The first challenge to human beings to go beyond accumulated common sense experience may have been awareness of animation and order. The distribution of competence to make important decisions determined the structure of society in early Greece and Rome for a thousand years. The assignment of important decisions to paterfamiliases and the grouping of all others under their authority served to divide the total social group into sets of workers, each under the direction and control of an authentic leader. The basic structure of Roman private law is: definition of a legal person; types of relations between legal persons; division and classification of things; definition and classification of relations of persons to things; transmission of rights with respect to things from one person to another; obligations arising from contract; obligations arising from delictual actions; and legal actions for the correction of injustices. The implementations of Roman Stoic fundamental beliefs established basic principles and institutions of property law, family law, inheritance, and legal personality which are in use today in every country which inherited Western civilization. 3 figures, 126 notes, bibliography, and index