Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/244

 228 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

become sedentary. It has a judicial existence; it is proprietor of the soil; its members enjoy only usufruct or temporary possession ; it is governed by the heads of families assembled in council under the presidency of the starosta, or mayor, chosen by them.

The same groupings, with the same delimitations, are met with in all civilizations at the same stage in Egypt, in China, in India, in Persia, among the Semites, and the Aryans, Celtic, German, and Slavic. This internal organization, in connection with the technique and the modes of economic circulation and production, always corresponds to an organization adequate to the general structure of the societies, and notably to the frontiers which separate them from other societies.

In England, in the early centuries, the hundred moot was the basis of the social organization, as the assembly for local govern- ment. Every free man under Canute II and Edward the Confes- sor must be a member of a hundred and of a tything. Ten similar gylds formed a hundred (Stubbs). Under the Prankish law there was the decanus and the centenarius. Under the Mero- vingians it was likewise obligatory that every free man should be present at the assemblies, especially of centuries; fines were imposed for absence. In time of war the Germanic peoples, when no other bond united them, formed in families, and in companies under chiefs. These German chiefs had their comites.

Thus, when new groupings are formed no longer tending to be genetic, these new internal divisions correspond naturally to a larger extension of the frontiers.

[To be continued}