It is, then, indisputable that all existing documents show us a system of private property; but Maurer supposes, 1st, that there must once have been a period of undivided common property; 2nd, that the “associates of the mark” passed from this to the later system of private ownership, by dividing the land amongst them. That property had ever been undivided he has no kind of proof to bring forward. It is a statement he frequently repeats as if he had already proved it, but we shall search his book in vain for any such demonstration. It is certainly very strange for a scholar to heap together evidence for a host of matters of secondary importance, and neglect to bring forward a single authority for that on which everything turns, _i.e._, the existence of the primitive community. His book is rich in references, but not one bears upon this; so that we might say that everything here is proved except the very point that was in need of proof. As evidence of the supposed partition by means of which the “associates of the mark” passed to a system of private ownership, Maurer refers to three authorities.[123] The first is the hagiographer Meginarius, who, in his _Translatio Alexandri_, relates a tradition according to which the Saxons, on getting possession of Thuringia, at once divided the country amongst themselves into separate portions to be held in perpetuity, and handed over parts of them to be cultivated by _coloni_.[124] Here we certainly have an instance of a division of land; but this division does not follow upon a condition of undivided ownership; so far from implying the existence of such a state of things, it shows rather that to these Saxons the very idea is unknown. As soon as they are masters of the soil they establish a system of private property. The same fact is illustrated by the passage from Helmold, which Maurer quotes, where we are told that certain Westphalians, on being settled in a conquered country, at once divided it between them.[125] His third reference is to a Bavarian document of the year 1247, where we are told that “the fields were divided by a line, and twelve acres allotted to each house.” Maurer imagines this refers to an association of free peasants who have for centuries cultivated the soil in common, and at last divide it amongst themselves in equal shares. Not at all. If we read the whole document we see that it refers to a villa, that is to say, a large estate belonging to a single proprietor, who distributes the soil in holdings amongst his _rustici_.[126] The document is interesting as illustrating a very common usage, according to which every peasant received three lots of land, one in each of the three different kinds.[127] This is, however, a very different thing from the division among common owners of land hitherto undivided; it is a division amongst tenants, carried out by the proprietor. Thus we see that not one of the documents referred to