Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/795

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 779

private form with that of the state. Mentioning the Athenian law of which these words have been preserved, " Do not trespass upon the boundaries," he adds :

Our first law must be : let nobody touch the frontier which divides his field from his neighbor's, for it must remain immovable. Let nobody think of disturbing the small stone which separates friendship from enmity, the stone which one has vowed by oath to let stay at its place.

Thus the violation of the boundary line produces enmity, as the violation of the frontiers brings about war. The frontier between estates is known to be immovable, as are also the frontiers between nations. And yet at all times they have been moved and transformed; for the individuals and the nations see only what they wish or are able to see. Every belief is an obstacle to the conception of anything that does not fit into its frame.

When, about three hundred years after Christ, under the empire, Rome had become a relatively enormous center of popu- lation, with characteristics very similar to those of our large cities, we still find the ancient conception of the family patrimony, but how dimmed! In this already essentially capitalistic epoch the city contained, according to our most competent archaeologists, about forty-five thousand " tenement houses," and only about one thousand seven hundred mansions or private houses occupied by their owners. The "tenement houses" were called insulae; the private houses domus. These latter represented all that had remained of the old domestic constitution, but, as we see, even the others, the " islands," were still considered as closed, isolated homes, contrary to reality.

These were by no means institutions and ideas that were exclusively pertaining to the Graeco-Roman civilization. They can be found everywhere in the same stage, with some variations which, however, are but accessory. The laws of Manu 22 inform us that the same conditions existed, for instance, in India, But everywhere the order and the equilibrium were supposed to be immovable and definitive as form-limit, while the limits of the private and family property which are always conditioned by the social and especially to the economic movement were either extended or reduced in accordance with the changeable conditions

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