Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/60

50 Hence originates that early conception of law which long continues with slowly increasing modification, and which, in our day, still survives in those who hold that Right means "that which is ordered"—firstly, by a revelation from God, and secondly by god-appointed or god-approved kings. For the theological view implies that governments in general exist by divine permission, and that their dictates have consequently a divine sanction. In the absence of a utilitarian justification which only gradually emerges in the minds of thinking men, there of course exists for law no other justification than that of being supernaturally derived—first of all directly and afterward indirectly.

It follows, therefore, that primitive law, formed out of transmitted injunctions, partly of ancestry at large and partly of the distinguished ancestor or deceased ruler, comes usually to be enunciated by those who were in contact with the ruler—those who, first of all as attendants communicated his commands to his subjects, and who afterward, ministering to his apotheosized ghost, became (some of them) his priests. Naturally these last, carrying on the worship of him in successive generations, grow into exponents of his will; both as depositories of his original commands and as mouth-pieces through whom the commands of his spirit are communicated. By necessity, then, the primitive priests are distinguished as those who above all others know what the law is, and as those to whom, therefore, all questions about transgressions are referred—the judges. In small rude societies judicial systems have not arisen, and hence there is little evidence. Still we read that among the Guiana Indians the Pe-i-men are at once priests, sorcerers, doctors, and judges. Concerning the Kalmucks, who are more advanced, Pallas tells us that the highest judicial council consisted partly of priests, and also that one of the high-priests of the community was head-judge.

Though among the semi-civilized Negro races of Africa, theological development has usually not gone far enough to establish the cult of a great god or gods, yet among them may be traced the belief that conduct is to be regulated by the wills of supernatural beings, who are originally the ghosts of the distinguished dead; and in pursuance of this belief the ministrants of such ghosts come to be the oracles. Thus Lander tells us that "in Badagry the fetich-priests are the sole judges of the people." Cameron describes a sitting of Mganga, chief medicine man at Kowédi. After the chief's wife had made presents and received replies to her inquiries others inquired.

Questions were "put by the public, some of which were quickly disposed of, while others evidently raised knotty points, resulting in much