CHIEFS AND KINGS
At the outset the principle of efficiency was the sole principle of organisation, but evidently supremacy which depends exclusively on personal attributes is but transitory. Only when the chief's place is forthwith filled by one whose claim is admitted does there begin a differentiation which survives through successive generations. The custom of reckoning descent through females, it may be noted, is less favourable to the establishment of permanent political headship than is the system of kinship through males, which conduces to a more coherent family, to a greater culture of subordination and to a more probable union of inherited position and inherited capacity. In sundry semi-civilised societies distinguished by permanent political headships, inheritance through males has been established in the ruling house while inheritance through females survives in the society at large. Descent through males also fosters ancestor-worship, and the consequent reinforcing of natural authority by supernatural authority—a very powerful factor. Development of the ghost theory, leading as it does to special fear of the ghosts of powerful men, until, where many tribes have been welded together by a conqueror, his ghost acquires in tradition the pre-eminence of a god, produces two effects. In the first place his descendant is supposed to partake of his divine nature; and in the second place, by propitiatory sacrifices to him is supposed to obtain his aid.
From the evolution-standpoint we are enabled to discern the relative beneficence of institutions which, considered absolutely, are not beneficent; and we are taught to approve as temporary that which as permanent we abhor. The evidence shows that subjection to despots has been largely instrumental in advancing civilised life.
COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS
An examination of fact shows that where groups of the patriarchal type fall into regions permitting considerable growths of population, but having physical structures which impede the centralisation of power, compound political heads will arise and for a time sustain themselves through co-operation of the two factors, independence of local groups, and need for union in war. Thus, as Mommsen says, primitive Rome was rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. Not only do conditions determine the various forms which compound heads assume, but conditions determine the various changes they undergo. They may be narrowed by militancy, or they may be widened by industrialism.
CONSULTATIVE BODIES
The council of war is the germ out of which the consultative body arises. Within the warrior class, which was of necessity the land-owning class, war produces increasing differences of wealth, as well as increasing differences of status; so that military leaders come to be distinguished as large landowners and local rulers. Hence members of a consultative body become contrasted with the freemen at large—not only as leading warriors are contrasted with their followers, but still more as men of wealth and authority. If the king attains or acquires the reputation of supernatural descent or authority, and the law of hereditary succession is so settled as to exclude election, those who might otherwise have formed a consultative body having co-ordinate power become simply appointed advisers. But if the king has not the prestige of supposed sacred origin or commission the consultative body retains power; and if the king continues to be elected it is liable to become an oligarchy.
REPRESENTATIVE BODIES