Excerpt from An Examination of the Law of Personal Rights: To Discover the Principles of the Law, as Ascertained From the Practical Rules of the Law, and Harmonized With the Nature of Social Relations In man there is a principle of individual equality which, though inactive in primitive states, yet in the progress of knowl edge and experience asserts itself. It is through the operation of this principle of individual equality that man comes to discover that all the members of a community should participate in the ex pression of its will. In the earliest stages Of human society, as in societies of animals of a lower type than man, the conception of equality is without force, and personal rather than collective rule is the practice, derived, beyond doubt, out of those instincts that form the parental relation, which appear to be identical in both man and many of the lower animals. The fact of the transition from parent to patriarch, or Chieftain, and from that to monarch, would imply that the ideas characteristic of the parental relation would be carried over to the succeeding rela tion, until met by some modifying cause sufficient to give them a new force and interpretation. As, with man, the parental idea seeks to rehabilitate itself in the tribal condition, so, with the lower animals, the gregarious relation perpetuates the essen tial features Of the precedent parental relation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.