Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/154

 148 THE FAMILT. BOOK II. each family ? But it is clear that this contradiction did not always exist, and that at the epoch when this belief was established in the mind, and became power- ful enough to form a religion, it corresponded exactly with the social state of man. Now, the only social state that is in accord with such a belief is that in which the family lives independent and isolated. In such a state the whole Aryan race appears to have lived for a long time. The hymns of the Vedas confirm this for the branch from which the Hindus are descended, and the old beliefs and the old private laws attest it for those who finally became Greeks and Romans. If we compare the political institutions of the Aryas of the East with those of the Aryas of the West, we find haidly any analogy between them. If, on the con- trary, we compare the domestic institutions of these various nations, we perceive that the family was con- stituted upon the same principles in Greece and in India ; besides, these principles were, as we have al- ready shown, of so singular a nature that we cannot sujj- pose this resemblance to have been the work of chance. Finally, not only do these institutions offer an evident analogy, but even the words that designate them are often the same in the different languages which this race has spoken from the Ganges to the Tiber. From this fact we may draw a double conclusion : one is, that the origin of domestic institutions among the na* tions of this race is anterior to the period when its different branches separated ; the other is, that the origin of political institutions is, on the contrary, later than this separation. The first were fixed from the time when the race still lived in its ancient cradle of Central Asia. The second were formed by degrees in