SOCIETY.
Social Stages, 401—Family, 402—Morals of Lower Races,
405—Public Opinion and Custom, 408—Moral Progress,
410—Vengeance and Justice, 414—War, 418—Property,
419—Legal Ceremonies, 423—Family Power and Responsibility,
426—Patriarchal and Military Chiefs, 428—Nations, 432—Social
Ranks, 434—Government, 436.
In the reports of crimes which appear daily in the newspapers of our
civilized land, such phrases often occur as _savage_ fury, _barbarous_
cruelty. These two words have come to mean in common talk such behaviour
as is most wild, rough, and cruel. Now no doubt the life of the less
civilized people of the world, the _savages_ and _barbarians_, is more
wild, rough, and cruel than ours is on the whole, but the difference
between us and them does not lie altogether in this. As the foregoing
chapters have proved, savage and barbarous tribes often more or less
fairly represent stages of culture through which our own ancestors passed
long ago, and their customs and laws often explain to us, in ways we
should otherwise have hardly guessed, the sense and reason of our own.
It should be understood that it is out of the question to give here even
a summary of the complicated systems of society: all that can be done is
to put before the reader some of its leading principles in ancient and
modern life.
Mankind can never have lived as a mere struggling crowd, each for
himself. Society is always made up of families or households bound
together by kindly ties, controlled by rules of marriage and the duties
of parent and child. Yet the forms of these rules and duties have been
very various. Marriages may be shifting and temporary pairing, or unions
where the husband may have several wives, and the wife several husbands.
It is often hard to understand the family group and its ties in the rude
and ancient world. Thus it seems to us a matter of course to reckon
family descent in the male line, and this is now put in the clearest
way by the son taking the father’s surname. But in lower stages of
civilization, on both sides of the globe, many tribes take the contrary
idea as a matter of course. In most Australian tribes the children belong
to the mother’s clan, not the father’s; so that in native wars father
and son constantly meet as natural enemies. Chiefship often goes down in
the royal mother’s line, as among the Natchez, who had their sun-temples
in what is now Louisiana. Yet this wide-spread law of female descent,
deep as it lies in the history of society, had been so lost sight of
among the ancient civilized nations, that when Herodotus noticed it
among the Lykians, who took their names from their mothers and traced
their pedigrees through the female branches only, the historian fancied
this was a peculiar custom, in which they were unlike all other people.
In the savage and barbaric world there prevails widely the rule called
by McLennan exogamy or marrying-out, which forbids a man to take a wife
of his own clan—an act which is considered criminal, and may even be
punished with death. It is a strange contrast to the popular idea that
savage life has no rules, when we find Australian tribes where every man
is bound to marry into the particular clan which is, so to speak, the
wife-clan to his own. Among the Iroquois of North America the children
took the clan-name or totem of the mother; so if she were of the Bear
clan, her son would be a Bear, and accordingly he might not marry a Bear
girl, but might take a Deer or Heron. Such laws appear also among higher
nations who reckon descent in the male line. Thus in India a Brahman is
not to marry a wife whose clan-name (her “cow-stall,” as they say) is the
same as his; nor may a Chinese take a wife of his own surname. Though the
family and tribe rules of the savage and barbaric world are too intricate
to be fully discussed here, there are some instructive points to which
attention should be called. Marriage is in early stages of society a
civil contract. Thus, among the wild hunting-tribes of Nicaragua, the
lad who wishes a girl for a wife kills a deer and lays it with a heap of
firewood at the door of her parents’ hut, which symbolic act is his offer
to hunt and do man’s work; if the gift is accepted, it is a marriage,
without further ceremony. Among peoples of higher culture more formal
promises and ceremonies come in, with feasts and gatherings of kinsfolk;
and then, as in other important matters of life, the priest is called in
to give divine blessing and sanction to the union. Where this is done, a
wedding has come to be very different from what it was in the rough times
of marriage by capture, such as might be seen in our own day among fierce
forest tribes in Brazil, where the warriors would make forays on distant
villages and by main force bring home wives. Ancient tradition knows this
practice well, as where the men of Benjamin carry off the daughters of
Shiloh dancing at the feast, and in the famous Roman tale of the rape
of the Sabines, a legend putting in historical form the wife-capture
which in Roman custom remained as a ceremony. What most clearly shows
what a recognised old-world custom it was, is its being thus kept up as
a formality where milder manners really prevail. It had passed into this
state among the Spartans, when Plutarch says that though the marriage
was really by friendly settlement between the families, the bridegroom’s
friends went through the pretence of carrying off the bride by violence.
Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where
the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off
the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride’s
people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except now and
then by accident, as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye, which
mischance seems to have put an end to this curious relic of antiquity.
It was one of the consequences of increase of property in the world,
that the practice of buying wives came in, as where a Zulu bargains with
a girl’s people to let him have her perhaps for five oxen or ten. This
was the custom in England among our barbaric forefathers, as appears in
the West-Saxon law of Ine—“If a man buy a wife,” &c. Cnut somewhat later
forbade the wife to be sold, but the husband might give something of his
own will. It is an interesting problem in the history of law how the
money once paid as the bride’s price passed into a gift or dower for her;
some provision of this kind became necessary when the widow was no longer
provided for by being taken, as she would have been in a ruder state of
society, as a wife by her husband’s brother.
Marriage has been here spoken of first, because upon it depends the
family, on which the whole framework of society is founded. What has been
said of the ruder kinds of family union among savages and barbarians
shows that there cannot be expected from them the excellence of those
well-ordered households to which civilized society owes so much of its
goodness and prosperity. Yet even among the rudest clans of men, unless
depraved by vice or misery and falling to pieces, a standard of family
morals is known and lived by. Their habits, judged by our notions, are
hard and coarse, yet the family tie of sympathy and common interest is
already formed, and the foundations of moral duty already laid, in the
mother’s patient tenderness, the father’s desperate valour in defence of
home, their daily care for the little ones, the affection of brothers
and sisters, and the mutual forbearance, helpfulness, and trust of all.
From the family this extends to a wider circle. The natural way in which
a tribe is formed is from a family or group, which in time increases and
divides into many households, still recognising one another as kindred,
and this kinship is so thoroughly felt to be the tie of the whole tribe,
that, even when there has been a mixture of tribes, a common ancestor is
often invented to make an imaginary bond of union. Thus _kindred_ and
_kindness_ go together—two words whose common derivation expresses in the
happiest way one of the main principles of social life.
Among the lessons to be learnt from the life of rude tribes is, how
society can go on without the policeman to keep order. It is plain
that even the lowest men cannot live quite by what the Germans call
“faustrecht,” or “fist-right,” and we call “club law.” The strong savage
does not rush into his weaker neighbour’s hut and take possession,
driving the owner out into the forest with a stone-headed javelin sent
flying after him. Without some control beyond the mere right of the
stronger, the tribe would break up in a week, whereas in fact savage
tribes last on for ages. Under favourable circumstances, where food
is not too scarce nor war too wasting, the life of low barbaric races
may be in its rude way good and happy. In the West Indian islands where
Columbus first landed, lived tribes who have been called the most
gentle and benevolent of the human race. Schomburgk, the traveller, who
knew the warlike Caribs well in their home life, draws a paradise-like
picture of their ways, where they have not been corrupted by the vices
of the white men; he saw among them peace and cheerfulness and simple
family affection, unvarnished friendship, and gratitude not less true
for not being spoken in sounding words; the civilized world, he says,
has not to teach them morality, for though they do not talk about it,
they live in it. At the other side of the world in New Guinea, Kops,
the Dutch explorer, gives much the same account of the Papuans of Dory,
who live in houses built on piles in the water, like the old lake-men
of Switzerland; he speaks of their mild disposition, their inclination
to right and justice, their strong moral principles, their respect for
the aged and love for their children, their living without fastenings to
their houses—for theft is considered by them a grave offence, and rarely
occurs. Among the rude non-Hindu tribes of India, English officials
have often recorded with wonder the kindliness and cheerfulness of
the rude men of the mountains and the jungle, and their utter honesty
in word and deed. Thus Sir Walter Elliot mentions a low poor tribe of
South India, whom the farmers employ to guard their fields, well knowing
that they would starve rather than steal the grain in their charge;
and they are so truthful that their word is taken at once in disputes
even with their richer neighbours, for people say “a Kurubar always
speaks the truth.” Of course these accounts of Caribs and Papuans show
them on the friendly side, while those who have fought with them call
them monsters of ferocity and treachery. But cruelty and cunning in
war seem to them right and praiseworthy; and what we are here looking
at is their home peace-life. It is clear that low barbarians may live
among themselves under a fairly high moral standard, and this is the
more instructive because it shows what may be called natural morality.
