Note 80 — Chapter VII · VILLAGE LIFE AND LAND TENURE

The family-system has of course existed in regions other than Asia. "In most of the Greek states and in Rome," says Sir Henry Maine (Ancient Law, 4th ed., p. 128), "there long remained the vestiges of an ascending series of groups out of which the State was at first constituted.... The elementary group is the Family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant. The aggregation of Families forms the Gens or House. The aggregation of Houses makes the Tribe. The aggregation of Tribes constitutes the commonwealth." In another place (p. 126) he speaks of "the clearest indications that society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an aggregation of families. The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient society was the Family, of a modern society the individual." Had Maine been acquainted with the details of the social organisation of the Chinese he would have found a copious source from which to draw illustrations of his thesis, and would have perceived that the family-unit system is not yet to be spoken of as a vanished phase of social development.