Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/102

men of the earliest prehistoric ages were social beings and lived in tribes, as monkeys and numerous other gregarious animals do to this day. Each band had its leader, who guided and defended it, and without doubt was the strongest individual of the tribe. In the early dawn of civilization whose reflection rests upon the most ancient portions of the Bible, the Vedas, and the sacred books of the Chinese, the family was the foundation of society, and the patriarch the natural ruler, judge and adviser of his family and descendants. As men increased in number the families grew until they became tribes. The father of the family was succeeded by the chief who ruled the tribe; whose authority was founded upon the fiction that all the members of the tribe were of his blood―a fiction which is even at the present day, the foundation of the clan attachments and customs of the Scotch—and partly upon the more tangible and reliable grounds, upon which herds of cattle select their leaders, that is upon his superiority, which might be due to either greater physical force or energy, or to the possession of greater wealth in flocks, pastures, implements or servants. In this phase the difference in rank between ruler and ruled is comparatively slight, and the sources of pre-eminence are apparent to everyone. He is obeyed by his son from motives of affection and respect, by the weak,, because he is strong and inspires fear, and by the poor from hope of gain, because he is rich. The right to inherit this pre-eminence was hardly recognized at this period. The actual possession of the means of power, sufficed theoretically and practically to show his right to it. No supernatural element had entered into these simple relations to complicate them; he ruled because he had the power, and the tribe obeyed because they chose or were obliged to. As civilization developed however, the leader found it necessary to