Here again North America presents a wide and interesting field to the investigator, for it has within its extent many distinct governments, and these governments, so far as investigations have been carried, are found to belong to a type more primitive than any of the feudalities from which the civilized nations of the earth sprang, as shown by concurrently recorded history.
Yet in this history many facts have been discovered suggesting that feudalities themselves had an origin in something more primitive. In the study of the tribes of the world a multitude of sociologic institutions and customs have been discovered, and in reviewing the history of feudalities it is seen that many of their important elements are survivals from tribal society.
So important are these discoveries that all human history has to be rewritten, the whole philosophy of history reconstructed. Government does not begin in the ascendency of chieftains through prowess in war, but in the slow specialization of executive functions from communal associations based on kinship. Deliberative assemblies do not start in councils gathered by chieftains, but councils precede chieftaincies. Law does not begin in contract, but is the development of custom. Land tenure does not begin in grants from the monarch or the feudal lord, but a system of tenure in common by gentes or tribes is developed into a system of tenure in severalty. Evolution in society has not been from militancy to industrialism, but from organization based on kinship to organization based on property, and alongside of the specializations of the industries of peace the arts of war have been specialized.
So, one by one, the theories of metaphysical writers on sociology are overthrown, and the facts of history are taking their place, and the philosophy of history is being erected out of materials accumulating by objective studies of mankind