not, _each of you individually_, but _each and every man_ of your kin, cognation or mǽgsceaft, shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship: from which we must infer that the misconduct of one person might compromise his relatives, who are held responsible for his actions[445]. And this rule, coupled with the fact of all serving together, under one selected from among themselves, and each under the eye of his nearest and dearest friends, supplied a military organization capable of enabling the _barbarians_ to cope with far more disciplined and scientific military systems than their own; serving to explain the almost irresistible power with which, like the Turks of more recent times, the Teutons of old burst upon the nations exposed to their onset[446]. The wergyld, or price of blood, the earliest institution of this race, only becomes perfectly intelligible when considered from this point of view: the _gens_ or family at large are injured by the loss of their associate, and to them compensation must be made; so they, in turn, must make compensation for him, since rights and duties are commensurate. This principle, however darkly, is still involved in the theory of our civil actions for seduction. ----- Footnote 445: See the remarkable passage cited at p. 188, note 1. Footnote 446: Weight and momentum combined are the secret of modern tactics, and _morally speaking_ (i. e. the appearance in superior force on certain points), of modern strategics also. Cavalry charging in successive echelons would always break infantry but for the check which man and horse experience in their speed from the file-firing of the squares: the mere weight of the horse _falling dead into the first rank_ would break it if he reached it. If the weight of the advancing body be greater than that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. A successful charge of cavalry won the battle of Marengo, an unsuccessful one lost that of Waterloo. Modern warfare was more changed by the substitution of iron for wooden ramrods, by which the momentum of musket-balls was increased, than by almost any other mere change of detail. Steam-carriages and scythe-chariots, the Macedonian phalanx—nay, even squadrons of horse, are only _larger bullets_, which may be launched with more or less success: all these are mechanical discoveries consequent upon the fact that the individuals of which armies are composed are lower in the scale of moral dignity than of old. Once group men in masses, and they become subject, more or less, according as discipline has destroyed their individuality, to the mechanical laws which govern the relations of all masses. No doubt a stone wall will turn any charge of cavalry; and so will a regiment of infantry, in exact proportion as you teach it to stand like a stone wall, that is, as you destroy the individual action of each soldier. The Romans stood above two feet apart; our men touch each other at the