When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is
an end to what may be called its spontaneous development.
Henceforward the changes effected in it, if effected at all, are
effected deliberately and from without. It is impossible to
suppose that the customs of any race or tribe remained unaltered
during the whole of the long -- in some instances the immense --
interval between their declaration by a patriarchal monarch and
their publication in writing. It would be unsafe too to affirm
that no part of the alteration was effected deliberately.

But from the little we know of the progress of law during this
period, we are justified in assuming that set purpose had the
very smallest share in producing change. Such innovations on the
earliest usages as disclose themselves appear to have been
dictated by feelings and modes of thought which, under our
present mental conditions, we are unable to comprehend. A new era
begins, however, with the Codes. Wherever, after this epoch, we
trace the course of legal modification we are able to attribute
it to the conscious desire of improvement, or at all events of
compassing objects other than those which were aimed at in the
primitive times.