440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with these factors a consequent factor namely, the extra power which 

 the greater, wealth gives. For when there arise disputes within the tribe, 

 the richer are those who, by their better appliances for defense and 

 their greater ability to purchase aid, naturally have the advantage over 

 the poorer. Proof that this is a potent cause is found in a fact named 

 by Sir Henry Maine : " The founders of a part of our modern Euro- 

 pean aristocracy, the Danish, are known to have been originally peas- 

 ants who fortified their houses during deadly village struggles, and 

 then used their advantage." Such superiorities of power and position 

 once initiated are increased in another way. Already in the last 

 chapter we have seen that communities are to a certain extent increased 

 by the addition of fugitives from other communities sometimes 

 criminals, sometimes those who are oppressed. While, in places where 

 such fugitives belong to races of superior type, they often become 

 rulers (as among many Indian Hill-tribes, whose rajahs are of Hindoo 

 extraction), in places where they are of the same race, and can not do 

 this, they attach themselves to those of chief power in their adopted 

 tribe. Sometimes they yield up their freedom for the sake of protec- 

 tion : a man will make himself a slave by breaking a spear in the 

 presence of his wished-for master, as among the East Africans, or by 

 inflicting some small bodily injury upon him, as among the Fulahs. 

 And in ancient Rome the semi-slave class distinguished as clients 

 originated by this voluntary acceptance of servitude with safety. But, 

 where his aid promises to be of value as a warrior, the fugitive offers 

 himself in that capacity in exchange for maintenance and refuge. 

 Other things equal, he joins himself to some one marked by superiority 

 of power and property, and thus enables the man already dominant to 

 become more dominant. Such armed dependents, having as aliens no 

 claims to the lands of the group, and bound to its head only by fealty, 

 answer in position to the comites as found in the early German com- 

 munities, and as exemplified in old English times by the *' Huscarlas " 

 (house-carls), with whom nobles surrounded themselves. Evidently, 

 too, followers of this kind, having certain interests in common with 

 their protector, and no interests in common with the rest of the com- 

 munity, become, in his hands, the means of usurping communal rights 

 and elevating himself while depressing the rest. 



Step by step the contrast strengthens. Beyond such as have vol- 

 untarily made themselves slaves to a head-man, others have become 

 enslaved by capture in the wars meanwhile going on, others by staking 

 themselves in gaming, others by purchase, others by crime, others by 

 debt. And of necessity the possession of many slaves, habitually accom- 

 panying wealth and power, tends still further to increase that wealth 

 and power, and to mark off still more the higher rank from the lower. 



Certain concomitant influences generate differences of nature, phys- 

 ical and mental, between those members of a community who have at- 



