ppear to differ in
little beyond the higher capacity which the child in blood possesses of
becoming one day the head of a family himself. The flocks and herds of
the children are the flocks and herds of the father, and the
possessions of the parent, which he holds in a representative rather
than in a proprietary character, are equally divided at his death among
his descendants in the first degree, the eldest son sometimes receiving
a double share under the name of birthright, but more generally endowed
with no hereditary advantage beyond an honorary precedence. A less
obvious inference from the Scriptural accounts is that they seem to
plant us on the traces of the breach which is first effected in the
empire of the parent. The families of Jacob and Esau separate and form
two nations; but the families of Jacob's children hold together and
become a people. This looks like the immature germ of a state or
commonwealth, and of an order of rights superior to the claims of
family relation.

'If I were attempting for the more special purposes of the jurist to
express compendiously the characteristics, of the situation in which
mankind disclose themselves at the dawn of their history, I should be
satisfied to quote a few verses from the "Odyssee" of Homer:--

"'_Toisin d' out' agorai boulephoroi oute themistes,
themisteuei de hekastos
paidon ed alochon, out' allelon alegousin._'"

'"They have neither assemblies for consultation nor THEMISTES, but
everyone exercises jurisdiction over his wives and his children, and
they pay no regard to one another."' And this description of the
beginnings of history is confirmed by what may be called the last
lesson of prehistoric ethnology. Perhaps it is the most valuable, as it
is clearly the most sure result of that science, that it has dispelled
the dreams of other days as to a primitive high civilisation. History
catches man as he emerges, from the patriarchal state: ethnology shows
how he lived, grew, and improved in that state. The conclusive
arguments against the imagined original civilisation are indeed plain
to everyone. Nothing is more intelligible than a moral deterioration of
mankind--nothing than an aesthetic degradation--nothing than a
political degradation. But you cannot imagine mankind giving up the
plain utensils of personal comfort, if they once knew them; still less
can you imagine them giving up good weapons--say bows and arrows--if
they once knew the