WalL, vol. ii. p. 780). And, when the youngest son
has had the paternal dwelling-house, eight acres of
land and certain tools and utensils, the other sons are
to divide what remains. It appears to me that the
institution is founded on the same ideas as those
which gave a preference to the Geilfine division ot
the Celtic family. The home-stajring, unemancipatcd
son, still retained under Patria Potestas, is preferred
to the others. If this be so, there is no room for the
surprise which the custom of Borough English has
excited, and which arises from contrasting it with the
rule of Primogeniture. But the two institutions
have a different origin. Primogeniture is not a
natural outgrowth of the family. It is a political
not a tribal institution, and comes to us not from
the clansmen but from the Chief. But the rule oi
Borough English, like the privileges of the Geilfine,



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S24 FRIHOGENITUBE AND BOROUGH ENGLISH, lboi. tH.
is closely connected with the ancient conception of
the Family as linked together by Patria Potestas.
Those who are most emphatically part of the Family
when it is dissolved by the death of its head are
preferred in the inheritance according to ideas which
appear to have been once common to the primitive
Romans, to the Irish and Welsh Celts, and to the
original observerSi whoever they were, of the English
custom



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UCT« Tin. COMPASATIVE MTTHOLOOT. S25



LECTURE VIII.
THE GROWTH AKD DIFFUSION OF FBIMITIVE IDBA8.
Mr, Ttlor has justly observed that the true lesson
of the new science of Comparative Mythology is the
barrenness in primitive times of the faculty which we
most associate with mental fertility, the Imagination.
