COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS. 373 



playing the united traits above described. Such a people 

 taking possession of such a land, inevitably fell in course of 

 time &quot; into as many independent clans as the country itself 

 was divided by its mountain chains into valleys and dis 

 tricts.&quot; From separation resulted alienation ; so that those 

 remote from one another, becoming strangers, became ene 

 mies. In early Greek times the clans, occupying mountain 

 villages, were so liable to incursions from one another that 

 the planting of fruit trees was a waste of labour. There 

 existed a state like that seen at present among such Indian- 

 liill tribes as the Nagas. 



Though preserving the tradition of a common descent, and 

 owning allegiance to the oldest male representative of the 

 patriarch, a people spreading over a region which thus cut off 

 from one another even adjacent small groups, and still more 

 those remoter clusters of groups arising in course of genera 

 tions, would inevitably become disunited in government: 

 subjection to a general head would be more and more difficult 

 to maintain, and subjection to local heads would alone con 

 tinue practicable. At the same time there would arise, under 

 such conditions, increasing causes of insubordination. When 

 the various branches of a common family are so separated as 

 to prevent intercourse, their respective histories, and the lines 

 of descent of their respective heads, must become unknown, 

 or but partially known, to one another ; and claims to supre 

 macy made now by this local head and now by that, are cer 

 tain to be disputed. If we remember how, even in settled 

 societies having records, there have been perpetual conflicts 

 about rights of succession, and how, down to our own day, 

 there are frequent law-suits to decide on heirships to titles 

 and properties, we cannot but infer that in a state like that 

 of the early Greeks, the difficulty of establishing the legiti 

 macy of general headships, conspiring with the desire to 

 assert independence and the ability to maintain it, inevitably 

 entailed lapse into numerous local headships. Of course, 

 under conditions varying in each locality, splittings-up of 



