It is generally[131] asserted that primitive societies recognise no distinction either between wilful murder and manslaughter (which presumes a certain degree of guilt), or even between wilful murder and accidental slaying. The reason assigned is that bloodshed, even in comparatively advanced civilisations, is a ‘civil’ rather than a ‘criminal’ offence—a matter for damages and compensation rather than for exemplary punishment. Thus Glotz[132] says: ‘L’intention n’est rien: le fait est tout. Pas de circonstances atténuantes. Nulle différence entre l’assassinat lâchement prémédité et l’homicide involontaire.’ To the possible objection that the distinction is found in Greek legends, as given by Aeschylus, Apollodorus, Pausanias and others, he replies that these legends are of late origin—a view which is not quite consistent with his usual attitude.[133] He thinks that those legends were invented by the Athenians to restore the history of the Areopagus, the Palladium, and the Delphinium courts.[134] He attributes the moral distinction, which these courts are assumed to imply, between voluntary and involuntary homicide to a period ‘not much anterior to Dracon,’ but he admits that the idea was being developed before that time in ‘family law’—that is, in clan justice. He seems to us rather inconsistent in holding that ‘dans les lois sur l’homicide (de Dracon) apparaît pour la première fois la distinction du meurtre prémédité et du meurtre involontaire,’ and in maintaining at the same time that it was a ‘principe lentement élaboré dans la justice sociale.’[135] The distinction was developed, he thinks, not from any philanthropic motives but only because private vengeance was abolished and the newly established power of the State sought thereby to restrain the taste for blood. Now we may admit, with Glotz,[136] that the distinction is a late development in most races whose social customs are known to us—for instance, amongst the Germans, the Slavs, the Celts, the Scandinavians, and the Ossetes. France does not seem to have recognised the distinction in its written laws before A.D. 819. In feudal England it does not make its appearance before the time of Henry VIII.[137] But Seebohm[138] shows that in the Lex Wisigothorum (about A.D. 650) ‘a homicide committed unknowingly (_nesciens_) is declared to be ... no cause of death. “Let the man who has committed it depart secure.”’ The introduction of Roman law may have caused this innovation, for Roman law admitted the distinction from the time of the Twelve Tables[139] onwards, and this code was still operative amongst Gallic peoples when they were conquered by the Wisigoths.[140] From _Beowulf_, however, Seebohm[141] infers that in Scandinavia within the clan ‘accidental homicide does not seem to be followed even by exile.’ The poem says[142]: ‘Hæthcyn by arrow from hornbow brought him (Herebeald) down, his near kinsman. He missed the target and shot his brother. One brother killed the other with