I shall in a subsequent chapter state to what extent I believe it to be true that society was founded upon a contract, and also the way in which this impression was confirmed, from the actual circumstances of the formation of the early communities of Greece and Italy; and I shall then examine the true tradition, such as I believe it to be, of a state of nature associated with the reminiscence of a golden age, as contrasted with the distinct yet parallel tradition of a state of nature identified with a state of barbarism (_vide_ ch. vii. and ch. xiii.) This latter tradition I believe to have been a recollection of that period of temporary privation after the Flood, when mankind clung to the caverns and the mountains (_vide_ p. 137), until, incited by the example of Noah, they were brought into the plains, and instructed in the arts of husbandry by the patriarch; and the notion of the primitive equality[19] of condition I believe to have originated in the Bacchanalian traditions of the same patriarch.[20] [19] In all the Diluvian commemorative festivals, to which I shall draw attention (ch. xi.), there is one day set apart for the commemoration of this primitive equality, accompanied with Bacchanalian festivities and ceremonials. [20] Sir H. Maine ("Ancient Law," p. 95) says, "Like all other deductions from the hypothesis of a law natural, and like the belief itself in a law of nature, it was languidly assented to, until it passed out of the possession of the lawyers into that of the literary men of the eighteenth century, and the public which sat at their feet. With them it became the most distinct tenet of their creed, and was even regarded as the summary of all the others." If we start with a belief in the primitive equality of conditions, the only way out of the mesh is apparently by a theory of a compact. "From the Roman law downwards," says Sir G. C. Lewis, "there has been a strong tendency among jurists to deduce recognised rights and obligations from a supposed, but non-existing contract. When an express contract exists, the legal rights and duties which it creates are in general distinct and well-defined. Hence, in cases where it is wished that similar legal consequences should be drawn, which come within the spirit of the rules applicable to a contract, though they do not themselves involve any contract, the lawyer cuts the knot by saying that a contract is presumed, that there is a contract by intendment of law, that there are certain rights and obligations "_quasi ex contractu_." Thus the Roman law held that a guardian was bound to his ward by a _quasi_ contract."--_Sir G. C. Lewis, "On the Methods of Observation, &c., in Politics_," i. 423; "_On the Social Compact_," pp. 424-431.