itics of sacrificing fidelity to poignancy of
contrast and picturesqueness of narrative. Other histories too, which
have been handed down to us among the archives of the people to whose
infancy they relate, have been thought distorted by the pride of race
or by the religious sentiment of a newer age. It is important then to
observe that these suspicions, whether groundless or rational, do not
attach to a great deal of archaic law. Much of the old law which has
descended to us was preserved merely because it was old. Those who
practised and obeyed it did not pretend to understand it; and in some
cases they even ridiculed and despised it. They offered no account of
it except that it had come down to them from their ancestors. If we
confine our attention, then, to those fragments of ancient
institutions which cannot reasonably be supposed to have been tampered
with, we are able to gain a clear conception of certain great
characteristics of the society to which they originally belonged.
Advancing a step further, we can apply our knowledge to systems of law
which, like the Code of Menu, are as a whole of suspicious
authenticity; and, using the key we have obtained, we are in a
position to discriminate those portions of them which are truly
archaic from those which have been affected by the prejudices,
interests, or ignorance of the compiler. It will at least be
acknowledged that, if the materials for this process are sufficient,
and if the comparisons be accurately executed, the methods followed
are as little objectionable as those which have led to such surprising
results in comparative philology.

The effect of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is
to establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race
which is known as the Patriarchal Theory. There is no doubt, of
course, that this theory was originally based on the Scriptural
history of the Hebrew patriarchs in Lower Asia; but, as has been
explained already, its connection with Scripture rather militated than
otherwise against its reception as a complete theory, since the
majority of the inquirers who till recently addressed themselves with
most earnestness to the colligation of social phenomena, were either
influenced by the strongest prejudice against Hebrew antiquities or by
the strongest desire to construct their system without the assistance
of religious records. Even now there is perhaps a disposition to
undervalue these accounts, or r