If you wished to employ the comparative method it would first of all be needful to study each nation in itself, to study it throughout its history, and above all in its law. Should you wish to know if the ancient Greek cities held their land in common, you must study Greek law. For the Romans, you must go over the whole history of Rome; for the Germans, you must take German law. M. Viollet and M. de Laveleye make frequent references to ancient India; why do they not mention that in all the ancient Hindoo law that has come down to us the rights of private property are sanctioned, although, of course, the holding of property in common by co-heirs is also recognised? Why has no one quoted the old maxim: “The land belongs to the man who first clears it, as the deer belongs to the man who first wounds it”? They prefer to quote certain customs, whose importance they enormously exaggerate, rather than present to us the rules which were constant and normal. The comparative method does not consist in discovering amongst fifteen different nations fifteen little facts, which, if interpreted in a certain manner, unite in the construction of a system; it consists in studying a number of nations in regard to their law, their ideas, all the circumstances of their social life, and in discovering what they have in common and wherein they differ. I greatly fear that this comparative method, when it shall be seriously applied, will give very different results than those that MM. Viollet and de Laveleye believe they have obtained from the comparative method as they understand it. [227] M. de Laveleye, _De la propriété collective du sol_, in the _Revue de Belgique_, 1886, p. 50 of the reprint. [228] _Ibidem_, p. 49. [229] _Ibidem_, p. 65. [230] Strabo, xv., 1., 66, edit. Didot, p. 610: παρ’ ἄλλοις δὲ κατὰ συγγένειαν κοινῇ τοὺς καρποὺς ὲργασαμένονς, ἐπὰν συγκομίσωσιν, αἴρεσθαι ἔκαστον εἰς διατροφὴν τοῦ ἔτους. If one reads the whole chapter, one sees that Nearchus, who distinguishes between general and exceptional institutions, νόμους, τούς μὲν κοινοὺς, τούς δὲ ἰδίους, includes this among the exceptional. [231] See the work of M. Eug. Robe, _Origines de la propriété immobilière en Algérie_, 1883--a volume which is full of facts. [232] Em. de Laveleye, _De la propriété_, p. 105. [233] _Id._, _La propriété collective_, in the _Revue de Belgique_, 1886, pp. 2-24 of the reprint. [234] Em. de Laveleye, _De la propriété_, p. 152. [235] _Ibidem_, p. 161. [236] Save in the exceptional case described by Diodorus in the Lipari islands. [237] This is shewn by Heraclides of Pontus in the _Fragmenta hist. græc._, of Didot, vol. II., p. 211; and by Plutarch, _Life of Agis_, 5. To this can be added the other texts cited in my _Étude sur la propriété à Sparte_, 1880. See also the work of M. Claudio Jannet.