Among them religion, mostly concerned with propitiating souls of
ancestors and spirits of nature, has not the strong moral influence it
exerts among higher nations; indeed their behaviour to their fellows is
little affected by divine command or fear of divine punishment. It has
more to do with their life being prosperous or miserable. When want or
the miseries of war upset their well-being, they (like their betters)
become more brutal and selfish in their ways, and moral habits are
at all times low among the comfortless hordes of savages whose daily
struggle for existence is too harsh for the gentler feelings to thrive.
Moreover, there is this plain difference between low and high races of
men, that the dull-minded barbarian has not power of thought enough to
come up to the civilized man’s best moral standard. The wild man of the
forest, forgetful of yesterday and careless of to-morrow, lolling in his
hammock when his wants are satisfied, has little of the play of memory
and foresight which is ever unrolling before our minds the panorama of
our own past and future life, and even sets us in thought in the places
of our fellows, to partake of their lives and enter into their joys
and sorrows. Much of the wrong-doing of the world comes from want of
imagination. If the drunkard could see before him the misery of next
year with something of the vividness of the present craving, it would
overbalance it. Ofttimes in the hottest fury of anger, the sword has been
sheathed by him across whose mind has flashed the prophetic picture of
the women weeping round the blood-stained corpse. The lower races of
men are so wanting in foresight to resist passion and temptation, that
the moral balance of a tribe easily goes wrong, while they are rough and
wantonly cruel through want of intelligent sympathy with the sufferings
of others, much as children are cruel to animals through not being able
to imagine what the creatures feel. What we now know of savage life will
prevent our falling into the fancies of the philosophers of the last
century, who set up the “noble savage” as an actual model of virtue to be
imitated by civilized nations. But the reality is quite as instructive,
that the laws of virtue and happiness may be found at work in simple
forms among tribes who make hatchets of sharpened stones and rub sticks
together to kindle fire. Their life, seen at its best, shows with
unusual clearness the great principle of moral science, that morality
and happiness belong together—in fact that morality is the method of
happiness.
It must not be supposed that in any state of civilization a man’s
conduct depends altogether on his own moral sense of right and wrong.
Controlling forces of society are at work even among savages, only in
more rudimentary ways than among ourselves. Public opinion is already a
great power, and the way in which it acts is particularly to be noticed.
Whereas the individual man is too apt to look to his own personal
interest and the benefit of his near friends, these private motives
fall away when many minds come together, and public opinion with a
larger selfishness takes up the public good, encouraging the individual
to set aside his private wishes and give up his property or even his
life for the commonwealth. The assembled tribe can crush the mean and
cowardly with their scorn, or give that reward of glory for which the
high-spirited will risk goods and life. Travellers have remarked that the
women, however down-trodden, know how to make their influence felt in
this way, and many a warrior whose heart was failing him in face of the
enemy, has turned from flight when he thought of the girls’ mockery when
he should slink home to the village, safe but disgraced. This pressure
of public opinion compels men to act according to custom, which gives
the rule as to what is to be done or not done in most affairs of life.
Explorers of wild countries, not finding the machinery of police they are
accustomed to at home, have sometimes rashly concluded that the savages
lived unrestrained at their own free will. We have here already noticed
that this is a mistake, for life in the uncivilized world is fettered
at every turn by chains of custom. To a great extent it is evident that
customs have come into existence for the benefit of society, or what was
considered so. For instance, it is generally held right in wild countries
that hospitality shall be freely given to all comers, for every one knows
he may want it any day himself. But whether a custom is plainly useful
or not, and even when its purpose is no longer known, once established
as a custom it must be conformed to. Savages may have finger-joints cut
off, or undergo such long and severe fasts that many die; but often the
only reason they can give for inflicting such suffering on themselves is
that it was the custom of their ancestors. In some parts of Australia
custom forbade to the young hunters, and reserved for the old men, much
of the wild fowl and the best joints of the large game. No doubt this was
in some measure for the public benefit, as the experienced elders, who
were past the fatigue of hunting, were able to stay in camp, make nets
and weapons, teach the lads, and be the repositories of wisdom and the
honoured counsellors of the tribe. Nothing could prove more plainly how
far society is, even among such wild men of the desert, from being under
the mere sway of brute force.
Thus communities, however ancient and rude, always have their rules of
right and wrong. But as to what acts have been held right and wrong,
the student of history must avoid that error which the proverb calls
measuring other people’s corn by one’s own bushel. Not judging the
customs of nations at other stages of culture by his own modern standard,
he has to bring his knowledge to the help of his imagination, so as to
see institutions where they belong and as they work. Only thus can it
be made clear that the rules of good and bad, right and wrong, are not
fixed alike for all men at all times. For an example of this principle,
let us observe how people at different stages of civilization deal with
the aged. Some of the lower races take much care of their old folks even
after they are fallen into imbecility, treating them with almost gentle
considerateness and very commonly tending them till death, when respect
to the living ancestor passes into his worship as an ancestral spirit.
