we find the communal rotation of the crops; with the Indian stem of the Wyandots we have the periodical redistribution of land within the tribe, and the clan-culture of the soil; and in all those parts of Sumatra where Moslem institutions have not yet totally destroyed the old organization we find the joint family (suka) and the village community (kota) which maintains its right upon the land, even if part of it has been cleared without its authorization.(41) But to say this, is to say that all customs for mutual protection and prevention of feuds and wars, which have been briefly indicated in the preceding pages as characteristic of the village community, exist as well.  More than that:  the more fully the communal possession of land has been maintained, the better and the gentler are the habits.  De Stuers positively affirms that wherever the institution of the village community has been less encroached upon by the conquerors, the inequalities of fortunes are smaller, and the very prescriptions of the lex talionis are less cruel; while, on the contrary, wherever the village community has been totally broken up, “the inhabitants suffer the most unbearable oppression from their despotic rulers."(42) This is quite natural.  And when Waitz made the remark that those stems which have maintained their tribal confederations stand on a higher level of development and have a richer literature than those stems which have forfeited the old bonds of union, he only pointed out what might have been foretold in advance.

More illustrations would simply involve me in tedious repetitions—­so strikingly similar are the barbarian societies under all climates and amidst all races.  The same process of evolution has been going on in mankind with a wonderful similarity.  When the clan organization, assailed as it was from within by the separate family, and from without by the dismemberment of the migrating clans and the necessity of taking in strangers of different descent—­the village community, based upon a territorial conception, came into existence.  This new institution, which had naturally grown out of the preceding one—­ the clan—­permitted the barbarians to pass through a most disturbed period of history without being broken into isolated families which would have succumbed in the struggle for life.  New forms of culture developed under the new organization; agriculture attained the stage which it hardly has surpassed until now with the great number; the domestic industries reached a high degree of perfection.  The wilderness was conquered, it was intersected by roads, dotted with swarms thrown off by the mother-communities.  Markets and fortified centres, as well as places of public worship, were erected.  The conceptions of a wider union, extended to whole stems and to several stems of various origin, were slowly elaborated.  The old conceptions of justice which were conceptions of mere revenge, slowly underwent a deep modification—­the idea of amends for the wrong done taking the place