of particular cases, would only, if it bequeathed any body of
judicial principles to posterity, bequeath one consisting of the ideas
of right and wrong which happened to be prevalent at the time. Such a
jurisprudence would contain no framework to which the more advanced
conceptions of subsequent ages could be fitted. It would amount at
best to a philosophy marked with the imperfections of the civilisation
under which it grew up.

Few national societies have had their jurisprudence menaced by this
peculiar danger of precocious maturity and untimely disintegration. It
is certainly doubtful whether the Romans were ever seriously
threatened by it, but at any rate they had adequate protection in
their theory of Natural Law. For the Natural Law of the jurisconsults
was distinctly conceived by them as a system which ought gradually to
absorb civil laws, without superseding them so long as they remained
unrepealed. There was no such impression of its sanctity abroad, that
an appeal to it would be likely to overpower the mind of a judge who
was charged with the superintendence of a particular litigation. The
value and serviceableness of the conception arose from its keeping
before the mental vision a type of perfect law, and from its inspiring
the hope of an indefinite approximation to it, at the same time that
it never tempted the practitioner or the citizen to deny the
obligation of existing laws which had not yet been adjusted to the
theory. It is important too to observe that this model system, unlike
many of those which have mocked men's hopes in later days, was not
entirely the product of imagination. It was never thought of as
founded on quite untested principles. The notion was that it underlay
existing law and must be looked for through it. Its functions were in
short remedial, not revolutionary or anarchical. And this,
unfortunately, is the exact point at which the modern view of a Law of
Nature has often ceased to resemble the ancient.

The other liability to which the infancy of society is exposed has
prevented or arrested the progress of far the greater part of mankind.
The rigidity of primitive law, arising chiefly from its early
association and identification with religion, has chained down the
mass of the human race to those views of life and conduct which they
entertained at the time when their usages were first consolidated into
a systematic form. There were one or two races exempted by a
marvellous fate fro