S16 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. n. 



at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the 

 view of tlie men who composed it, it was an aggregation of 

 families. The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by 

 saying that the unit of an ancient society was the family, 

 of a modern society the individual" ^ But originally the 

 family-government excluded not only individual indepen- 

 dence, but also state supremacy. The sole government 

 actual or possible was that exercised by the male head of a 

 family-group. By slow stages various family-groups closely 

 akhi in blood appear to have become integrated into tribes 

 or clans, community of descent being still the only con- 

 ceivable bond which could hold together a number of indi- 

 viduals in the same political aggregate. At a later stage 

 the limits of the tribe were further enlarged by the impor- 

 tant legal fiction of " adoption," or the pretence that newly- 

 added members were descended from some conspicuous 

 common ancestor of the tribe. Vestiges of a time when 

 there were no aggregations of men more extensive than the 

 tribal community thus constituted, and when there was no 

 sovereign authority save that exercised by the head of the 

 tribe, may be found in every part of the world,^ and among 

 totally-savage races this state of things still continues. Now 

 we shall find something more than an instructive analogy in 

 the comparison of the primitive family-group to a unicellular 

 organism, for such a comparison will enable us to realize 

 that in social and in organic evolution the process of integra- 

 tion has been substantially the same. The first well-marked 

 stage in coalescence is the formation of the tribe or clan, 



^ Ancient Law, p. 126. 



• " The yivos of Athens, the gens of Eome, the mark or gcmcinde of the 

 Teutonic nations, the village community of the East . . . the Irish clan, are 

 all essentially the same thing " — Freeman, Comparative Politics, p. 102, 



See, among other authorities, Volney's View of the United States, p. 397 ; 

 Phillipp on Jurisprvdence, p. 207 ; Charles Comte, Traite de Legislation, 

 Uv, iii., chap. 28 ; Grote, History of Greece, vol. iii., pp. 49 — 69 ; Gibbon 

 (Paris edit.), vol. iii., p. 243 ; Vico, Scienza Nuova, Opere, tom. iv., pp. 23, 

 S5, 40 ; Aristotle^ Eth. Nikom. viu. 14 ; Tacitua, Gcrmania, vii. ; Ctesar, 

 Bell. Gall. vL 22, 23. 



