eated, not as individuals, but always as members of a
particular group. Everybody is first a citizen, and then, as a
citizen, he is a member of his order--of an aristocracy or a
democracy, of an order of patricians or plebeians; or, in those
societies which an unhappy fate has afflicted with a special
perversion in their course of development, of a caste. Next, he is a
member of a gens, house, or clan; and lastly, he is a member of his
_family_. This last was the narrowest and most personal relation in
which he stood; nor, paradoxical as it may seem, was he ever regarded
as _himself_, as a distinct individual. His individuality was
swallowed up in his family. I repeat the definition of a primitive
society given before. It has for its units, not individuals, but
groups of men united by the reality or the fiction of blood-relationship.

It is in the peculiarities of an undeveloped society that we seize the
first trace of a universal succession. Contrasted with the
organisation of a modern state, the commonwealths of primitive times
may be fairly described as consisting of a number of little despotic
governments, each perfectly distinct from the rest, each absolutely
controlled by the prerogative of a single monarch. But though the
Patriarch, for we must not yet call him the Pater-familias, had rights
thus extensive, it is impossible to doubt that he lay under an equal
amplitude of obligations. If he governed the family, it was for its
behoof. If he was lord of its possessions, he held them as trustee for
his children and kindred. He had no privilege or position distinct
from that conferred on him by his relation to the petty commonwealth
which he governed. The Family, in fact, was a Corporation; and he was
its representative or, we might almost say, its Public officer. He
enjoyed rights and stood under duties, but the rights and the duties
were, in the contemplation of his fellow-citizens and in the eye of
the law, quite as much those of the collective body as his own. Let us
consider for a moment the effect which would be produced by the death
of such a representative. In the eye of the law, in the view of the
civil magistrate, the demise of the domestic authority would be a
perfectly immaterial event. The person representing the collective
body of the family and primarily responsible to municipal jurisdiction
would bear a different name; and that would be all. The rights and
obligations which attached to the deceased he