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 238 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April to human progress in many departments of civilization was a very old one, and had been frequently fertile in the hands of philosophic historians, although few may have thought of setting it forth as the basis of a system. Darwiri's work had a great and real value, the sense of which time has not lessened, but the novelty lay not in broaching the doctrine that species became differentiated but in pointing out various ways in which the differentiation, long conjectured, had probably taken place. As regards Herbert Spencer, to whom also our author refers, British as well as French and German historians seem disposed to doubt whether they owe to him anything of value in the way of ideas or suggestions, whether in fact he did more than set forth in elaborate formulas ideas or doctrines which, whether sound or merely conjectural, they knew well enough before. Sir Paul Vinogradoff's tribute to the work of Rudolf Ihering is well deserved. It is a pity that some at least of the books of that vigorous and original thinker have not been translated into English, for he is one of the least technical of the Germans who have treated these subjects, and accordingly his ideas, like Savigny's, bear translation better than do those of most of his German colleagues. More than half of the volume is devoted to a careful and penetrating study of early tribal law in the three departments of (a) personal family relations, including marriage and parentage ; (b) joint ownership and the right of succession to property ; and (c) tribal ^r clan organization. The examina- tion of these topics is prefaced by some remarks on the Aryan group of peoples and the connexion between various branches of that stock which comparative philology has established. Is there, however, much reason to think that there is any definite body of institutions specially charac- teristic of these peoples, as distinguished from the institutions of the races whom we call Semitic, or ' Allophylian ', or * Turanian ', or Berber, or American, or even negroid ? The term ' Aryan ' was invented as part of a definitely linguistic classification. But in point of fact we find many customs or institutions which, because they had been first observed in the Greco-Italian, or Celtic, or Teutonic, or Slavonic peoples, were deemed characteristic of the so-called ' Indo-European ' branch of mankind to be in fact present in other branches, because they were the outgrowth of tendencies belonging not to any particular group but belonging to men as men. Sir Paul Vinogradoff himself very properly includes in his survey these other branches of the human race, and finds in their customs many relevant facts. Take for instance the Pacific islanders. The tribal organiza- tions of theTahitians and Samoans or the quasi-feudal system of theHawaiians furnish remarkable instances of family or gentile groupings which show how complex and elaborate distinctions and classifications may be among primitive races far removed from all the influences of the Old World. Things which are primitive are not necessarily simple. Often they are highly complex, and advance is towards simplification. A parallel may be found in literature. The versificatory system of the Old Norse poetry (preserved chiefly in Iceland) is in its way as elaborate and artificial as were the classifications of relationship among the aboriginal races of the Pacific coast described by L. H. Morgan in his illuminative study of that region.