that either in Rome or Greece even the fiction of a common origin could be preserved for long when the organisation of the people into gentes, phratries, and tribes was adopted by the State as a system of political division and their numbers were fixed.1 When the genos and gens first appear to us in history they were mere dwindling survivals, except in one respect: they remained, as they had been from the outset, religious communities long after they had lost all other practical importance. This was especially the case at Athens, where certain reputed gentes for centuries continued to play a prominent part in the religious cult; and the Romans seem to have preserved their gentilicia sacra still in Cicero's time.1 3 А In ancient Wales districts were occupied by tribes under their petty kings or chiefs, and the tribe (cenedl) was a bundle of kindreds "bound together and interlocked by common interests and frequent intermarriages, as well as by the necessity of mutual protection against foreign foes."5 A group of households, again, corresponding to the Roman gens formed a trev, which was a cluster of scattered households, "not necessarily a village in the modern sense." " The same seems to have been the case with the Teutonic vici, spoken of by Tacitus ; but that among the Teutons, also, the people of the same neighbourhood were bloodrelatives may be directly inferred from a statement made by Cæsar. They were not much addicted to agriculture," and "the dreary world" they inhabited, with its desert aspect, its harsh climate, its lack of cultivation, was not 4 Cicero, Pro domo, 13 (34). Seebohm, English Village Community, p. 190. Idem, Tribal System in Wales, p. 61. 6 Idem, English Village Community, P. 343. 7 Tacitus, Germania, 16. Cf. Hildebrand, op. cit. p. 105 sqq. 8 Caesar, De bello Gallico, vi. 22:"Magistratus ac princeps in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum, qui una coierint, quantum, et quo loco visum est, agri attribuunt.' 9 Ibia. vi. 22. favourable to the formation of permanent large social bodies of great cohesiveness. However, we meet among them social units which Cæsar calls regiones or pagi, of which the vici may be assumed to have been subdivisions. Among the highly agricultural Slavonians, on the other hand, we find even in the present time a social organisation very similar to that of the Hindus. The South Slavonians, as we have seen, live in house communities corresponding to the joint families in India. Now, when the members of a house community, or zadruga-as it is often called become too numerous, a separation takes place, and the emigrants form new households by themselves. A zadruga is thus gradually expanded into a bratstvo, or brotherhood-a group of related house communities which not only feel themselves as branches of the same stock, but still have certain practical interests in common and a common chief. Several bratstva, finally, form a pleme, or tribe. Among the Russians, again, the family, or joint family, has developed into a mir, or village community, composed of an assemblage of separate houses each ruled by its own head but with a common village chief elected by the heads of the various households. The Russian mir is an institution very similar to the Hindu village community described above. The land belongs to the community, and in earlier days it was probably cultivated in common. At present it is divided between the component families, the lots shifting among them periodically, or perhaps vesting in them as their property, but always subject to a power in the collective body of villagers to veto its sale. Originally the mir was also a group of kindred; but, as in the Hindu village community, the tie of blood has been greatly weakened by all sorts of fictions and the admission of so many strangers that the tradition of a common origin is dim or lost.3 In the social organisation of all these peoples there is 1 Cæsar, De bello Gallico, vi. 23. 2 Krauss, op. cit. pp. 2, 32 sqq. von Hellwald, op. cit. p. 502 sq. Grosse, op. cit. p. 204 sq. 3 de Laveleye, De la propriété, p. 12 sqq. Maine, Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 261 sq. thus originally a general congruity between the principle of local proximity and the principle of descent. On the one hand, all freemen, all true members of the society, who belong to the same local group, are at the same time kinsmen ; on the other hand, all persons who are united by the tie of a common descent belong to the same or neighbouring local groups. The cause of this congruity is the universal prevalence of the paternal system of descent. Whether the case was different in prehistoric times is an open question. That the ancient Chinese reckoned kinship through the mother, not through the father, has been conjectured on philological grounds,' as to the plausibility of which I can express no opinion. Several writers have also endeavoured to prove that the uterine line of descent prevailed among the primitive Aryans, but the evidence is far from being conclusive. I agree with Professor Leist that all so-called survivals of a system of maternal descent in the prehistoric antiquity of the Aryan races