though they saw other and more advanced states too: a
period of which we have distinct descriptions from eye-witnesses, and
of which the traces and consequences abound in the oldest law. 'The
effect,' says Sir Henry Maine, the greatest of our living jurists--the
only one, perhaps, whose writings are in keeping with our best
philosophy--'of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is
to establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race
which is known as the Patriarchal Theory. There is no doubt, of course,
that this theory was originally based on the Scriptural history of the
Hebrew patriarchs in Lower Asia; but, as has been explained already,
its connection with Scripture rather militated than otherwise against
its reception as a complete theory, since the majority of the inquirers
who till recently addressed themselves with most earnestness to the
colligation of social phenomena, were either influenced by the
strongest prejudice against Hebrew antiquities or by the strongest
desire to construct their system without the assistance of religious
records. Even now there is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these
accounts, or rather to decline generalising from them, as forming part
of the traditions of a Semitic people. It is to be noted, however, that
the legal testimony comes nearly exclusively from the institutions of
societies belonging to the Indo-European stock, the Romans, Hindoos,
and Sclavonians supplying the greater part of it; and indeed the
difficulty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to know where to
stop, to say of what races of men it is NOT allowable to lay down that
the society in which they are united was originally organised on the
patriarchal model. The chief lineaments of such a society, as collected
from the early chapters in Genesis, I need not attempt to depict with
any minuteness, both because they are familiar to most of us from our
earliest childhood, and because, from the interest once attaching to
the controversy which takes its name from the debate between Locke and
Filmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in
English literature. The points which lie on the surface of the history
are these:--The eldest male parent--the eldest ascendant--is absolutely
supreme in his household. His dominion extends to life and death, and
is as unqualified over his children and their houses as over his
slaves; indeed the relations of sonship and serfdom a