have seen a single germ multiplying and branching into products
as different from each other as the flower from the root. It
hardly remains to ask what that germ was. We have seen that it
was the desire of retaliation against the offending thing itself.
Undoubtedly, it might be argued that many of the rules stated
were derived from a seizure of the offending thing as security
for reparation, at first, perhaps, outside the law. That
explanation, as well as the one offered here; would show that
modern views of responsibility had not yet been attained, as the
owner of the thing might very well not have been the person in
fault. But such has not been the view of those most competent to
judge. A consideration of the earliest instances will show, as
might have been expected, that vengeance, not compensation, and
vengeance on the offending thing, was the original object. The ox
in Exodus was to be stoned. The axe in the Athenian law was to be
banished. The tree, in Mr. Tylor's instance, was to be chopped to
pieces. The [35] slave under all the systems was to be
surrendered to the relatives of the slain man, that they might do
with him what they liked. /1/ The deodand was an accursed thing.
The original limitation of liability to surrender, when the owner
was before the court, could not be accounted for if it was his
liability, and not that of his property, which was in question.
Even where, as in some of the cases, expiation seems to be
intended rather than vengeance, the object is equally remote from
an extrajudicial distress.

The foregoing history, apart from the purposes for which it has
been given, well illustrates the paradox of form and substance in
the development of law. In form its growth is logical. The
official theory is that each new decision follows syllogistically