e
degree to the conditions of social stability--laws enacted because it
was seen that the actions forbidden by them were dangerous to the State.
We do not by any means say that all, or even the greater part, of the
laws were of this nature; but we do say, that the fundamental ones were.
It cannot be denied that the laws affecting life and property were such.
It cannot be denied that, however little these were enforced between
class and class, they were to a considerable extent enforced between
members of the same class. It can scarcely be questioned, that the
administration of them between members of the same class was seen by
rulers to be necessary for keeping their subjects together. And knowing,
as we do, that, other things equal, nations prosper in proportion to the
justness of their arrangements, we may fairly infer that the very cause
of the advance of these earliest nations out of aboriginal barbarism was
the greater recognition among them of the claims to life and property.

But supposition aside, it is clear that the habitual recognition of
these claims in their laws implied some prevision of social phenomena.
Even thus early there was a certain amount of social science. Nay, it
may even be shown that there was a vague recognition of that fundamental
principle on which all the true social science is based--the equal
rights of all to the free exercise of their faculties. That same idea of
_equality_ which, as we have seen, underlies all other science,
underlies also morals and sociology. The conception of justice, which is
the primary one in morals; and the administration of justice, which is
the vital condition of social existence; are impossible without the
recognition of a certain likeness in men's claims in virtue of their
common humanity. _Equity_ literally means _equalness_; and if it be
admitted that there were even the vaguest ideas of equity in these
primitive eras, it must be admitted that there was some appreciation of
the equalness of men's liberties to pursue the objects of life--some
appreciation, therefore, of the essential principle of national
equilibrium.

Thus in this initial stage of the positive sciences, before geometry had
yet done more than evolve a few empirical rules--before mechanics had
passed beyond its first theorem--before astronomy had advanced from its
merely chronological phase into the geometrical; the most involved of
the sciences had reached a certain degree of development--