the unifying principle required. Once the primary constitution of the
body politic has been made out, a limit is set up, inside of which
a number of fairly definite forms of grouping offer themselves for
examination; whilst outside of it various social relationships of a
vaguer kind have also to be considered. Thus, amongst institutions
of the internal kind, the family by itself presents a wide field of
research; though in certain cases it is liable to be overshadowed by
some other sort of organization, such as, notably, the clan. Under
the same rubric fall the many forms of more or less voluntary
association, economic, religious, and so forth. On the other hand,
outside the circle of the body politic there are, at all known stages
of society, mutual understandings that regulate war, trade, travel,
the celebration of common rites, the interchange of ideas. Here, then,
is an abundance of types of human association, to be first scrutinized
separately, and afterwards considered in relation to each other.

Closely connected with the previous subject is the history of law.
Every type of association, in a way, has its law, whereby its members
are constrained to fulfil a certain set of obligations. Thus our
student will pass on straight from the forms of society to the most
essential of their functions. The fact that, amongst the less civilized
peoples, the law is uncodified and merely customary, whilst the
machinery for enforcing it is, though generally effective enough, yet
often highly indefinite and occasional, makes the tracing of the growth
of legal institutions from their rudiments no less vitally important,
though it makes it none the easier. The history of authority is a
strictly kindred topic. Legislating and judging on the one hand, and
governing on the other, are different aspects of the same general
function. In accordance, then, with the order already indicated, law
and government as administered by the political society in the person