not%22&amp;gs_l=psy-ab.3..35i39k1.760.900.0.1092.2.2.0.0.0.0.90.178.2.2.0....0...1..64.psy-ab..0.2.178....0.s2HZ8SQPjaQ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google</a> yielded nothing.</p></li>
<li><p>What did Hand intend to say? What is meant by 'whether the best mood or habit is not that'? 'specific choices'? 'Momentous'? </p></li>
</ol>

<p>I think the quote is just awkwardly worded. It makes more sense when rearranged like this: "Forgetting for the time our job as lawyers, I wonder whether the best mood or habit is not that we should think of human beings as a whole, we should look at life <em>sub specie aeternitatis</em>, and yet believe that all specific choices may be momentous." So he's just saying that these are better ways to approach the lawyer's duty. </p>

<p>Besides Google, I ran the quote through Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law and came up with nothing. The fact that I can't get find it in <em>any</em> of those sources -- along with the fact that it's awkwardly worded -- suggests it wasn't a written source. I think that's especially possible because this book was co-authored by Matthew Mayer, whose work on the legal profession makes extensive use of quotes from speeches by lawyers and judges -- including several by Judge Hand -- going back to the early 20th century.</p>

judge professional-ethics