On this basis we might draw up tables of consecutive stages, of which the simplest may be taken from Post : Four types of organization: the tribal, the territorial, the seignorial, and the social. The first has as its basis marriage and relationship by blood ; the second, neighbouring occupation of a district ; the third, patronage relations between lord and dependants; the fourth, social intercourse and contractual relations between individual personalities (Grundriss, i. 14) .
It is, however, at the very least, premature to sketch anything like a course of universal development for legal history. We have grave doubts whether the time will ever come for laying down any single course of that kind. The attempts made hitherto have generally led to overstating the value of certain parts of the evidence and to squeezing special traits into a supposed general course of evolution.
Economic Stages and Types.—Another group of thinkers is therefore content to systematize and explain the material from the point of view, not of universal history, but of correspondence to economic stages and types. This is, as we have seen, the leading idea in Dargun's or Hildebrand's investigations. It is needless to go into the question of the right or wrong of particular suggestions made by these writers, but the general trend of study initiated in this direction is certainly promising, if only investigators are very chary of laying down certain combinations as the necessary out come of certain economic situations. Such combinations or con sequences certainly exist ; pastoral husbandry, the life of scattered hunting groups, the conditions of agriculturists under feudal rule, certainly contain elements which will recur in divers ethnical sur roundings. But we must not forget that different minds and char acters will draw different and perhaps opposite conclusions in exactly similar outward conditions. This may happen in identical or similar geographical environment—as in the case of ancient Greeks and Turks on the Balkan peninsula, for instance, or of ancient Greeks and modern Greeks. But even the same historical medium leaves, as a rule, scope for treatment of legal problems on divers lines. Take systems of succession. They exercise the most potent influence on the structure and life of society. Undivided succession, whether in the form of primogeniture or in that of junior right, sacrifices equity and natural affection to the economic efficiency of estates. Equal-partition rules, like gavelkind or parage, lead in an exactly opposite direction. And yet both sets of rules co-existed among the agriculturists of feudal England; communities placed in nearly identical historical positions followed one or the other of these rules. The same may be said of types of dwelling and forms of settlement. In other words, it is not enough to start from a given economic condition as if it were bound to regulate with fatalistic precision all the incidents of legal custom and social intercourse. We have to start from actual facts as complex results of many causes, and to try to reduce as much as we can of this material to the action of economic forces in a particular stage or type of development.
Conclusion.—If one turns to a current number of the Zeitschrift one will probably find that the first article deals with some such topic as the Soviet Civil Code, and the last with, say, a biological theory of Totemism. Clearly no one scientific pursuit can embrace such diverse topics, nor would a common origin be even suspected from the opening sentences of this article. The two methods there indicated have indeed diverged. The comparative study of law, narrowing itself to more immediately practical aims, has become a subject all to itself, and the work of Mario Sarfatti and that of the Institute over which Prof. Edouard Lambert pre sides amply justify its special recognition. The other method has undergone a more subtle transformation. By almost imperceptible steps comparative jurisprudence passed into juristic ethnography, and then widened out into cultural anthropology. There was little difference of subject matter, hardly any of treatment, only the outlook was broader and the point of view freed from the preoccupations of the jurist. But if the special training of the lawyer is no longer a first requisite in the comprehensive study of social phenomena, that is not to say that the jurist is not concerned for the solution of his own particular problems. In fact, it is precisely from this angle that both jurists and sociolo gists are coming to discover fresh possibilities for their investiga tions. Within the realm of the empirical social sciences there is a special pursuit for the jurist : the effort to understand the specific nature of legal institutions and ideas. To add one more to the long list of illustrations this article has already afforded of prob lems opened up if not solved: the Ordeal, hitherto wholly un intelligible but cardinal in every primitive system of justice, is at last beginning to engage the attention it deserves. After all, it is justice and the law and not social organization or culture that is the primary concern of the jurist. But this is to begin a new chapter. (P. VI.; H. GOT.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.—References to many works on special branches of our subject are given throughout the article; important excerpts from these and others will be found in Wigmore and Kocourek's Evolution of Law, 3 vols., 1915-19, Boston. The Continental Legal History (edited by J. H. Wigmore, 1912, with an Introduction to vol. iv. by Prof. Vinogradoff) is also invaluable. The list of books in Prof. Vino gradoff's Historical Jurisprudence, the footnotes and references in The History and Prospects of the Social Sciences (H. E. Barnes, 1915) to gether with the excellent bibliographies in Park and Burgess, Introduc tion to the Science of Sociology (1924) will serve as a sufficient guide to the vast literature on the subject.
For periodicals, see the list given in the Journal of the Royal Anthro pological Institute and those mentioned in the last bibliography to JURISPRUDENCE.