The chief object of this book 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 prosecured 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 earlier portion the traces of the most remote antiquity and supplying from its later rules the ...
