ness and great felicity of style
in chapter V. ("Primitive Society and Ancient Law") of the present
work, and his chief illustrations are sought in the history of Roman
law. The topics of the other chapters are selected largely with a view
to supplying confirmation of the theory in question and, as we shall
see in a moment, Maine's later works do but serve to carry the train
of reasoning a step further by the use of the Comparative Method in
invoking evidence from other sources, notably from Irish and Hindu
Law. Let us, however, confine ourselves for the moment to "Ancient
Law." Maine works out the implications of his theory by showing that
it, and it alone, can serve to explain such features of early Roman
law as Agnation, _i.e._ the tracing of descent exclusively through
males, and Adoption, _i.e._ the preservation of the family against the
extinction of male heirs. The perpetual tutelage of women is the
consequence of this position. Moreover, all the members of the family,
except its head, are in a condition best described as _status_: they
have no power to acquire property, or to bequeath it, or to enter into
contracts in relation to it. The traces of this state of society are
clearly visible in the pages of that classical text-book of Roman Law,
the _Institutes_ of Justinian,[1] compiled in the sixth century A.D.,
though equally visible is the disintegration wrought in it by the
reforming activity of the praetor's edicts. That reformation followed
the course of a gradual emancipation of the members of the family,
except those under age, from the despotic authority of the father.
This gradual substitution of the Individual for the Family was
effected in a variety of ways, but in none more conspicuously than by
the development of the idea of contract, _i.e._ of the capacity of the
individual to enter into independent agreements with strangers to his
family-group by which he was legally bound--an historical process
which Maine sums up in his famous aphorism that the movement of
progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to
Contract.

In the chapters on the early history of Wills, Property, and Contract,
Maine supports his theory by showing that it is the key which unlocks
many, if not all, of the problems which those topics present. The
chapter on Wills--particularly the passage in which he explains what
is meant by Universal Succession--is a brilliant example of Maine's
analytic power. He shows t