246 HISTORY OF LAW 



there could be no distinct history. This differentiation was only 

 sufficiently completed to permit of a definite use of the term "science 

 of law" when the relation of principles to each other was determined 

 by a body of rules independent of, although not necessarily antago- 

 nistic to, those recognized by religion, ethics, and morals, enumerated 

 and enunciated not arbitrarily by some law-maker, but explained 

 by some rational process and developed according to some system 

 of principles and administered by some authority recognizing in 

 theory, if not in practice, the obligation to make the result of such 

 administration conform to rules and principles thus recognized. 



In order to fix the starting-point of the history of law as a distinct 

 science, it is necessary to ascertain the first existence of such a branch 

 Starting- of human knowledge. The unequal advancement of the 

 History * human race accounts for the development of an organized 

 of Law. social system in which systematic jurisprudence is recog- 

 nized at an earlier stage in one group than in another; and by elim- 

 inating from consideration those groups in which there can be said 

 as yet to be no science of jurisprudence in a distinctive sense as the 

 term is now employed, and noticing that those groups in which such 

 science has been achieved are so related to each other that the 

 jurisprudence of the one can be assumed as having had some influence 

 on the others, it will be found that a history can be written with 

 a somewhat definite starting-point, and dealing with a somewhat 

 consecutive and homogeneous development. 



There can be little difficulty in eliminating from the field of our 

 present view all of the so-called ancient races save the Romans. 

 Begin ^ e ^ aw ^ ^ ie Hindus as illustrated by the Code of 



with the Manu, the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Koran are so 

 Romans. essentially religious that they must be excluded from 

 consideration in a discussion of the history of the law. The Baby- 

 lonians and the Egyptians appear to have had no distinctive judicial 

 system of administering the law. Even the Greeks, with all their 

 advancement in art and philosophy, had no system of jurisprudence. 

 With them the science of law had not yet been separated from that 

 of politics and government. But among the Romans the law became 

 a branch of human knowledge, having for its scope recognized facts. 

 a reasonably well-ascertained arrangement, and a somewhat distinct 

 philosophy. And such a conception of the law thus originating among 

 them has not been lost sight of in the civilized world down to the 

 present time. It may have been independently achieved among 

 other Western peoples, but the development of the Roman civiliz- 

 ation reached the whole Western world during the formative period, 

 and no other system can be discussed without considering the in- 

 fluence of Roman civilization upon it. It is not assumed, on the 

 other hand, that the Roman civilization was spontaneous, but what- 



