POLITICAL HEADS CHIEFS, KINGS, ETC. 34*5 



pastoral habits and the patriarchal organization, but that it 

 recurs in South African races. 



Be the causes what they may, however, we find abundant 

 proof that this family-supremacy of the eldest male, common 

 among pastoral peoples and peoples who have passed througli 

 the pastoral stage into the agricultural stage, develops into 

 political supremacy. Of the Santals Hunter says 

 &quot; The village government is purely patriarchial. Each hamlet has an 

 original founder (the Manjhi-Hanan), who is regarded as the father of 

 the community. He receives divine honours in the sacred grove, and 

 transmits his authority to his descendants.&quot; 



Of the compound family among the Khonds we read in Mac- 

 pherson that 



&quot; There it [paternal authority] reigns nearly absolute. It is a Khond s 

 maxim that a man s father is his god, disobedience to whom is the 

 greatest crime ; and all the members of a family live united in strict 

 subordination to its head until his death.&quot; 



And the growth of simple groups into compound and 

 doubly-compound groups, acknowledging the authority of one 

 who unites family headship with political headship, has been 

 made familiar by Sir Henry Maine and others as common to 

 early Greeks, Eomans, Teutons, and as still affecting social 

 organization among Hindoos and Sclavs. 



Here, then, we have making its appearance, a factor which 

 conduces to permanence of political headship. As was pointed 

 out in a foregoing chapter, while succession by efficiency 

 gives plasticity to social organization, succession by inherit 

 ance gives it stability. No settled arrangement can arise in 

 a primitive community so long as the function of each unit 

 is determined exclusively by his fitness ; since, at his death, 

 the arrangement, in so far as he was a part of it, must be 

 recommenced. Only when his place is forthwith filled by 

 one whose claim is admitted, does there begin a differentia 

 tion which survives through successive generations. And 

 evidently in the earlier stages of social evolution, while the 

 coherence is small and the want of structure great, it is requi 

 site that the principle of inheritance should, especially in re- 



