294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there is combination for offense and defense among those whose names 

 are recognized marks of different bloods yet where there has been 

 established descent through males, and especially where monogamy 

 prevails, sameness of blood becomes largely, if not mainly, influential in 

 determining political cooperation. And this truth, under one of its 

 aspects, is the truth above enunciated, that combined action, requiring 

 a certain likeness of nature among those who carry it on, is, in early 

 stages, most successful among those who, being descendants of the 

 same ancestors, have the greatest likeness. 



An all-important though less direct effect of blood-relation shij), and 

 especially that more definite blood-relationship which arises from mon- 

 ogamic marriage, has to be added. I mean community of religion 

 a likeness of ideas and sentiments embodied in the worshij* of a com- 

 man deity. Beginning, as this does, with the propitiation of the de- 

 ceased founder of the family, and shared in, as it is, by the multiply- 

 ing groups of descendants, as the family spreads, it becomes a further 

 means of holding together the compound cluster gradually formed, 

 and checking the antagonisms that arise between the component clus- 

 ters : so favoring integration. The influence of the bond supplied by 

 a common cult everywhere meets us in ancient history. Each of the 

 cities in primitive Egypt was a center for the worship of a special 

 divinity ; and no one who, unbiased by foregone conclusions, observes 

 the extraordinary development of ancestor-worship, under all its forms, 

 in Egypt, can doubt the origin of this divinity. Of the Greeks we 

 read that "each family had its own sacred rites and funereal com- 

 memoration of ancestors, celebrated by the master of the house, to 

 which none but members of the family were admissible : the extinction 

 of a family, carrying with it the suspension of these religious rites, 

 was held by the Greeks to be a misfortune, not merely from the loss of 

 the citizens composing it, but also because the family gods and the 

 manes of deceased citizens were thus deprived of their honors and 

 might visit the country with displeasure. The larger associations, 

 called Gens, Phratry, Tribe, were formed by an extension of the same 

 principle of the family considered as a religious brotherhood, wor- 

 shiping some common god or hero with an appropriate surname, and 

 recognizing him as their joint ancestor." 



A like bond was generated in a like manner in the Roman commu- 

 nity. Each curia, which was the homologue of the phratry, had a 

 head, "whose chief function was to preside over the sacrifices." And, 

 on a larger scale, the same thing held with the entire society. The 

 primitive Roman king was a priest of the deities common to all ; " he 

 held intercourse with the gods of the community, whom he consulted 

 and whom he appeased." The beginnings of this religious bond, here 

 exhibited in a developed form, are still traceable in India. Sir Henry 

 Maine, says, "The joint family of the Hindoos is that assemblage of 

 persons who would have joined in the sacrifices at the funeral of 



