“It is not during life only, that a man looks for the service of his sons. It is his consolation in declining years, to think that they will continue the performance of the prescribed rites in the hall of ancestors, and at the family tombs, when he is no more: and it is the absence of this prospect which makes the childless doubly miserable. The superstition derives influence from the importance attached by the government to this species of posthumous duty: a neglect of which is punishable, as we have seen, by the laws. Indeed, of all the subjects of their care, there are none which the Chinese so religiously attend to as the tombs of their ancestors, conceiving that any neglect is sure to be followed by worldly misfortune.”—(The Chinese, by John Francis Davis, chap. ix, pp. 131-134. ed. Knight, 1840.) Mr. Mill notices the same state of feeling among the Hindoos.—(History of British India, book ii, chap. vii. p. 381, ed. 8vo.) [89] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 8; Herodot. i, 147; Suidas, Ἀπατουρία—Ζεὺς Φράτριος—Ἀθηναία φρατρία, the presiding god of the phratric union.—Plato, Euthydem. c. 28, p. 302; Demosth. adv. Makart. p. 1054. See Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 11-14. The πάτριαι at Byzantium, which were different from θίασοι, and which possessed corporate property (τά τε θιασωτικὰ καὶ τὰ πατριωτικὰ, Aristot. Œconomic. ii, 4), are doubtless the parallel of the Athenian phratries. Such were the manifestations of Grecian sociality, as we read them in the early constitution, not merely of Attica, but of other Grecian states besides. To Aristotle and Dikæarchus, it was an interesting inquiry to trace back all political society into certain assumed elementary atoms, and to show by what motives and means the original families, each having its separate meal-bin and fireplace,[90] had been brought together into larger aggregates. But the historian must accept as an ultimate fact the earliest state of things which his witnesses make known to him; and in the case now before us, the gentile and phratric unions are matters into the beginning of which we cannot pretend to penetrate. [90] Dikæarchus ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Πατρὰ; Aristot. Polit. i, 1, 6: Ὁμοσιπύος and ὁμοκάπνους are the old words cited by the latter from Charondas and Epimenidês.