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Ancient Law
by Henry Maine
Chapter 2
Legal Fictions
When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is
an end to what may be called its spontaneous development.
Henceforward the changes effected in it, if effected at all, are
effected deliberately and from without. It is impossible to
suppose that the customs of any race or tribe remained unaltered
during the whole of the long -- in some instances the immense --
interval between their declaration by a patriarchal monarch and
their publication in writing. It would be unsafe too to affirm
that no part of the alteration was effected deliberately. But
from the little we know of the progress of law during this
period, we are justified in assuming that set purpose had the
very smallest share in producing change. Such innovations on the
earliest usages as disclose themselves appear to have been
dictated by feelings and modes of thought which, under our
present mental conditions, we are unable to comprehend. A new era
begins, however, with the Codes. Wherever, after this epoch, we
trace the course of legal modification we are able to attribute
it to the conscious desire of improvement, or at all events of
compassing objects other than those which were aimed at in the
primitive times.
It may seem at first sight that no general propositions worth
trusting can be elicited from the history of legal systems
subsequent to the codes. The field is too vast. We cannot be sure
that we have included a sufficient number of phenomena in our
observations, or that we accurately understand those which we
have observed. But the undertaking will be seen to be more
feasible, if we consider that after the epoch of codes the
distinction between stationary and progressive societies begins
to make itself felt. It is only with the progressive that we are
concerned, and nothing is more remarkable than their extreme
fewness. In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult
for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to
himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a
rare exception in the history of the world. The tone of thought
common among us, all our hopes, fears, and speculations, would be
materially affected, if we had vividly before us the relation of
the progressive races to the totality of human life. It is
indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never
shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be
improved since the moment when external completeness was first
given to them by their embodiment in some permanent record. One
set of usages has occasionally been violently overthrown and
superseded by another; here and there a primitive code,
pretending to a supernatural origin, has been greatly extended,
and distorted into the most surprising forms, by the perversity
of sacerdotal commentators; but, except in a small section of the
world, there has been nothing like the gradual amelioration of a
legal system. There has been material civilis |