It will be remembered that the
oldest form of civil society, which is still to be found among some
barbarous races, was that in which families were organized into clans
and clans into tribes; and we saw that among our forefathers in
England the dwelling-place of the clan became the township, and the
home of the tribe became the shire or county. Now, in nearly all
primitive societies that have been studied, we find a group that is
larger than the clan but smaller than the tribe,--or, in other words,
intermediate between clan and tribe. Scholars usually call this group
by its Greek name, _phratry_ or "brotherhood", for it was known
long ago that in ancient Greece clans were grouped into brotherhoods
and brotherhoods into tribes. Among uncivilized people all over the
world we find this kind of grouping. For example, a tribe of North
American Indians is regularly made up of phratries, and the phratries
are made up of clans; and, strange as it might at first seem, a good
many half-understood features of early Greek and Roman society have
had much light thrown upon them from the study of the usages of
Cherokees and Mohawks.
Wherever men have been placed, the problem of forming civil society
has been in its main outlines the same; and in its earlier stages it
has been approached in pretty much the same way by all.
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