Individuals were born under status and must submit to whatever was customary in the rule of the family or tribe. There was no law other than custom to determine the relation of individuals to one another. Each must abide in the sphere of activity into which he was born. He could not rise above it, but must submit to the arbitrary rule of traditional usage. The only position an individual had was in the family, and he must observe what custom had taught. This made family life arbitrary and conventional. _The Earliest Form of Social Order_.--The family is sometimes called the unit of society. The best historical records of the family are found in the Aryan people, such as the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons. Outside of this there are many historical references to the Aryans in their primitive home in Asia, and the story of the Hebrew people, a branch of the Semitic race, shows many phases of tribal and family life. The ancient family differed from the modern in organization and composition. The first historical family was the patriarchal, by which we mean a family group in which descent was traced in the male line, and in which authority was vested in the eldest living male inhabitant. It is held by some that this is the original family type, and that the forms which we find among savage races are degenerate forms of the above. Some have {112} advocated that the patriarchal family was the developed form of the family, and only occurred after a long evolution through states of promiscuity, polygamy, and polyandry. There is much evidence that the latter assumption is true. But there is evidence that the patriarchal family was the first political unit of all the Aryan races, and also of the Semitic as well, and that monogamic marriage was developed in these ancient societies so far as historical evidence can determine. The ancient Aryans in their old home, those who came into India, Greece, Rome, and the northern countries of Europe, whether Celt or Teuton, all give evidence of the permanency of early family organization.