7 CHAPTER II. Relatively speaking, law is a product of modern times. For ages and ages mankind lived without any written law, even that graved in symbols upon the entrance stones of a temple. During that period, human relations were simply regulated by customs, habits .and usages, made sacred by constant repetition, and acquired by each person in childhood, exactly as he learned how to obtain his food by hunting, cattle-rearing, or agriculture. All human societies have passed through this primitive phase, and to this day •a large prnportion of mankind have no written law. Every tribe has its own manners and customs; custom.iry law, as the jurists say. It has social habits, a.nd that suffices to maintain cordial relations between the inhabitants of the village, the members of the tribe .or community. Even amongst outselves-the "civilised" nations-when we leave large towns, and g-0into the country, we see that there the mutual relations of the inhabitants are still regulated according to ancient and - generally accepted customs, a.nd not according to the wr-itten law of the legislators. The peasants of Russia, Italy and Sp'ain, and even of a large part of France and England, have no comception of written law. It only meddles with their lives to regulate their relations with t-he"State. As to relations between themselves, though these are sometimes very complex, they are simply regulated according to ancient custom. Formerly, this was the case with mankind in general. Two distinctly marked currents of custom are revealed by ,.{lnalysis of the usages of primitive people. As man does ·not live in a solitary state, habits and feelings develop within him which are useful for the preservation of society and the propagation of the race. Without social feelings and usages, life in common would have been absolutely impossible. It is' not law which has esta.blished them; they a.re anterior to all law. Neither is it religion which has ordained BibliotecaGinoBianco
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