It is most probable that some of the features which Hammurabi’s Code has in common with the early Hebrew legislation are only slightly modified from the still earlier codes which date from the time of earlier Sumerian supremacy in Babylonia. Hence we should remember that a common Semitic origin may really be only a step towards a reference of both to an early Babylonian origin. At present we are not likely to find evidences of early Semitic custom anywhere so early by some thousand years as in Babylonia; and though we are quite justified in supposing that Arab customs may be older still, as they certainly are more primitive, we can never date them with certainty except when we can show them to arise purely and simply out of local circumstances. Then we may perhaps affirm that they must always have been the custom in Arabia and treat them as a witness to early Semitic law. On this side of the question Mr. S. A. COOK’s work is invaluable. But the evolutionist or scientific man has a much easier solution. He has made a comparison of laws among such foreign folk as are wholly unconnected with Semites or Sumerians. It is found that all men everywhere do hit upon much the same solution of the same social problem. We may say that the likenesses we perceive between the Code of Hammurabi and the Hebrew laws are due to the natural dictates of human experience. If we take up the laws, one by one, which are common to the two systems, we can account for almost all the likenesses in this way. Some very remarkable similarities have been shown by PROFESSOR D. H. MÜLLER to exist between the Code of Hammurabi and the Twelve Tables of the Roman Law. PROFESSOR COHN, of Zürich, has pointed out strong likenesses to the laws of the West Goths. On the other hand, DR. H. GRIMME has pointed out some very close agreements between the Mosaic Laws and an ancient Semitic Law of Bogos, which goes back before the coming of the Amhara into Abyssinia. There are some likenesses even with the old Indian laws of Manu, and even the laws of the Aztecs have been compared. We could not expect much assent if we argued for a common parentage of these widely scattered laws and their descent from the Code of Hammurabi.