He considers himself the equal of all, and recognizes no authority above him. He chooses his chiefs as he will, and takes partin the administration of the interest of the community; as juror he decides the differences, the quarrels, and the crimes of hisfellows; as warrior, he never lays aside his arms, and by the clash of them signalizes the adoption of any importantresolution. His mode of life is barbarous in the sense, that he never thinks of providing for the refined wants begotten bycivilization; but he brings into active use, and so develops all the faculties of man; strength of body first, then will, foresight,reflection. The modem peasant is lazy; he is overwhelmed by the powerful hierarchies, political, judicial, administrative, andecclesiastical, which tower above him; he is not his own master, he is an appanage of society, which disposes of him as of itsother property. He is seized by the state for its brigades; he trembles before his pastor, or the rural guard; on all sides areauthorities, which command him and which he must obey, seeing that they arrange all the strength of the nation so as toenforce his obedience. Modern societies possess a collective power incomparably greater than that of primitive societies; butin the latter, when they escaped conquest, the individual was endowed with far superior energy.
The dwelling-house of the freeman is called in the Latin of ancient documents curtis , hoba , mansus , and in the Germandialects hof , hube , tompt , bool . The undivided portion of amble land appendant to it was commonly designated by the term pflug , or plough, being the extent that could be tilled with a single plough. As this portion was destined to supply the wantsof a family, it was larger in extent according as the land was less fertile. Thus in the region of the Rhine and the Lahn, it was30 morgen (the morgen being rather more than half, or about six-tenths of an acre); in the neighbourhood of Trèves 15 morgen , in Odenwald 40, and in Eifel 160. The whole parcel was also called mannwerk , or that which a man tills for hissupport.
The passage in which Tacitus says of the Germans, colunt discreti ac diversi ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit , led to thebelief that they dwelt in isolated houses in the midst of fields belonging to them, whereas in the Roman empire theinhabitants arranged their dwellings side by side, in villages. At the present day, however, it is generally allowed that theGermans also grouped their houses together, but surrounded each with an orchard or garden. (23) Isolated farms are hardly tobe met with in Germany, except in the north-west, and there they are of recent origin. Everywhere else the houses arecollected in a group occupying the centre of the domain. The village, called boel , by in the north, dorf , torf in the centre andthe south, was surrounded by an inclosure, often a quickset hedge, with self-closing, gates, such as one commonly sees onthe upper pastures of Switzerland. The Saxon villages of Transylvania maintain the same arrangement to the present day.
In Germany, as in Russia or India, the village community was based on family relations due to a common origin. Like theScotch clan, or Roman gens , the inhabitants of the dorf preserved the tradition of descent from a common ancestor. Innorthern Scandinavia, where Danish savants have found so many traces of primitive agrarian organization, the land wasoriginally cultivated by groups, the name of which indicates the most intimate relation: they are called skulldalid and frandalid , associations of friends. Members of the mark community bear the name of Markgenossen , Cummarchani , or Beerbten ; this last name is significant, it means those who take part in the inheritance. The free citizen was never disinherited ; he had an indestructible right to a proportional part of the common patrimony. The ancient family group, whichconstituted the social unit among nomadic nations, was preserved after the tribe had settled on the soil to devote itself toagriculture. As a result, the community exercised a right of eminent domain, even over what was private property. No onecould sell his property to a stranger without the consent of his associates, who always had a right of preemption. (24) Theportion of the common land reserved for the pasturage of cattle was the mark or marke , marca in the Latin of the middleages. As pasture composed far the greater part of the territory, this term was applied also to the whole mass of amble land,waste or forest. When a tribe occupied a valley, it was the whole of this that constituted the mark. Countries, too, wherecolonies were formed, on the berders of the German territory, were also called marken . Thus Austria and Carinthia were marken . This is the origin of the title marquis , the markgraf or chief of the mark. The word gau had nearly the same importas mark; it is found as a termination in the names of a great number of districts, whose chiefs were Gaugrafen , or counts ofthe gau .
The limits of the mark were indicated by stones, stakes or trees planted with great ceremony. According to a strangecustom, still maintained in Bavaria and the Palatinate, children were brought as witnesses, and were beaten, that therecollection of this act impressing itself upon their minds in a lasting manner, they might at a later time be able to giveevidence of it. (25) Once or twice in the year the inhabitants of the mark, or markgenossen ( commarchani ), assemble andsolemnly visit the boundaries of the mark, and restore them when they have been removed or displaced. This visit, made onhorseback, assumed in later days a religious character. A procession went round the fields, which were blessed by the priest;altars were erected near the boundary-stones; the monstrance was placed upon them, and mass said. The ancient custom of aheathen age survived, but assumed an entirely different form. The fate of many mythological traditions was the same.
