the Daryal valley, nor the indescribable charm of the leaping Terek that attracted Kovalevsky. From his early youth there was something in the apperceptive mass of his great mind that made him interested in man as he finds himself in his social relations, in man's social evolution. The picturesque tribes of the Caucasus held unconquerable fascination for young Kovalevsky because of their rich folklore, because of their interesting customs and laws. His excursions to the Caucasus were not made in the spirit of an ordinary tourist. The scientific interest was already awake in him, and the material he gathered at that time, supplemented by data obtained later through subsequent investigations in the Caucasus, was very valuable to him as illustrative matter for his theories.
As we have already noted, Kovalevsky began his studies in the department of jurisprudence, and he always retained a keen interest in the juridical sciences. But his eager mind refused to limit itself to the narrow bounds of a specialized investigation. His wide reading led him to other fields. He was equally at home in the domains of administrative law, sociology, both applied and theoretical, ethnography, primitive law and primitive culture, history of political institutions and social classes, history of the development of political and social ideas, history of economic development.
But first of all he was a sociologist, for his whole scientific outlook was based upon a historico-sociological foundation. To him the essence of sociology consists in a comparative study of the different phases of man's social, political and economic development. He insists especially upon this "historico-comparative" method, as he terms it, and devotes a brilliant monograph to its presentation. He believes that only by gathering our material in the widest possible field, and comparing the results of our investigations, can we obtain a really adequate picture of any stage of man's social evolution. And human history, to him, is nothing but social evolution, that ever strives to reach truer and juster forms.
Since evolution is determined by the interaction of social, political, and economic forces, the conditions of their relations must be ascertained, and this led Kovalevsky to extended studies in the domain of the history of human institutions. Hence his interest in ethnography, which led to valuable researches. These researches were mostly along the lines of primitive law, and therefore primitive institutions in general. In one of his earliest works, "The History of the Disappearance of Communal Landownership in Vaadt," he touches upon these questions, which he treats much more fully in his book, "Communal Landownership," and still more definitely in his "Historico-Comparative Method." In the latter work, he divides the study of the history of law into two parts; the determination of the "natural evolution of human society," and the study of primitive law among separate groups by means of a comparative method. He himself followed out his method with almost perfect precision. In 1886 he published two works, of which one, "Primitive Law,"
