collectively, toward that wherein the interests of all, while becoming more distinct individually, shall be merged in the general interests of the whole and become identical therewith. Mr. Maine says, in his “Ancient Law,” that “society in ancient times was not what it is assumed to be at present—a collection of individuals. In fact, and in view of the men that composed it, it was an aggregation of families. The contrast may be best and most forcibly expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient society was the family; of a modern society, the individual.” In speaking of ancient society, Mr. Fiske says: “Family government excluded not only individual independence but also State supremacy; and that vestiges of a time when there were no aggregates of men more extensive than the family may be found in every part of the world, when social organization was but one step removed from absolute and ferocious anarchy;” and this he defines as a social aggregate of the first order; the coalescence of families into civic communities an aggregate of the second order; the coalescence of civic and tribual communities into the nation an aggregate of the third order. The coalescence of nations would then describe an aggregate of the fourth order. Under these four orders all the forms of government which can ever exist in the world must be classified. As low a form of government as can be conceived as existing next above that of the family, worthy to be called human government, still exists among the barbarians inhabiting some portions of Central Africa, some of the East India Islands, and perhaps some of the South Sea Islands. These people unite in bands or tribes, and rove about seeking the means of subsistence and endeavoring to conquer other tribes. Some have central points of rendezvous, where the rudest habitations are constructed, in which the women and children remain during the absence of the men. The women almost universally are considered very much in the light of slaves by all these nomadic tribes, and as only fit to minister to their passions and to perform their drudgery. Their language is as rude as their habits, consisting of little more than a comparatively few spasmodically uttered harsh sounds. Written language they have none, excepting perhaps some images or rude figures symbolizing some special event they in this way attempt to commemorate, and which may be considered as the foundation of it for the tribes using them as they were the primary foundation of all written language.