COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS, 201 



see how there came to coexist, in the same societies, some institutions 

 of a despotic kind, with other institutions of a kind appearing to be 

 based on the principle of equality, and often confounded with free 

 institutions. Let us recall the antecedents of those early European 

 peoples who developed governments of this form. 



During the wandering pastoral life, subordination to a single head, 

 growing naturally out of fatherhood, was fostered. A recalcitrant 

 member of any group had either to submit to the authority under 

 which he had grown up, or, throwing ofl: its yoke, had to leave the 

 group and face those risks which unprotected life in the desert threat- 

 ened. The establishment of this subordination was furthered by the 

 more frequent survival of groups in which it was greatest ; since, in 

 the conflicts between groups, those of which the members were in- 

 subordinate, ordinarily being both smaller and less able to cooperate 

 effectually, were the more likely to disappear. But now, to the fact 

 that in such families and clans circumstances fostered obedience to 

 the father and to the patriarch, has to be added the fact above em- 

 phasized, that circumstances also fostered the sentiment of liberty in 

 the relations between clans. The exercise of power by one of them 

 over another was made diflicult by wide scattering and by great mo- 

 bility ; and with successful opposition to external coercion, or evasion 

 of it, carried on through numberless generations, the tendency to re- 

 sent and resist all strange authority was likely to become strong. 



Whether, when groups thus disciplined aggregate, they assume 

 this or that form of political organization, depends partly, as already 

 implied, on the conditions into which they fall. Even could we omit 

 those differences between Mongols, Semites, and Aryans, established 

 in prehistoric times by causes unknown to us even had complete 

 likeness of nature been produced in them by long continuance of pas- 

 toral life yet large societies, formed by combinations of these small 

 ones, could be similar in type only under similar circumstances. 

 Hence, probably, the reason why Mongols and Semites, where they 

 have settled and multiplied, have failed to maintain the autonomies of 

 their hordes after combination of them, and to evolve the resulting 

 institutions. Even the Aryans, among whom chiefly the less concen- 

 trated forms of political rule have arisen, yield an illustration. Origi- 

 nally inheriting in common the mental traits generated during their 

 life in the Hindoo-Koosh and its neighborhood, the different divisions 

 of the race have developed different institutions and accompanying 

 characters. Those of them who spread into the plains of India, where 

 great fertility made possible a large population, to the control of which 

 there were small physical impediments, lost their independence of 

 nature, and did not evolve political systems like those which grew up 

 among their Western kindred, under conditions favorable for main- 

 taining the original character. 



The implication is, then, that where groups of the patriarchal type 



