jurisprudence is to establish that view of the primeval condition of
the human race which is known as the Patriarchal Theory. There is no
doubt, of course, that this theory was originally based on the
Scriptural history of the Hebrew patriarchs in Lower Asia; but, as
has been explained already, its connection with Scripture rather
militated than otherwise against its reception as a complete theory,
since the majority of the inquirers who till recently addressed
themselves with most earnestness to the colligation of social
phenomena, were either influenced by the strongest prejudice against
Hebrew antiquities or by the strongest desire to construct their
system without the assistance of religious records. Even now there
is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these accounts, or rather to
decline generalising from them, as forming part of the traditions of
a Semitic people. It is to be noted, however, that the legal
testimony comes nearly exclusively from the institutions of
societies belonging to the Indo-European stock, the Romans,
Hindoos, and Sclavonians supplying the greater part of it; and
indeed the difficulty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to
know where to stop, to say of what races of men it is NOT allowable
to lay down that the society in which they are united was originally
organised on the patriarchal model. The chief lineaments of such a
society, as collected from the early chapters in Genesis, I need not
attempt to depict with any minuteness, both because they are
familiar to most of us from our earliest childhood, and because,
from the interest once attaching to the controversy which takes its
name from the debate between Locke and Filmer, they fill a whole
chapter, though not a very profitable one, in English literature.
The points which lie on the surface of the history are these:--The
eldest male parent--the eldest ascendant--is absolutely supreme in
his household. His dominion extends to life and death, and is as