ssemble and sacrifice to the gods. There
was a common meeting-place from year to year. As it has been related,
this had a tendency to cement the tribe together and enhance political
unity. This custom must have had its influence on social order and
must have, in a measure, arrested the tendency of the people to an
unsocial and selfish life.

_Political Assemblies_.--The political assemblies, where all of the
freemen met to discuss the affairs of the community, must have been
powerful factors in the establishment of social customs and usage. The
kinsmen or fellow tribesmen were grouped in villages, and each village
maintained its privilege {288} of self-government, and consequently the
freemen met in the village assembly to consider the affairs of the
community. We find combined in the political representation the ideas
of tribal unity and individuality, or at least family independence. As
the tribes federated, there was a tendency to make the assemblies more
general, and thus the family exclusiveness tended to give way in favor
of the development of the individual as a member of the tribal state.
It was a slow transition from an ethnic to a democratic type of society.

This association created a feeling of common interest akin to
patriotism. Mr. Freeman has given us a graphic representation of the
survival of the early assembly in the Swiss cantons.[1] In the forest
cantons the freemen met in the open field on stated occasions to enact
the laws and transact the duties of legislators and judges. But
although there was a tendency to sectional and clannish relations in
society, this became much improved by the communal associations for
political and economic life. But society, as such, could not advance
very far when the larger part of the occupation of the freemen was that
of war. The youth were educated in the field, and the warriors spent
much of their time fighting with neighboring tribes.

The entire social structure, resting as it did upon kinship, found its
changes in developing economic, political, and religious life.
Especially is this seen in the pursuit of the common industries. As
soon as the tribes obtained permanent seats and had given themselves
mostly to agriculture, the state of society became more settled, and
new customs were gradually introduced. At the same time society became
better organized, and each man had his proper place, not only in the
social scale but also in the industrial and