n of the Testamentary Heir, for the manner in which a
man became Haeres had nothing to do with the legal character he
sustained. The dead man's universal successor, however he became so,
whether by Will or by Intestacy, was his Heir. But the Heir was not
necessarily a single person. A group of persons considered in law as a
single unit, might succeed as _co-heirs_ to the Inheritance.

Let me now quote the usual Roman definition of an Inheritance. The
reader will be in a position to appreciate the full force of the
separate terms. _Haereditas est successio in universum jus quod
defunctus habuit_ ("an inheritance is a succession to the entire legal
position of a deceased man"). The notion was that, though the physical
person of the deceased had perished, his legal personality survived
and descended unimpaired on his Heir or Co-heirs, in whom his identity
(so far as the law was concerned) was continued. Our own law, in
constituting the Executor or Administrator the representative of the
deceased to the extent of his personal assets, may serve as an
illustration of the theory from which it emanated, but, although it
illustrates, it does not explain it. The view of even the later Roman
Law required a closeness of correspondence between the position of the
deceased and of his Heir which is no feature of an English
representation; and in the primitive jurisprudence everything turned
on the continuity of succession. Unless provision was made in the will
for the instant devolution of the testator's rights and duties on the
Heir or Co-heirs, the testament lost all its effect.

In modern Testamentary jurisprudence, as in the later Roman law, the
object of first importance is the execution of the testator's
intentions. In the ancient law of Rome the subject of corresponding
carefulness was the bestowal of the Universal Succession. One of these
rules seems to our eyes a principle dictated by common sense, while
the other looks very much like an idle crotchet. Yet that without the
second of them the first would never have come into being is as
certain as any proposition of the kind can be.

In order to solve this apparent paradox, and to bring into greater
clearness the train of ideas which I have been endeavouring to
indicate, I must borrow the results of the inquiry which was attempted
in the earlier portion of the preceding chapter. We saw one
peculiarity invariably distinguishing the infancy of society. Men are
regarded and tr