Wherever primitive man has been protected against foreign influences, as we have seen, he apparently always lives in monogamy. This mode of marriage is continued in the totemic age, and is the fundamental mode from which all others are deviations. These deviations we found to be the two forms of polygamy--polyandry and polygyny. In the presence of these various marriage practices, firmly established family bonds are impossible. Striking evidence of the recedence of the family as compared with the social bond, is offered by the men's club, that widely prevalent institution of the totemic age. True, the individual member of the men's club may have his own wife who lives in her particular hut, but there is no common life of husband and wife such as is essential for a true family. In certain cases, of course, marriage conditions approximate somewhat more closely to a true family life, yet the development is hindered by the overshadowing polygyny. But the beginning of the political age marks the rise of a new form of monogamy. The _enlarged monogamous family_, the so-called ancient or joint family, makes its appearance. The joint family, which is characteristic of the heroic era, takes the place of the clan. Though the latter also survives for a time, it more and more loses its importance and finally disappears altogether. Now the clan, as well as the joint family, is composed of individuals of the same ancestry--that is, of blood relations, in the wider sense--even though, in exceptional cases, it also includes members of other clans or even tribal strangers. The recedence of the clan in favour of the joint family must therefore be regarded as a process in which a limited number of closer blood relatives separate from the clan and gradually attain the dominant influence within society. Such a development presupposes first of all a sharper demarcation of the individual family. Hence the joint family directly impresses one as being an extension of the individual family. As a rule, for example, a joint family includes _three_ generations: father, son, and grandchild. This series of generations terminates with the third, because the oldest male member retains the authority over the joint family only so long as there is no generation younger than grandchildren. Though a great-grandfather is honoured as the oldest member of the family, the authority over the joint family passes down to the son who has become a grandfather. Moreover, nature allows such cases as this but rarely. The life-span of three generations is approximately a century; and the average life of man is such that it happens but seldom that those who are living at any one time will outspan a century. Thus, the fact that the ancient family comprised three generations may be due to the natural limit of life, which does not seem to have changed essentially since the beginnings of civilization. The family organization under discussion, therefore, is characterized, in the