Some of the institutions essential to the great aim of establishing civil society at the least possible sacrifice of individual freedom—such as the _Wergild_, the _Frank pledge_, etc.—will be investigated in their proper places: they seem to offer a nearly perfect guarantee for society at an early period. But for the present we must confine ourselves to the subject of personal rank: and as the centre and groundwork of the whole Teutonic scheme is the individual freeman, it is with him that we must commence our investigation. The natural divisions into which all human society must be distributed, with respect to the beings that form it, are the _Free_ and the _Unfree_[208], those who can protect themselves and those who must be in the protection of others. Even in the family this distinction must be found, and the wife and son are unfree in relation to the husband and the father; they are in his _mund_. From this mund the son indeed may be emancipated, but not the wife or daughter: these can only change it; the wife by the act of God, namely the death of the husband; the daughter by marriage. In both cases the mund passes over into other hands[209]. ----- Footnote 208: “Summa itaque divisio personarum hæc est, quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt aut servi.” Fleta, bk. i. cap. 1. “Est autem libertas, naturalis facultas ejus, quod cuique facere libet, nisi quod de jure aut vi prohibetur.” Ibid. cap. 2. Footnote 209: See Fleta, bk. i. cap. 5, 6, 7, 9. ----- Originally the Freeman is he who possesses at least as much land as, being tilled, will feed him, strength and skill to labour, and arms to defend his possession. Married to one free woman who shares his toils, soothes his cares, and orders his household, he becomes the founder of the family—the first unit in the state: the son who springs from this marriage, completes the family, and centres in himself the blood, the civil rights and the affections of his two progenitors. It is thus, through the son, that the family becomes the foundation of the state[210]. ----- Footnote 210: It is probably in this sense that the Hindu Institutes assert, “Then only is a man perfect when he consists of three persons united, his wife, himself, and his son.” Manu, ch. ix. 45. -----