Ancient Law

The theory of legal development propounded in this volume has been generally accepted; but it has been thought that, in his Fifth Chapter on Primitive Society and Ancient Law, the Author has not done sufficient justice to investigations which appear to show the existence of states of society still more rudimentary than that vividly described in the Homeric lines quoted, and ordinarily known as the Patriarchal State. The Author has mentioned accounts by contemporary observers of civilisations less advanced than their own, as capable of affording peculiarly good evidence concerning the rudiments of society; and, in fact, since his work was first published, in 1861, the observation of savage or extremely barbarous races has brought to light forms of social organisation extremely unlike that to which he has referred the beginnings of law, and possibly in some cases of greater antiquity. The subject is, properly speaking, beyond the scope of the present work, but he has given his opinion upon the results of these more recent inquiries in a paper on Theories of Primitive Society, published in a volume on Early Law and Custom.