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and which tastes of its Eastern origin. The rights of the 

 individual are still submerged in the laws and customs of 

 the state or community. That division within the indi- 

 vidual man — how far he belongs to society, and how far 

 he is his own empire — a division which forms the fun- 

 damental law of modern humanity, was still unknown in 

 Greece. The wisest legislation amongst the Greeks, 

 which approaches the nearest to our ideas, — that of 

 Solon — still encroaches in many parts on the autonomy 

 of the moral man. Religion, morals, and civil rights are 

 still uuseparated. Therefore if Greece raised in the fine 

 arts the standard of taste, she was unable to lay down 

 rules for the civil intercourse of man with man. The 

 attempts which were made in Sparta, and even Athens, 

 to regulate this intercourse, excite by no means in us the 

 admiration which we are obliged to pay to their architec- 

 ture and sculpture ; nay, their jurisprudence often startles 

 us, as no less strange than the Pyramids of Egypt. 

 According to tradition, the Romans have fetched their laws 

 of the Twelve Tables from Greece; but Gibbon says justly, 

 that, " in all the great lines of public and private jurispru- 

 dence the legislators of Rome and Athens appear to be 

 strangers, or adverse to each other;" an opinion with 

 which even the Greek Dionysius Halicarnassensis so far 

 agrees, that he owns the superiority of the Roman law. 

 The legislation of Lycurgus, Dracon, and Solon, says 

 Cicero, appear '''' inconditum ac pcene ridiculum,^^ in compa- 

 rison with the Twelve Tables. 



If we had to fix Avith one word the place which Ave 

 would accord to Rome in the history of civilization, 

 we should say it was Rome who first separated civil 

 law from religion and morality, and abolished therewith 

 a confusion in the relations of man, which retarded so 

 much the progress of his civilization. Rome was the 

 first state that freed the civil man fi-om the fetters of 



