Mr. Grote speaks of the gens as an extension of the family, and as presupposing its existence; treating the family as primary and the gens as secondary. This view, for the reasons stated, is untenable. The two organizations proceed upon different principles and are independent of each other. The gens embraces a part only of the descendants of a supposed common ancestor, and excludes the remainder; it also embraces a part only of a family, and excludes the remainder. In order to be a constituent of the gens, the family should enter entire within its folds, which was impossible in the archaic period, and constructive only in the later. In the organization of gentile society the gens is primary, forming both the basis and the unit of the system. The family also is primary, and older than the gens; the punaluan and the consanguine families having preceded it in the order of time; but it was not a member of the organic series in ancient society any more than it is in modern.
The gens existed in the Aryan family when the Latin, Grecian and Sanskrit speaking tribes were one people, as is shown by the presence in their dialects of the same term (gens, genos, and _ganas_) to express the organization. They derived it from their barbarous ancestors, and more remotely from their savage progenitors. If the Aryan family became differentiated as early as the Middle Period of barbarism, which seems probable, the gens must have been transmitted to them in its archaic form. After that event, and during the long periods of time which elapsed between the separation of these tribes from each other and the commencement of civilization, those changes in the constitution of the gens, which have been noticed hypothetically, must have occurred. It is impossible to conceive of the gens as appearing, for the first time, in any other than its archaic form; consequently the Grecian gens must have been originally in this form. If, then, causes can be found adequate to account for so great a change of descent as that from the female line to the male, the argument will be complete, although in the end it substituted a new body of kindred in the gens in place of the old. The growth of the idea of property, and the rise of monogamy, furnished motives sufficiently powerful to demand and obtain this change in order to bring children into the gens of their father, and into a participation in the inheritance of his estate. Monogamy assured the paternity of children, which was unknown when the gens was instituted, and the exclusion of children from the inheritance was no longer possible. In the face of the new circumstances, the gens would be forced into reconstruction or dissolution. When the gens of the Iroquois, as it appeared in the Lower Status of barbarism, is placed beside the gens of the Grecian tribes as it appeared in the Upper Status, it is impossible not to perceive that they are the same organization, the one in its archaic and the other in its ultimate form. The differences between them are precisely those which would have been forced upon the gens by the exigencies of human progress.