But among other tribes filial kindness breaks down earlier, as among
those fierce Brazilians who knock on the head with clubs the sick and
aged, and even eat them, whether they find their care too burdensome, or
whether they really think, as they say, that it is kind to end a life no
longer gladdened with fight and feast and dance. We realize the situation
among roving tribes. The horde must move in quest of game, the poor
failing creature cannot keep up in the march, the hunters and the heavily
laden women cannot carry him; he must be left behind. Many a traveller
has beheld in the desert such heartrending scenes as Catlin saw when he
said farewell to the white-haired old Puncah chief, all but blind and
shrunk to skin and bone, crouched shivering by a few burning sticks, for
his shelter a buffalo-hide set up on crutches, for his food a dish of
water and a few half-picked bones. This old warrior was abandoned at his
own wish when his tribe started for new hunting-grounds, even as years
before, he said, he had left his own father to die when he was no longer
good for anything. When a nation settled in the agricultural state has
reached something of wealth and comfort, there is no longer the excuse of
necessity for killing or abandoning the aged. Yet history shows how long
the practice was kept up even in Europe, partly with the humane intent
of putting an end to lingering misery, but more through the survival of
a custom inherited from harder and ruder times. The Wends in what is
now Germany practised the hideous rite of putting the aged and infirm
to death, cooking and eating them, much as Herodotus describes the old
Massagetæ as doing. In Sweden there used to be kept in the churches
certain clumsy wooden clubs, called “family-clubs,” of which some are
still preserved, and with which in ancient times the aged and hopelessly
sick were solemnly put to death by their kinsfolk. It is interesting
to trace in the old German records the change from such hard ancient
barbarism to gentler manners, when the infirm old house-father, dividing
his substance among his children, is to sit henceforth well cared for
in the “cat’s place” by the hearth. One of the marks of advancing
civilization was the growing sense of the sacredness of human life, even
apart from its use and pleasure, and under this feeling the cutting
short of even a burdensome and suffering existence, which our ancestors
resorted to without reproach, has come to be looked upon with horror.
It must be clearly understood also that the old-world rules of moral
conduct were not the same towards all men. A man knew his duty to his
neighbour, but all men were not his neighbours. This is very clearly seen
in the history of men’s ideas of manslaughter and theft. The slaying of
a man is scarcely held by the law of any people to be of itself a crime,
but on the contrary it has been regarded as an allowable or praiseworthy
act under certain conditions, especially in self-defence, war, revenge,
punishment, and sacrifice. Yet no known tribe, however low and ferocious,
has ever held that men may kill one another indiscriminately, for even
the savage society of the desert or the jungle would collapse under such
lawlessness. Thus all men acknowledge some law “thou shall not kill,”
but the question is how this law applies. It is instructive to see
how it works among those fierce tribes who approve the killing of men
simply as a proof of valour. Thus the young Sioux Indian, till he had
killed his man, was not allowed to stick the feather in his head-dress
and have the title of brave or warrior; he could scarcely get a girl to
marry him till he had “got the feather.” So the young Dayak of Borneo
could not get a wife till he had taken a head, and it was thus with the
skull or scalp which the Naga warrior of Asam had to bring home, thereby
qualifying himself to be tattooed and to marry a wife, who had perhaps
been waiting years for this ugly marriage-licence. The trophy need not
have been taken from an enemy, and might have been got by the blackest
treachery, provided only that the victim were not of the slayer’s own
tribe. Yet these Sioux among themselves hold manslaughter to be a crime
unless in blood-revenge; and the Dayaks punish murder. This state of
things is not really contradictory; in fact its explanation lies in the
one word “tribe.” The tribe makes its law, not on an abstract principle
that manslaughter is right or wrong, but for its own preservation.
Their existence depends on holding their own in deadly strife with
neighbouring tribes, and thus they put a social premium on the warrior’s
proof of valour in fight against the enemy, though in these degenerate
days they allow the form to be meanly fulfilled by bringing in as a
warrior’s trophy the head of some old woman or wretched waylaid stranger.
