Abstract
MR. DIAMOND holds that Sir Henry Maine's conception of primitive law as inseparable from the concepts of primitive religion and morality is no longer tenable in the light of modern research, and, farther, that in the development of early law there is a parallelism which corresponds with economic and social progress. Thus the code of Hammurabi, for example, is formulated in a society which corresponds in economic development with the societies which produced the codes of medieval Europe. The undoubted religious elements which appear in the codes as they have come down to us are due, he holds, not to the fact that they embody survivals from an earlier stage in which religious belief, law and morality were undifferentiated, but are due to introductions by priestly scribes at a date later than the formulation of the codes.
Primitive Law
By A. S. Diamond. Pp. x + 451. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1935.) 25s. net.
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Primitive Law. Nature 138, 59 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138059b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138059b0