130
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
qualities of the nature which God has implanted in
him ; and the first community is the union of free
men for purposes of friendly intercourse and mutual
aid, each enjoying at the hands of every other the
same rights as he is willing to grant to every other,
each yielding something of his natural freedom in
order that the idea of state, that is of orderly go-
vernment, maybe realized. For the state is neces-
sary, not accidental. Man not living in a state,
not having developed and in some degree realized
the idea of state, is, in so far, not man but beast.
He has no past and no future : he lives for the
day, and does not even accumulate for the days to
come: he lives, thinks, feels and dies like a brute.
For man is free through the existence, not the ab-
sence, of law ; through his voluntary and self-con-
scious relinquishment of the power to do wrong,
and the adoption of means to counteract and dimi-
nish his own tendency to evil. The amount of
personal liberty to be given up is the only question
of practical importance, but from the idea of Free-
dom itself results the law, that this amount must
be in all cases a minimum.
The ideas of freedom and equality are not, how-
ever, inseparable : a nation of slaves may exist in
sorrowful equality under the capricious will of a
native or foreign tyrant : a nation of free men may
cheerfully, wisely and happily obey the judge or the
captain they have elected in the exigencies of peace
and war. Hence the voluntary union of free men
does not exclude the possibility of such union being
either originally based upon terms of inequality, or
CH. V.]
THE FREEMAN. THE NOBLE.
131
becoming sooner or later settled upon such a basis.
But, as the general term is the freedom, I take this as
the unity which involves the difference ; the noble
is one of the freemen, and is made noble by the act
of the free : the free are not made so by the noble.
By these principles the divisions of this chapter
are regulated.
The freeman is emphatically called Man, ceorl,
mas, maritus; wæpned man, armatus; after the pre-
valence of slavery, he is, for distinction, termed
free, frigman, frihals, i. e., free neck, the hand of a
master has not bent his neck1 ; but his oldest and
purest denomination is ccorl. Till a very late pe-
riod the Anglosaxon law knows no other distinction
than that of ceorl and eorl2. TheDld Norse Rigs-
mal which is devoted to the origin of the races,
considers Karl as the representative of the freeman.
His sons are Hair, Anglosaxon, Hæle, vir ; Drengr,
Anglos. Dreng, vir ; pegen, Anglos. J>egn, virfortis,
miles, minister ; Holdr, Anglos, hold, pugil, fidelis ;
Biii, Anglos, gebιir, colonus ; Bondi, Anglos, bonda,
colonus; Smi1Sr, Anglos. Sva∖%,faber; Seggr, Anglos.
Secg, vir. Among the daughters are Snot, Brulδr,
FlioS and Wif. Many of these terms yet survive,
to represent various classes of freemen in almost
every Germanic country3.
' The converse is Collibertue, qui coUutn Iiberavit, culvert, coward.
2 Swa eac we setta<5 be eallum ha<lum, ge ceorle, ge eorle : “ во also
we ordain concerning all degrees of men, churl as well as earl.” Leg.
Ælfr. § 4.
3 Conf. Grimm, Deut. Rechtsalt. 283. The Latin laws of the Mid-
dle Ages usually adopt the words, Liber, liber homo, ingenuuβ. In
■reference to the noble, he is mediocris, minqfledus, κaτaδecστepos ∙, in
rθspect of his wife, he is bare.
κ2