Page:The Aryan Household.djvu/20

8 different coalescing bodies a true integration took place, and the aggregate acquired a life separate from the life of its several component parts, and ultimately superior to it. This union was at first, like all others, personal, but finally became territorial. The tie that held the society together was not the fact of a common descent, or even the fact of a common worship, but the fact of its occupation of a common country. Early political history consists mainly of the narrative of the relations between the clans and the new body to which they had given rise. The great example of this process is found in the history of Roman law, both because Rome was the earliest example on a large scale of a true State, and because the results of that process directly and largely influenced the history of modern Europe. I have therefore endeavoured to compare the two analogous social functions—Law and Custom; the one belonging to the State, the other holding a similar place in relation to the clan. I have sought to trace the early history of property, and the gradual growth of the supremacy of law; and I have followed the sinking fortunes of the clan until, all over the ancient world, the State shone forth sole regent of the social sky in the unclouded splendour of the Julian line.

The discovery that society may be organized otherwise than politically, and that our own political society includes among its antecedents such an organization, will ultimately lead to a reconsideration of some important departments of human knowledge. The earliest and the most conspicuous and the most extensive changes may be expected in history. The tale must be told over again, and from a different point of view. Narratives which pre-suppose the existence of a state of society similar to our own, and of similar motives, cannot be set right by a few notes or corrections. The stand-point must be changed, and the old materials must under the altered light be studied anew. Still more than