Note 45 — Chapter IX · BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.

Author's note.

Lassalle's "System of Acquired Rights" argues in its second part mainly the proposition that the Roman testament is as old as Rome itself, and that there has never been in Roman history "a time without a testament." According to him, the testament had its origin in pre-Roman times in the cult of the departed. Lassalle, as a convinced Hegelian of the old school, derives the provisions of the Roman law, not from the social condition of the Romans, but from the "speculative conception" of will, and thus arrives at this totally anti-historic conclusion. This is not to be wondered at in a book that draws from the same speculative conception the conclusion that the transfer of property was purely a side issue in Roman inheritance. Lassalle not only believed in the illusions of Roman jurists, especially of the earlier ones, but he outstripped their fancy.