Social Consequences of Heredity. 363 



particularly in Hanover, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, and Bavaria. 

 In Russia, among the nomad tribes of the Ural, the Caspian, the 

 lower Volga, and the Don, with the exception of personal pro- 

 perty limited to clothing everything is possessed by the com- 

 munity, and the heads of families cannot alienate anything. 



At the other extremity we find the opposite type of testamen- 

 tary liberty, where the individual, instead of being the slave of 

 heredity, is its absolute master, and may at will establish, restrict, 

 suspend, or do away with it. Here the freest play is accorded to 

 free-will, and heredity, in place of being the rule, becomes the 

 exception. Thus it is not surprising that this rule, unknown to 

 primitive peoples, is propagated and extended in proportion as 

 we depart from nature and her fatalistic laws. It is found in its 

 most perfect form in the United States of America, and under a 

 restricted form in England, in various German States, and in Italy. 

 As we have seen, it made its appearance at an early period in 

 ancient Rome. 



We need not here inquire whether testamentary discretion has 

 drawbacks. It is certain that if in France legislation is adverse 

 to it, the reason is lest it should be abused ; and when we observe 

 the evident tendency of those who demand it to go back to the 

 ancien regime, we can but believe that it would there be attended 

 by disastrous consequences. It is with testamentary as with all 

 other liberty in order to possess it a man must be worthy, and 

 know how to use it 



It will be observed that the two opposite rules of which we 

 have spoken imply two different views of property; the one in 

 which property exists completely, the other in which it hardly 

 exists at all. Under the rule of testamentary discretion, owner- 

 ship is absolute and without limit; property forms part of the 

 individual, who disposes of it as of himself. 



Under the rule of obligatory conservation, ownership is reduced 

 to usufruct. And since under the first arrangement heredity has 

 no place in right, since it emanates wholly from free-will, and as 

 under the second it always exists in right and in fact, being the 

 law, we are again face to face with the same antinomy; and we 

 may conclude that in the organization of the family there has 

 ever existed an inverse proportion between the power of heredity 

 and that of free-will. 



