of Edinhurgh, Session 1882-83. 103 
perhaps— but always the magazine from which, as it grew, the tribe 
drew its supply of fresh land for its increasing numbers. 
A very pleasing and simple picture of pristine society is thus 
presented, and one to which it would rather seem that there is an 
anxiety in some quarters to revert; it is well therefore to dispel 
delusions and to point out that this typical condition of ancient 
life existed with us only as an imaginary point from which to 
measure the advance to more developed systems. The influences 
which sway mankind now, swayed them in these olden times : the 
inexorable laws which operate now among the myriad incidents of 
our modern life ojDerated then with the same force; and it is 
interesting to distinguish their operation where we can discern the 
immediate succession of cause and effect so clearly as we can in 
those simple communities, just as we can best discern the growth 
of the organs of riper life in the rudimentary forms they present in 
the lower types of creation. 
' What then are the influences to which the historian and the 
social economist attribute the growth and development of our race 1 
Laying aside the influences of religion as operating in a different 
plane from that in which we are now moving in this inquiry, I 
apprehend physical energy and money, the active potentiality of 
brute strength, and the passive and accumulative force of labour and 
self-denial, of which wealth or money is the result and embodi- 
ment — are those forces which have operated and do operate most 
strongly on human action; the strong man and the rich man, the 
strong nation and the rich nation are those which dominate, and 
in our primitive society no sooner has the curtain risen on the simple 
pastoral scene I have briefly sketched, than the action of the drama 
begins by the strong man rushing in on the stage — the Saul of the 
tribe, lofty in stature and bold of heart, to claim the share of the 
common property due to his superior prowess — and we find the 
social equilibrium at once disturbed in order to find for this Kingly 
man his fitting tribute. 
Therefore in the Celtic tenure the mensal lands of the king and 
the lands devoted to his special maintenance were the first to be 
cut out of the common property ; the king had his own share of the 
lands as a member of 'the tribe, and he had the mensal lands besides 
to support his royal state. These mensal lands remained no doubt 
