The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American, and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry, and tribe, the Roman gens, _curia_, and tribe find their analogues in the gens, phratry, and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish _sept_, the Scottish _clan_, the _phrara_ of the Albanians, and the Sanskrit _ganas_, without extending the comparison further are the same as the American-Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan. As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization.... Gentile society wherever found is the same in structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people. These changes give the history of the development of the same original conceptions.[81] [81] _Ancient Society_, pp. 62, 63. Early society, as observed under gentile institutions, was established on purely personal and social relations, or, on the basis of the relations of the individual to the rest of the community, a community in which each member could trace her or his origin back to the head of the gens who was a woman. Under gentile institutions, or until the latter stage of barbarism was reached, each individual, female and male, constituted a unit in an aggregation or community whose interests were identical, and as such, to a certain extent, was held responsible for the safety and general welfare of every member composing the group. Extreme egoism, as it is the outgrowth of a later age, was unknown; and sympathy, the chief promoter of the well-being of mankind, a sprout from the well-established root, maternal affection, was the predominant characteristic of these primitive groups and the bond which held society together. Although the manner of reckoning descent had been changed from the female to the male line, the purely social organization of the gens, on the basis of kin, was, as has been observed, in operation at the beginning of our present civilization, at which time political society supervened, and individuals were no longer recognized through their relations to a gens or tribe, but through their relations to the state, county, township, or deme, to which institutions they must henceforward look for protection and for the redress of injuries done either to person or property.