Among a race in the extreme north, and under physical conditions entirely different from those of Italy, we find familycommunities with identically the same characteristics; a manifest proof that habits are not fashioned by climate. TheEsquimaux of North America and of Greenland live in very large buildings which contain several families,often as many asten. Each individual is absolute owner of his arms and .implements, but even the quantity of them is limited by custom; whilethe boats, sledges, dogs and provisions belong to the whole community, as also does the hunting-ground; generally, too, theproduce of fishing is divided among all. (1)Family communities also existed in Germany under the name of cognationes , magechaften , konne , geschlechter , and werelong maintained there. (2) They cultivated their domain for the common profit, formed an association for common defence( qesammt-gewere ), and lived at the common expense, in einer cost ungetheilt , à un pot et à un pain .The right ofinheritance was based not upon ties of blood, but upon the life in common, and only applied to relations living in community( kinder in der were ), whether collaterals or even strangers admitted by adoption. These communities were maintained underthe feudal system, and did not disappear till after the Thirty Years War. A remnant of them survived in the custom whichforbade the head of a family to alienate its property, or even to change the nature of the land by clearing, planting orotherwise, without the consent of the kinsmen. In Chapter IX. we saw that these family communities existed alike among thetribes of America and the Semitic races in Africa, and that they still survive in Russia, although since the abolition of serfagethe spirit of individualism has been rapidly destroying them.
The more or less absolute exclusion of females from the inheritance is a proof of the existence of family communities, whichafford the best explanation of the fact. M. Fustel de Coulanges ( La cité antique , Liv. II,. c. vii. ?2) thinks that the reason forthis exclusion is the incapacity of females to perform the sacrifices. But among the Germans, under the feudal law, and alsoamong the Mussulmans, females only succeed in a more or less limited degree; and among these nations the ancient sacrificedid not exist. Everywhere where we find family communities, alike in France in the middle ages or in Modem Servia, thedaughters are excluded from the succession. As in the Laws of Manu, (3) and as at Athens, they are only entitled to a marriageportion. The reason of this exclusion is manifest. The whole social order is based on the families, which have to preserveintact the patrimony from which they derive their support. if females inherited, seeing that by marriage they pass into anotherfamily, they would, by claiming their share, effect the dismemberment of the joint domain, and the consequent destruction ofthe family corporation. When we find the same custom, the exclusion of females from the succession, existing in Slavoniccountries, in German countries within the pale of Christianity, and also in India, and pagan Greece and Rome, we are boundto seek its origin in some motive economic rather than religious; and this motive is the preservation of the gens, thepatriarchal family, based upon the indivisibility of the family property, a system which everywhere succeeded that of thevillage community.
"After the death of the father, the sons shall divide the inheritance," says the code of Manu. At Athens daughters do notinherit. (4) Solon decides "that division shall be made among the sons." (Isaeus, vi. 25.) At Rome the principle appeared, butin a modified form: the married daughter was excluded from the succession, and the unmarried woman could bequeathnothing except with the consent of the agnates, in whose guardianship she was. In the codes of German origin, females donot inherit land, except in default of male heirs: De terra salica in mulierem nulla portio haereditatis transit ( Lex Salic , Tit.
62, c. 6). The oldest manuscripts do not contain the adjective salica . Females were therefore excluded absolutely fromsuccession to land. (5)
