g8 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



If one person killed another by the most unavoidable 

 accident, exactly the same pa^nnent was demanded as 

 if it had been premeditated murder. The amount of 

 payment demanded had reference wholly to the 

 injury done and not to the wrong committed. If a 

 man should violate the daughter of another, he 

 should pay a certain sum on the ground that he had 

 depreciated the market value of the girl. Over his 

 slave or his own daughter he had unlimited freedom, 

 the law failing to recognize such acts, since no other 

 person was injured thereby. 



No one who reads the condition of early law 

 can fail to be convinced that there was practically 

 no attempt made to secure justice, and that the 

 rightfulness or wrongfulness of an act hardly en- 

 tered into the conception of law. Laws were 

 designed to keep the peace and not to punish 

 wrong. Frequently they did not even try to pay for 

 the injury that was done. When we remember this 

 we can understand early types of trials which seem 

 so strange to us to-day. In some races, even till 

 recent times, a trial consisted in summoning wit- 

 nesses to swear to their belief that the accused was 

 innocent or guilty ; and if there were more witnesses 

 who thought him innocent, he was acquitted, while a 

 majority on the other side would convict him. Ab- 

 surd enough such a procedure appears to us, but it 

 was perfectly logical at an earlier period. Law was 

 designed to keep the peace, and the trial was not 

 looked upon as designed to show the innocence or 

 guilt of the accused, which was wholly a secondary 

 matter. The trial showed how large a band of fol- 

 lowers could be depended upon to support either 

 side, and this showing would take the place of an 



