orporations. It is therefore scanty,
because it is supplemented by the despotic commands of the heads of
households. It is ceremonious, because the transactions to which it
pays regard resemble international concerns much more than the quick
play of intercourse between individuals. Above all it has a
peculiarity of which the full importance cannot be shown at present.
It takes a view of _life_ wholly unlike any which appears in developed
jurisprudence. Corporations _never die_, and accordingly primitive law
considers the entities with which it deals, _i.e._ the patriarchal or
family groups, as perpetual and inextinguishable. This view is closely
allied to the peculiar aspect under which, in very ancient times,
moral attributes present themselves. The moral elevation and moral
debasement of the individual appear to be confounded with, or
postponed to, the merits and offences of the group to which the
individual belongs. If the community sins, its guilt is much more than
the sum of the offences committed by its members; the crime is a
corporate act, and extends in its consequences to many more persons
than have shared in its actual perpetration. If, on the other hand,
the individual is conspicuously guilty, it is his children, his
kinsfolk, his tribesmen, or his fellow-citizens, who suffer with him,
and sometimes for him. It thus happens that the ideas of moral
responsibility and retribution often seem to be more clearly realised
at very ancient than at more advanced periods, for, as the family
group is immortal, and its liability to punishment indefinite, the
primitive mind is not perplexed by the questions which become
troublesome as soon as the individual is conceived as altogether
separate from the group. One step in the transition from the ancient
and simple view of the matter to the theological or metaphysical
explanations of later days is marked by the early Greek notion of an
inherited curse. The bequest received by his posterity from the
original criminal was not a liability to punishment, but a liability
to the commission of fresh offences which drew with them a condign
retribution; and thus the responsibility of the family was reconciled
with the newer phase of thought which limited the consequences of
crime to the person of the actual delinquent.

It would be a very simple explanation of the origin of society if we
could base a general conclusion on the hint furnished us by the
scriptural example already adve