THE HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONS. 123 



" Roman law offers, as we saw, the ' variation ' of a civil 

 law saturated with elements of criminal law. The causes 

 of this variation are perfectly clear to the careful student of 

 Roman institutions. It was the necessary check of a con- 

 stitution that was built and erected on the strict morality of 

 a few citizens " (p. 69). 



Dr. Reich does not explain how the variation 

 arose : he only explains how the variation 

 proved advantageous to the society in which it 

 appeared, and so came, in Darwin's phrase, to 

 be "selected," because it made Rome more 

 successful than other communities in the 

 struggle for existence. Dr. Reich claims 

 (p. 67) to have proved that the Romans "did 

 not 'evolve' their law out of rudimentary 1 

 ' variations ' aided by ' natural selection in the 

 struggle for life.' ' But, according to what he 

 says on p. 69, the very thing he has proved 

 is that Roman law was evolved by natural" 

 selection. He has not used the phrase ; but, 

 what is more important, he has applied the 

 principle. If we may adopt the convenient 

 Aristotelian term, Dr. Reich gives the " final 

 cause," the " what for ? " the "good " of an insti- 



X I suppose Dr. Reich means "variations which are 

 rudiments." 



