Breaking with the Past 259
they favored on other grounds. “Po liti cal considerations” and “patriotic in-
terests,” Bonfi ls believed, “too oft en direct their judgements.”
Th ere was much truth in Bonfi ls’s lamentation. But he could take some
comfort in the fact that, even when its tide surged highest, positivism did
not have international legal fi eld all to itself. Th ere were dissenters who kept
old dreams alive— and even dreamed some new ones, too.