and Australia, and of the American aborigines.

The gens has passed through successive stages of development in its
transition from its archaic to its final form with the progress of
mankind. These changes were limited in the main to two, firstly,
changing descent from the female line, which was the archaic rule,
as among the Iroquois, to the male line, which was the final rule,
as among the Grecian and Roman gentes; and, secondly, changing the
inheritance of the property of a deceased member of the gens from
his gentiles, who took it in the archaic period, first to his
agnatic kindred, and finally to his children. These changes, slight
as they may seem, indicate very great changes of condition as well
as a large degree of progressive development.

The gentile organization, originating in the period of savagery,
enduring through the three subperiods of barbarism, finally gave way,
among the more advanced tribes, when they attained civilization--the
requirements of which it was unable to meet. Among the Greeks and
Romans political society supervened upon gentile society, but not
until civilization had commenced. The township (and its equivalent,
the city ward), with its fixed property, and the inhabitants it
contained, organized as a body politic, became the unit and the
basis of a new and radically different system of government. After
political society was instituted this ancient and time-honored
organization, with the phratry and tribe developed from it,
gradually yielded up their existence. It was under gentile
institutions that barbarism was won by some of the tribes of mankind
while in savagery, and that civilization was won by the descendants
of some of the same tribes while in barbarism. Gentile institutions
carried a portion of mankind from savagery to civilization.