time more highly organized divisions than prevailed in the natural tribal organization of the preceding age. In two distinct directions does the decimal system prove readily applicable. One is in the distribution of landed property. With the appearance of plough-culture, land gradually came to be largely converted into personal property. It was all the more necessary, therefore, for the individual to unite with others for the sake of protection and aid. Thus arose the mark-community. This naturally centred about that part of the territory which, because it was not put under the plough but was reserved for common use as well as common care, temporarily remained common property--namely, the pasture and woodland. Thus, the _mark-community_ was inevitable: it resulted from the new method of cultivating the soil, which brought with it a combination of personal property with common ownership. The size of the community was, of course, determined by the relation which these two forms of ownership sustained to each other, being dependent upon the fact that the amount of common property had to correspond with the number of individual owners who shared its use. The right proportion of these two sorts of property could be determined only by experience and reflection. Once ascertained, it was but natural to adopt this proportion more generally, in connection with more extensive groups of people. Here the decimal organization into groups of tens and hundreds, to which subjective influences naturally tended, promised to be convenient also from the standpoint of objective conditions.