starting-point, in which those who are connected by natural community of
blood form the original body within whose circle the artificial members
are admitted. A group of mankind thus formed is something quite
different from a fortuitious concurrence of atoms. Three or four
brothers by blood, with a fourth or fifth man whom they agree to look on
as filling in every thing the same place as a brother by blood, form a
group which is quite unlike a union of four or five men, none of whom is
bound by any tie of blood to any of the others. In the latter kind of
union the notion of kindred does not come in at all. In the former kind
the notion of kindred is the groundwork of every thing; it determines
the character of every relation and every action, even though the
kindred between some members of the society and others may be owing to a
legal fiction and not to natural descent. All that we know of the growth
of tribes, races, nations, leads us to believe that they grew in this
way. Natural kindred was the groundwork, the leading and determining
idea; but, by one of those legal fictions which have had such an
influence on all institutions, adoption was in certain cases allowed to
count as natural kindred.[3]

The usage of all languages shows that community of blood was the leading
idea in forming the greater and smaller groups of mankind. Words like
[Greek: phylon, genos], _gens_, _natio_, _kin_, all point to the natural
family as the origin of all society. The family in the narrower sense,
the children of one father in one house, grew into a more extended
family, the _gens_. Such were the Alkmaiônidai, the Julii, or the
Scyldingas, the real or artificial descendants of a real or supposed
forefather. The nature of the _gens_ has been set forth often enough. If
it is a mistake to fancy that every Julius or Cornelius was the natural
kinsman of every other Julius or Cornelius, it is equally a mistake to
think that the _gens Julia_ or _Cornelia_ was in its origin a mere