[T]he stationary condition of the human race is the rule, the progressive the exception. . . . The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions. The character of all the changes which it underwent is tolerably well ascertained. From its commencement to its close, it was progressively modified for the better, or for what the authors of the modification conceived to be the better, and the course of improvement was continued through periods at which all the rest of human thought and action materially slackened its pace, and repeatedly threatened to settle down into stagnation.
Sir Henry James Sumner Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society (1861), ch. 2, “Legal Fictions.”