Primitive And Ancient Legal Institutions PDF Download

Excerpt from Primitive and Ancient Legal Institutions, Vol. 2 The relation of the present volume to the preceding one and the volume which is to follow is shown in the Preface to Volume I. The first two volumes should be used together. The selection of materials is such that they are intended to complement each other. For the student, the best results will be gotten by attempting first to master the raw materials of the first volume, in analogy to the case-method; that is to say, by making an effort to reconstruct for himself, from topic to topic, the state of development of the legal institutions among primitive and ancient peoples. The easier and less profitable way will be to commence with the second volume, referring for illustrative materials to the first, from subject to subject. Nothing further is here tendered as suggestive of a method of attack. Something should be left to the imagination and the industry of the reader or teacher. In view of the statement as to the purpose of this compilation already made in the Preface to Volume I, it perhaps need not be declared that these volumes are not intended for the specialist in historical jurisprudence. But it needs again to be emphasized that a study of the laws, customs, and usages of inferior peoples does not exhaust its mission simply in tracing out the connections between the past and the present. The greatest productive value of an inquiry into the juridical life of remote ages and of arrested developments lies in providing an indispensable standard by which the processes of human reason, so far as they enter the sphere of legal evolution, are guided and corrected. Such an inquiry should result in a clearer estimate of the present, and should provide to a degree a calculus to measure the quality of the irresistible pressure of the future by which all juridical institutions are constantly and progressively modified. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.