Ancient Society - Lewis Henry Morgan

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as that upon sex. It seems to afford a glimpse at society when it verged upon the primitive. Among other tribes the gens seems to have advanced in proportion to the curtailment of the conjugal system. Mankind rise in the scale and the family advances through its successive forms, as these rights sink down before the efforts of society to improve its internal organization.

      The Australians might not have effected the overthrow of the classes in thousands of years if they had remained undiscovered; while more favored continental tribes had long before perfected the gens, then advanced it through its successive phases, and at last laid it aside after entering upon civilization. Facts illustrating the rise of successive social organizations, such as that upon sex, and that upon kin are of the highest ethnological value. A knowledge of what they indicate is eminently desirable, if the early history of mankind is to be measurably recovered.

      Among the Polynesian tribes the gens was unknown; but traces of a system analogous to the Australian classes appear in the Hawaiian custom of punalua. Original ideas, absolutely independent of previous knowledge and experience, are necessarily few in number. Were it possible to reduce the sum of human ideas to underived originals, the small numerical result would be startling. Development is the method of human progress.

      In the light of these facts some of the excrescences of modern civilization, such as Mormonism, are seen to be relics of the old savagism not yet eradicated from the human brain. We have the same brain, perpetuated by reproduction, which worked in the skulls of barbarians and savages in by-gone ages; and it has come down to us ladened and saturated with the thoughts, aspirations and passions, with which it was busied through the intermediate periods. It is the same brain grown older and larger with the experience of the ages. These outcrops of barbarism are so many revelations of its ancient proclivities. They are explainable as a species of mental atavism.

      Out of a few germs of thought, conceived in the early ages, have been evolved all the principal institutions of mankind. Beginning their growth in the period of savagery, fermenting through the period of barbarism, they have continued their advancement through the period of civilization. The evolution of these germs of thought has been guided by a natural logic which formed an essential attribute of the brain itself. So unerringly has this principle performed its functions in all conditions of experience, and in all periods of time, that its results are uniform, coherent and traceable in their courses. These results alone will in time yield convincing proofs of the unity of origin of mankind. The mental history of the human race, which is revealed in institutions, inventions and discoveries, is presumptively the history of a single species, perpetuated through individuals, and developed through experience. Among the original germs of thought, which have exercised the most powerful influence upon the human mind, and upon human destiny, are these which relate to government, to the family, to language, to religion, and to property. They had a definite beginning far back in savagery, and a logical progress, but can have no final consummation, because they are still progressing, and must ever continue to progress.

       Table of Contents

      The Gentile Organization.—Its Wide Prevalence.—Definition of a Gens.—Descent in the Female Line the Archaic Rule.—Rights, Privileges and Obligations of Members of a Gens.—Right of Electing and Deposing its Sachem and Chiefs.—Obligation not to marry in the Gens.—Mutual Rights of Inheritance of the Property of deceased Members.—Reciprocal Obligations of Help, Defense and Redress of Injuries.—Right of Naming its Members.—Right of Adopting Strangers into the Gens.—Common Religious Rites, Query.—A Common Burial Place.—Council of the Gens.—Gentes named after Animals.—Number of Persons in a Gens.

      The experience of mankind, as elsewhere remarked, has developed but two plans of government, using the word plan in its scientific sense. Both were definite and systematic organizations of society. The first and most ancient was a social organization, founded upon gentes, phratries and tribes. The second and latest in time was a political organization, founded upon territory and upon property. Under the first a gentile society was created, in which the government dealt with persons through their relations to a gens and tribe. These relations were purely personal. Under the second a political society was instituted, in which the government dealt with persons through their relations to territory, e.g.—the township, the county, and the state. These relations were purely territorial. The two plans were fundamentally different. One belongs to ancient society, and the other to modern.

      The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry and tribe, the Roman gens, curia and tribe find their analogues in the gens, phratry and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish sept, the Scottish clan, the phrara of the Albanians, and the Sanskrit ganas, without extending the comparison further, are the same as the American Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan. As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization. Nor is this all. Gentile society wherever found is the same in structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people. These changes give the history of development of the same original conceptions.

      Gens, γένος, and ganas in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have alike the primary signification of kin. They contain the same element as gigno, γίγνομαι, and ganamai, in the same languages, signifying to beget; thus implying in each an immediate common descent of the members of a gens. A gens, therefore, is a body of consanguinei descended from the same common ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and bound together by affinities of blood. It includes a moiety only of such descendants. Where descent is in the female line, as it was universally in the archaic period, the gens is composed of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her female descendants, through females, in perpetuity; and where descent is in the male line—into which it was changed after the appearance of property in masses—of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together with the children of his male descendants, through males, in perpetuity. The family name among ourselves is a survival of the gentile name, with descent in the male line, and passing in the same manner. The modern family, as expressed by its name, is an unorganized gens; with the bond of kin broken, and its members as widely dispersed as the family name is found.

      Among the nations named, the gens indicated a social organization of a remarkable character, which had prevailed from an antiquity so remote that its origin was lost in the obscurity of far distant ages. It was also the unit of organization of a social and governmental system, the fundamental basis of ancient society. This organization was not confined to the Latin, Grecian and Sanskrit speaking tribes, with whom it became such a conspicuous institution. It has been found in other branches of the Aryan family of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian and Turanian families, among the tribes of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines.

      An exposition of the elementary constitution of the gens, with its functions, rights, and privileges, requires our first attention; after which it will be traced, as widely as possible, among the tribes and nations of mankind in order to prove, by comparisons, its fundamental unity. It will then be seen that it must be regarded as one of the primary institutions of mankind.

      The gens has passed through successive stages of development in its transition from its archaic to its final form with the progress of mankind. These changes were limited, in the main, to two: firstly, changing descent from the female line, which was the archaic rule, as among the Iroquois, to the male line, which was the final rule, as among the Grecian and Roman gentes; and, secondly, changing

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