For another aspect of the group take Cæsar's description of landholding among the Germans:
"No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups (gentibus cognationibusque hominum) and to those (other groups) who live together." (De Bell. Gall., VI., 22.)
Of the Greeks, our intellectual ancestors, as well as fellow Aryans, it is stated that in Attica, even to a late period, the land remained to a large degree in possession of ideal persons, gods, phylæ (tribes) or phratries, kinships, political communities. Even when the superficies of the land might be regarded as private, mines were reserved as public.[3] The basis on which these kinship groups rested is thus stated by Grote:[4]
"All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and tendencies of the Grecian mind—a coalescence of the idea of worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed." "The god or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor to whom they owed their origin."
Coulanges gives a similar statement as to the ancient family group:[5]
"The members of the ancient family were united by something more powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused the family to form a single body both in this life and in the next."
Finally, the following passage on clanship among the Kafirs brings out two points: (1) That such a group life implies feelings and ideas of a distinctive sort; and (2) that it has a strength rooted in the very necessities of life.
"A Kafir feels that the 'frame that binds him in' extends to the clan. The sense of solidarity of the family in Europe is thin and feeble compared to the full-blooded sense of corporate union of the Kafir clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the rights of the individual. The system of tribal solidarity, which has worked so well in its smoothness that it might satisfy the utmost dreams of the socialist, is a standing proof of the sense of corporate union of the clan. In olden days a man did not have any feeling of personal injury when a chief made him work for white men and then told him to give all, or nearly all of his wages to his chief; the money was kept within the clan, and what was the good of the clan was the good of the individual and vice versa. The striking thing about this unity of the clan is that it was not a thought-out plan imposed from without by legislation upon an unwilling people, but it was a felt-out plan which arose spontaneously along the line of least resistance. If one member of the clan suffered, all the members suffered, not in sentimental phraseology, but in real fact." (Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, pp. 74 f.)
The above passages refer to Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian, and Kafir peoples. They could be matched by similar statements concerning nearly every people. They suggest a way of living, and a view of life very different from that of the American or of most Europeans.[6] The American or European belongs to groups of various kinds, but he "joins" most of them. He of course is born into a family, but he does not stay in it all his life unless he pleases. And he may choose his own occupation, residence, wife, political party, religion, social club, or even national allegiance. He may own or sell his own house, give or bequeath his property, and is responsible generally speaking for no one's acts but his own. This makes him an "individual" in a much fuller sense than he would be if all these relations were settled for him. On the other hand, the member of such groups as are referred to in our examples above, has all, or nearly all, his relations fixed when he is born into a certain clan or family group. This settles his occupation, dwelling, gods, and politics. If it doesn't decide upon his wife, it at least usually fixes the group from which she must be taken. His conditions, in the words of Maine, are thus of "status," not of "contract." This makes a vast difference in his whole attitude. It will help to bring out more clearly by contrast the character of present morality, as well as to see moral life in the making, if we examine more carefully this group life. We shall find, as brought out in the passages already quoted, that the most important type of group is at once a kindred or family, an economic, a political, a religious, and a moral unit. First, however, we notice briefly the most important types of groups.