6o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



reacting upon one another. The elemental forms and tokens of this 

 organism are family life, ownership, and government. Each of these 

 presupposes cooperation and contribution at all stages in the history 

 of society, though under different forms; each of them implies the 

 distribution of mankind into small groups rather than into large masses 

 of individual atoms. It is difficult to say that any one of these 

 original elements has precedence in point of time over any one of 

 the others. It is more true to say that, when once they are all found 

 to be in existence, the state has then and there come into being. A 

 very short time passes before another element — that of contract — 

 implied in all progressive industrial cooperation, also comes to the 

 surface. 



There are thus formed in the primitive state a certain number of 

 elemental institutions which may be looked upon, not in any sense as 

 the creation of law, but as existing independently of law ; for the 

 spontaneous arbitrary action of a primitive government resembles 

 what is now called " administration " rather than law. It is true, how 

 ever, that law, in the immature form of regulated usage, will be found 

 to be one of the earliest of all the ingredients of the state. It will be, 

 indeed, even from the first, the regulator and the guide of the other 

 institutions with which it is contemporary, but is in no sense their 

 parent or solitary guardian. iN'evertheless, as time goes on, the sup- 

 port that law gives to the integrity of family life, to property, to in- 

 dustrial and commercial relations, and to government, becomes impor- 

 tant in the highest degree. Indeed, the prominence of the legal super- 

 vision exercised in a highly-developed state over all these departments, 

 affords an apology for the familiar notion that they are all the arbi- 

 trary creation of law and depend for their continued subsistence upon 

 no greater or deeper sanction than that of physical force. 



If it be true, then, as this last theory asserts, that in every state 

 there are a limited number of great pivots, or turning-points, round 

 which human society revolves, and the law only plays a subordinate 

 part in regulating and protecting the grand mechanism, it is obvious 

 that a permanent and universal body of facts relative to law may be 

 at once anticipated to result from the permanence and universality of 

 the great groups of facts with wbich it happens to be mainly convers- 

 ant. Experience and observation confirm this anticipation. Every 

 known system of law, both of ancient and modern times, in all parts of 

 the world, and in all stages of national development, distributes itself 

 into the main divisions of laws determining — 1. The nature, functions, 

 and limitations of the governing authority ; 2. The forms and condi- 

 tions of ownership, whether of land or other things; 3. The relations 

 of family life ; and 4. The binding force of voluntary promises or con- 

 tracts. These several topics afford a natural method of distribution 

 applicable to every legal system whatever ; and each several topic, ac- 

 cording to its peculiar nature and to the incidents by which it is inter- 



