The Evolution of Human Government

70:5.1Ev­ery hu­man in­sti­tu­tion had a be­gin­ning, and civil gov­ern­ment is a prod­uct of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion just as much as are mar­riage, in­dus­try, and re­li­gion. From the early clans and prim­i­tive tribes there grad­u­ally de­vel­oped the suc­ces­sive or­ders of hu­man gov­ern­ment which have come and gone right on down to those forms of so­cial and civil reg­u­la­tion that char­ac­ter­ize the sec­ond third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

70:5.2With the grad­ual emer­gence of the fam­ily units the foun­da­tions of gov­ern­ment were es­tab­lished in the clan or­ga­ni­za­tion, the group­ing of con­san­guineous fam­i­lies. The first real gov­ern­men­tal body was the coun­cil of the el­ders. This reg­u­la­tive group was com­posed of old men who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in some ef­fi­cient man­ner. Wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence were early ap­pre­ci­ated even by bar­baric man, and there en­sued a long age of the dom­i­na­tion of the el­ders. This reign of the oli­garchy of age grad­u­ally grew into the pa­tri­ar­chal idea.

70:5.3In the early coun­cil of the el­ders there resided the po­ten­tial of all gov­ern­men­tal func­tions: ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial. When the coun­cil in­ter­preted the cur­rent mores, it was a court; when es­tab­lish­ing new modes of so­cial us­age, it was a leg­is­la­ture; to the ex­tent that such de­crees and en­act­ments were en­forced, it was the ex­ec­u­tive. The chair­man of the coun­cil was one of the fore­run­ners of the later tribal chief.

70:5.4Some tribes had fe­male coun­cils, and from time to time many tribes had women rulers. Cer­tain tribes of the red man pre­served the teach­ing of Ona­mo­na­lon­ton in fol­low­ing the unan­i­mous rule of the “coun­cil of seven.”

70:5.5It has been hard for man­kind to learn that nei­ther peace nor war can be run by a de­bat­ing so­ci­ety. The prim­i­tive “palavers” were sel­dom use­ful. The race early learned that an army com­manded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has al­ways been a king­maker.

70:5.6At first the war chiefs were cho­sen only for mil­i­tary ser­vice, and they would re­lin­quish some of their au­thor­ity dur­ing peace­times, when their du­ties were of a more so­cial na­ture. But grad­u­ally they be­gan to en­croach upon the peace in­ter­vals, tend­ing to con­tinue to rule from one war on through to the next. They of­ten saw to it that one war was not too long in fol­low­ing an­other. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

70:5.7In later times some chiefs were cho­sen for other than mil­i­tary ser­vice, be­ing se­lected be­cause of un­usual physique or out­stand­ing per­sonal abil­i­ties. The red men of­ten had two sets of chiefs—the sachems, or peace chiefs, and the hered­i­tary war chiefs. The peace rulers were also judges and teach­ers.

70:5.8Some early com­mu­ni­ties were ruled by med­i­cine men, who of­ten acted as chiefs. One man would act as priest, physi­cian, and chief ex­ec­u­tive. Quite of­ten the early royal in­signias had orig­i­nally been the sym­bols or em­blems of priestly dress.

70:5.9And it was by these steps that the ex­ec­u­tive branch of gov­ern­ment grad­u­ally came into ex­is­tence. The clan and tribal coun­cils con­tin­ued in an ad­vi­sory ca­pac­ity and as fore­run­ners of the later ap­pear­ing leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial branches. In Africa, to­day, all these forms of prim­i­tive gov­ern­ment are in ac­tual ex­is­tence among the var­i­ous tribes.