sation which surrounds him is a rare
exception in the history of the world. The tone of thought common
among us, all our hopes, fears, and speculations, would be materially
affected, if we had vividly before us the relation of the progressive
races to the totality of human life. It is indisputable that much the
greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its
civil institutions should be improved since the moment when external
completeness was first given to them by their embodiment in some
permanent record. One set of usages has occasionally been violently
overthrown and superseded by another; here and there a primitive code,
pretending to a supernatural origin, has been greatly extended, and
distorted into the most surprising forms, by the perversity of
sacerdotal commentators; but, except in a small section of the world,
there has been nothing like the gradual amelioration of a legal
system. There has been material civilisation, but, instead of the
civilisation expanding the law, the law has limited the civilisation.
The study of races in their primitive condition affords us some clue
to the point at which the development of certain societies has
stopped. We can see that Brahminical India has not passed beyond a
stage which occurs in the history of all the families of mankind, the
stage at which a rule of law is not yet discriminated from a rule of
religion. The members of such a society consider that the
transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil
penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the
delinquent to divine correction. In China this point has been passed,
but progress seems to have been there arrested, because the civil laws
are coextensive with all the ideas of which the race is capable. The
difference between the stationary and progressive societies is,
however, one of the great secrets which inquiry has yet to penetrate.
Among partial explanations of it I venture to place the considerations
urged at the end of the last chapter. It may further be remarked that
no one is likely to succeed in the investigation who does not clearly
realise that the stationary condition of the human race is the rule,
the progressive the exception. And another indispensable condition of
success is an accurate knowledge of Roman law in all its principal
stages. The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any
set of human institutions. The character of all the