518 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



times, as seen in trial by ordeal and trial by judicial 

 combat, in both of which God was supposed indirectly to 

 give judgment, the above evidence makes it amply manifest 

 that, in addition to those injunctions definitely expressed, or 

 embodied in usages tacitly accepted from seniors and 

 through them from remote ancestors, there are further in 

 junctions more consciously attributed to supernatural beings 

 either the ghosts of parents and chiefs who were personally 

 known, or the ghosts of more ancient traditionally-known 

 chiefs which have been magnified into gods. Whence it 

 follows that originally, under both of its forms, law embodies 

 the dictates of the dead to the living. 



531. And here we are at once shown how it happens that 

 throughout early stages of social evolution, no distinction is 

 made between sacred law and secular law. Obedience to 

 established injunctions of whatever kind, originating in 

 reverence for supposed supernatural beings of one or other 

 order, it results that at first all these injunctions have the 

 same species of authority. 



The Egyptian wall-sculptures, inscriptions, and papyri, 

 everywhere expressing subordination of the present to the 

 past, show us the universality of the religious sanction for 

 rules of conduct. Of the Assyrians Layard says : 



&quot; The intimate connection between the public and private life of the 

 Assyrians and their religion, is abundantly proved by the sculptures. 

 ... As among most ancient Eastern nations, not only all public and 

 social duties, but even the commonest forms and customs, appear to 

 have been more or less influenced by religion. . . . All his [the king s] 

 acts, whether in war or peace, appear to have been connected with the 

 national religion, and were believed to be under the special protection 

 and superintendence of the deity.&quot; 



That among the Hebrews there existed a like connexion, is 

 conspicuously shown us in the Pentateuch ; where, besides 

 the commandments specially so-called, and besides religious 

 ordinances regulating feasts and sacrifices, the doings of the 

 priests, the purification by scapegoat, &c., there are numerous 



