马克思以历史唯物主义去考究法的起源,给法律的起源以唯物的、有据可循的理论,但在法律起源于什么时期的问题上,认为法与国家相伴而生。这里定义的法律以国家制定和强制力保障实施为标准,是以规范性、调整性、有法庭和军队为特征的法律体系。原始社会作为人类最早的社会形态,孕育了现代社会的一切胚胎。梅因认为我们可以通过三条途径去认识原始社会,其中之一就是:同时代比较落后的各种文明的记事——即现代社会中仍然存在着的保有原始社会习俗的 Marx used historical materialism to study the origin of law and give the origin of law materialistic and evidence-based theory. However, on the question of the period from which law originated, Marx believes that law and state go hand in hand. The law as defined here is based on the state’s formulation and the enforcement of the coercive force as the standard and is a legal system characterized by normativeness, readiness, courts and the military. Primitive society, as the earliest social form of mankind, gave birth to all embryos in modern society. Maine thinks that we can understand the primitive society in three ways. One of them is: the memo of the comparatively backward civilizations of the same age - that is, the still existing primitive social customs in modern society