how impossible it was when once the demonstration had
flashed upon him, ever to comprehend those indistinct difficulties
again, or to call up the mental confusion, that admitted them. So in
these days, when we cannot by any effort drive out of our minds the
notion of law, we cannot imagine the mind of one who had never known
it, and who could not by any effort have conceived it.

Again, the primitive man could not have imagined what we mean by a
nation. We on the other hand cannot imagine those to whom it is a
difficulty; 'we know what it is when you do not ask us,' but we cannot
very quickly explain or define it. But so much as this is plain, a
nation means a LIKE body of men, because of that likeness capable of
acting together, and because of that likeness inclined to obey similar
rules; and even this Homer's Cyclops--used only to sparse human
beings--could not have conceived.

To sum up--LAW--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of
early mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is
requisite before they can gain anything else. But it is their greatest
difficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of
their reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it.
In later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly,
though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and
often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the Romans
did half the work for above half Europe. But where could the first ages
find Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer by the power of government, and
it was exactly government which then was not. The first ascent of
civilisation was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon
it, it seems almost nothing.

III.

How the step from polity to no polity was made distinct, history does
not record,--on this point Sir Henry Maine has drawn a most interesting
conclusion from his peculiar studies:--

'It would be,' he tells us, 'a very simple explanation of the origin of
society if we could base a general conclusion on the hint furnished us
by the scriptural example already adverted to, and could suppose that
communities began to exist wherever a family held together instead of
separating at the death of its patriarchal chieftain. In most of the
Greek states and in Rome there long remained the vestiges of an
ascending series of groups out of which the state was at first
constituted. The fami