are doubtful, if not false. As regards the Teutons, much importance has been attributed to the specially close connection which, according to Tacitus, existed between a sister's children and their mother's brothers; but, as Professor Schrader remarks, in spite of the prominent position of the maternal uncle among Teutonic peoples, the patruus distinctly came before the avunculus, the agnates before the cognates, in testamentary succession. The existence of a custom which in some respect recognises uterine relationship does not prove the earlier prevalence of the full maternal system of descent, to the exclusion of the paternal. Progress in civilisation is up to a certain point connected with social expansion. Among savages the largest permanent social unit is generally the tribe, and even the tribal bond is often very loose, if not entirely wanting. It is true that associations of tribes occur even among so 1 Puini, quoted by Grosse, op. cit. p. 193. 2 Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 58. Idem, Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. 490. 3 Tacitus, Germania, 20. 4 Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 395. low a race as the Australian aborigines, but unaccompanied by any kind of political organisation. At a somewhat higher stage we meet with the famous league of the Iroquois a federation on republican principles of five distinct tribes, which could point to three centuries of uninterrupted domestic unity and peace and the kingdoms of various African potentates. Civilisation only thrives in states. From small beginnings round the lake of Mexico the Aztecs gradually succeeded, through conquest, in forming an empire which covered probably almost sixteen thousand square leagues. However, between the various tribes lay broad belts of uninhabited territory, which enabled them to keep up a shy and exclusive attitude towards each other; and at the time of the Spanish conquest the empire of Mexico was, in fact, little more than "a chain of intimidated Indian tribes, who, kept apart from each other under the influence of mutual timidity, were held down by dread of attacks from an unassailable robber-stronghold in their midst." 3 In South America, in a long course of ages, six nations inhabited the region which extends from the water-parting between the basins of the Huallaga and Ucayali to that between the basins of the Ucayali and Lake Titicaca. When increasing population brought them in contact with each other, a struggle for supremacy ended in the mastery of the fittest-the Incas; and the empire of the latter was subsequently extended by the subjugation of a variety of other nations or tribes.4 The extent of territory claimed for ancient China by the earliest records is more than double the size of modern France, and, though it was often divided into different states, the great dynasties ruled over the whole of it. The two crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt were united at a very early date; and no less imposing was the great kingdom of Babylon and Assur. We may assume that all these empires were formed by an association, either voluntary or forcible, of different tribes, as was the case with those states with whose origin and early growth we are somewhat better acquainted. As late as the time of the Judges the tribes of Israel either stood each entirely alone or formed smaller groups, and there was no such thing as an Israelitish nation in a political sense until the unity of the people came into being under Samuel and the first kings. The Vedic people consisted of a great number of independent tribes, between which only temporary alliances were made for the sake of defence or attack. But gradually the alliances grew more permanent; war-kings united several tribes, surrounded themselves with a military nobility, and founded great kingdoms.2 In Greece and Italy the states grew out of forts which had been built on elevated places to serve as common strongholds or places of refuge in case of war. Several tribes united so as to be better able to resist dangerous enemies, and one of the fortified towns in time gained supremacy over all others in the neighbourhood, as Athens did in Attica and Alba Longa in Latium. Similar districts, ruled by a town, were called poleis or civitates. In historical times attempts were made to carry this process further by joining several of the small states under the rule of one. In this Sparta and Athens failed, whereas the efforts of Rome met with unequalled success. The development of the State tended to weaken or destroy the smaller units of which it was composed. The central power, hostile to separatism, naturally endeavoured to appropriate the authority invested in the latter, and in a well-governed state these on their part had little reason to resist. The main object of the clan, phratry, and tribe was to protect their respective members; hence they became superfluous in the presence of a powerful national govern3 Leist, Græco-italische geschichte, p. 109 sqq. 1 Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. 133. 2 Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 158, 192 sq. Rechts |
