THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 



families. The contrast may be most forcibly 

 expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient 

 society was th^ family, of a modern society the 

 individuals^ But originally the family govern- 

 ment excluded not only individual independ- 

 ence, but also state supremacy. The sole gov- 

 ernment actual or possible was that exercised by 

 the male head of a family group. By slow stages 

 various family groups closely akin in blood ap- 

 pear to have become integrated into tribes or 

 clans, community of descent being still the only 

 conceivable bond which could hold together a 

 number of individuals in the same political ag- 

 gregate. At a later stage the limits of the tribe 

 were further enlarged by the important legal 

 fiction of" adoption," or the pretence that newly 

 added members were descended from some con- 

 spicuous 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 sover- 

 eign 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 



^ Ancient LaWy p. 126. 



2 ** The yei/o? of Athens, the gens of Rome, the mark or 

 gemeinde of the Teutonic nations, the village community of 

 the East ... the Irish clan, are all essentially the same 

 thing.'* Freeman, Comparative Politics y p. 102. 



See, among other authorities, Volney's View of the United 



