WITH THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOCIETY, AND ITS RELATION TO MODERN IDEAS. BY HENRY SUMNER MAINE, READER ON JURISPRUDENCE AND THE CIVIL LAW AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, AND FORMERLY REGIUS 8° JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. PREFACE. THE chief object of the following pages is to indicate some of the earliest ideas of mankind, as they are reflected in Ancient Law, and to point out the relation of those ideas to modern thought. Much of the inquiry attempted could not have been prosecuted with the slightest hope of a useful result if there had not existed a body of law, like that of the Romans, bearing in its earliest portions the traces of the most remote antiquity and supplying from its later rules the staple of the civil institutions by which modern society is even now controlled. The necessity of taking the Roman law as a typical system, has compelled the author to draw from it what may appear a disproportionate number of his illustrations; but it has not been his intention to write a treatise on Roman jurisprudence, and he has as much as possible avoided all discussions which might give that appear |