nient is entirely artificial, has
evidently done much to divert inquiry on the subject before us from
the true direction. The lessons learned in discussing the Jus
Personarum have been forgotten where the Jus Rerum is reached, and
Property, Contract, and Delict, have been considered as if no hints
concerning their original nature were to be gained from the facts
ascertained respecting the original condition of Persons. The futility
of this method would be manifest if a system of pure archaic law could
be brought before us, and if the experiment could be tried of applying
to it the Roman classifications. It would soon be seen that the
separation of the Law of Persons from that of Things has no meaning in
the infancy of law, that the rules belonging to the two departments
are inextricably mingled together, and that the distinctions of the
later jurists are appropriate only to the later jurisprudence. From
what has been said in the earlier portions of this treatise, it will
be gathered that there is a strong _a priori_ improbability of our
obtaining any clue to the early history of property, if we confine our
notice to the proprietary rights of individuals. It is more than
likely that joint-ownership, and not separate ownership, is the really
archaic institution, and that the forms of property which will afford
us instruction will be those which are associated with the rights of
families and of groups of kindred. The Roman jurisprudence will not
here assist in enlightening us, for it is exactly the Roman
jurisprudence which, transformed by the theory of Natural Law, has
bequeathed to the moderns the impression that individual ownership is
the normal state of proprietary right, and that ownership in common by
groups of men is only the exception to a general rule. There is,
however, one community which will always be carefully examined by the
inquirer who is in quest of any lost institution of primeval society.
How far soever any such institution may have undergone change among
the branch of the Indo-European family which has been settled for ages
in India, it will seldom be found to have entirely cast aside the
shell in which it was originally reared. It happens that, among the
Hindoos, we do find a form of ownership which ought at once to rivet
our attention from its exactly fitting in with the ideas which our
studies in the Law of Persons would lead us to entertain respecting
the original condition of property. The Village