distinction disappears in the "law common to all nations," as
also does the difference between the archaic forms of property, Things
"Mancipi" and Things "nec Mancipi." The neglect of demarcations and
boundaries seems to me, therefore, the feature of the Jus Gentium
which was depicted in AEquitas. I imagine that the word was at first a
mere description of that constant _levelling_ or removal of
irregularities which went on wherever the praetorian system was applied
to the cases of foreign litigants. Probably no colour of ethical
meaning belonged at first to the expression; nor is there any reason
to believe that the process which it indicated was otherwise than
extremely distasteful to the primitive Roman mind.

On the other hand, the feature of the Jus Gentium which was presented
to the apprehension of a Roman by the word Equity, was exactly the
first and most vividly realised characteristic of the hypothetical
state of nature. Nature implied symmetrical order, first in the
physical world, and next in the moral, and the earliest notion of
order doubtless involved straight lines, even surfaces, and measured
distances. The same sort of picture or figure would be unconsciously
before the mind's eye, whether it strove to form the outlines of the
supposed natural state, or whether it took in at a glance the actual
administration of the "law common to all nations"; and all we know of
primitive thought would lead us to conclude that this ideal similarity
would do much to encourage the belief in an identity of the two
conceptions. But then, while the Jus Gentium had little or no
antecedent credit at Rome, the theory of a Law of Nature came in
surrounded with all the prestige of philosophical authority, and
invested with the charms of association with an elder and more
blissful condition of the race. It is easy to understand how the
difference in the point of view would affect the dignity of the term
which at once described the operation of the old principles and the
results of the new theory. Even to modern ears it is not at all the
same thing to describe a process as one of "levelling" and to call it
the "correction of anomalies," though the metaphor is precisely the
same. Nor do I doubt that, when once AEquitas was understood to convey
an allusion to the Greek theory, associations which grew out of the
Greek notion of [Greek: isotes] began to cluster round it. The
language of Cicero renders it more than likely that this was