INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 417
another, in regions which might even be far distant from one another and not bound together in any way; just as one may be the proprietor of lands which are not contiguous. The true hier- archical bond which set limits to social forces was the feudal con- tract ; general frontiers and particular subdivisions were only the verification of these relations. These frontiers and these divisions of sovereignty, like those of property, took account, and were obliged to take account, of mountains, or rivers, or streams, only in so far as these coincided, to a greater or less degree, with kingdoms, principalities, or seigneurial domains; just as, in the case of present titles to property, one indicates its boundaries, which may be in a given case a stream, but which may also cross it.
It is no more astonishing to see the continuous changes of frontiers in the Germanic west, beginning with the sixth century, than it is to observe those which occur in private domains at all times. Political sovereignty always tends to approach economic sovereignty. At this time the latter rested upon the ownership of the soil. In 511 the four sons of Clovis divided the Prankish Empire among themselves as a hereditary domain. Aquitaine was made the subject of a special division among them, on account of the superior richness of its products. Likewise in 561, at the death of Clotaire the First, who had again become sole master of the empire, and had increased his patrimony by the addition of Burgundy and Provence, the inheritance was divided among his four sons. In this partition they took account of the value of the divisions, and not of their extent or geographical limits, which were secondary matters. One portion comprised all the south and west of present France (except Bretagne), with the basins of the Garonne, the Loire, and the Seine; another, the north and the west, with the whole basin of the Scheldt ; the third, the basin of the Rhone; the last, those of the Meuse and the Rhine. These boundaries changed as the result of new deaths and partitions. The unity re-established in 613 was again broken up to make place, in 634, for two distinct kingdoms, the one of Austrasia, the other of Burgundy and Neustria. Each of the two kings, says Fredegarius, obtained "an equal number of subjects, and equal
