
SOCIETY 135 
siderable extent cohesion within the community. With- 
in each group with which he thus from time to time acts, 
there is a recognized leader; the head, through his life- 
time, of a family which theoretically is perpetual. He is 
the head because of superior competence; which in 
turn rests on distinguished wealth or bravery. Courage 
itself and fighting ability are of course not always trans- 
mitted from father to son, but wealth is; and inasmuch 
as the ability to fight successfully depends very largely 
on the possession of property, the leadership within the 
family group is quite normally directly hereditary. This 
is the plan of society under which the Ifugao, the 
Bontok, and to a greater or less degree all the pagans 
of Luzon live. 
The barangay system looks very much like an exten- 
sion of the mountaineers’ plan of society. Wealth was 
probably more readily accumulated on the coast and 
thus afforded greater opportunity for its irregular dis- 
tribution and concentration in relatively fewer hands. 
This, in turn, encouraged slavery, which throughout the 
Philippines has always been largely the result of debt or 
economic causes. In these ways leadership became 
more pronounced. Once it became powerful enough 
for its recognition to transcend the bonds of immediate 
kinship, and was accepted over a district as such, no 
matter how small, the barangay plan was in force; and 
in a sense too, the beginnings of a political organization 
had been laid. From the point of view of development, 
however, the step from the anarchic mountain system 
to that of the barangay was a very short one. 
With all this first step, the lowland Filipino of three 
or four centuries ago had however reached only the germ 
of a political constitution of society. He never succeeded 
in welding the little local barangays into larger units. 
This was the reason the Spaniards succeeded so easily in 