In this simple contrast between one’s own people and strangers, the
student will find a clue to the thought of right and wrong running
through ancient history, and slowly passing into a larger and nobler
view. The old state of things is well illustrated in the Latin word
_hostis_, which, meaning originally stranger, passed quite naturally into
the sense of enemy. Not only is slaying an enemy in open war looked on as
righteous, but ancient law goes on the doctrine that slaying one’s own
tribesman and slaying a foreigner are crimes of quite different order,
while killing a slave is but a destruction of property. Nor even now does
the colonist practically admit that killing a brown or black man is an
act of quite the same nature as killing a white countryman. Yet the idea
of the sacredness of human life is ever spreading more widely in the
world, as a principle applying to mankind at large.
The history of the notion of theft and plunder follows partly the same
lines. In the lower civilization the law, “thou shalt not steal,” is
not unknown, but it applies to tribesmen and friends, not to strangers
and enemies. Among the Ahts of British Columbia, Sproat remarks that
an article placed in an Indian’s charge on his good faith is perfectly
safe, yet thieving is a common vice where the property of other tribes
or of white men is concerned. But, he says, it would be unfair to
regard thieving among these savages as culpable in the same degree
as among ourselves, for they have no moral or social law forbidding
thieving between tribe and tribe, which has been commonly practised for
generations. Thus, although the Africans within their own tribe-limits
have strict rules of property, travellers describe how a Zulu war-party,
who have stealthily crept upon a distant village and massacred men,
women, and children, will leave behind them the ransacked kraal flaring
on the horizon and return with exulting hearts and loads of plunder.
The old-world law of a warlike people is well seen among the ancient
Germans in Cæsar’s famous sentence, “Robberies beyond the bounds of each
community have no infamy, but are commended as a means of exercising
youth and diminishing sloth.” Even in the midst of modern civilization,
a declaration of war may still carry society back to the earlier stages
of plunder and prize-money. But in peace the safety of property as well
as life is becoming more settled in the world. The extradition treaties
by which criminals, deprived of their old refuge over the border, are now
given up to justice in the country where they offended, mark the modern
tendency to unite nations in one community, which recognises among all
its members mutual right and duty.
Hitherto we have been looking at right and wrong chiefly as worked by
men’s own moral feelings and by public opinion. But stronger means have
at all times been necessary. It is now reckoned one of the regular duties
of civilization to have a criminal law to punish wrong-doers with fine,
imprisonment, blows, and even death. This system, however, only gradually
arose in the world, and history can show plain traces of how it grew up
from the early state of things when there were as yet no professional
judges or executioners, but it was every man’s right and duty to take the
law into his own hands, and that law was what we now call vengeance. When
in barbaric life fierce passion breaks loose and a man is slain, this
rule of vengeance comes into action. How it works as one of the great
forces of society may well be seen among the Australians. As Sir George
Grey says in his account of it, the holiest duty a native is called on to
perform is to avenge the death of his nearest relation. If he left this
duty unfulfilled, the old women would taunt him; if he were unmarried,
no girl would speak to him; if he had wives, they would leave him; his
mother would cry and lament that she had given birth to so degenerate a
son, his father would treat him with contempt, and he would be a mark for
public scorn. But what is to be done if the murderer escapes, as must
in so wild and thinly peopled a country be easy? Native custom goes on
the ancient doctrine that the criminal’s whole family are responsible;
so that when it is known that a man has been slain, and especially when
the actual culprit has escaped, his kinsfolk run for their lives; the
very children of seven years old know whether they are of kin to the
manslayer, and, if so, they are off at once into hiding. Here then we
come in view of two principles which every student of law should have
clearly in his mind in tracing its history up from its lowest stages. In
the primitive law of vengeance of blood, he sees society using for the
public benefit the instinct of revenge which man has in common with the
lower animals; and by holding the whole family answerable for the deed
of one of its members, the public brings the full pressure of family
influence to bear on each individual as a means of keeping the peace.
No one who sees the working of blood-vengeance can deny its practical
reasonableness, and its use in restraining men from violence while there
are as yet no judges and executioners. Indeed among all savages and
barbarians the avenger of blood, little as he thinks it himself in his
wild fury, is doing his part toward saving his people from perishing
by deeds of blood. Unhappily his usefulness is often marred through
ignorance and delusion turning his vengeance against the innocent. These
Australians are among the many savages who do not see why anybody should
ever die unless he is killed, so they account for what we call natural
death by settling it that some enemy killed the sufferer by magic art,
wounding him with an invisible weapon, or sending a disease-demon to
gnaw his vitals. Therefore, when a man dies, his kinsmen set themselves
to find out by divination what malignant sorcerer did him to death, and
when they have fixed on some one as the secret enemy the avenger sets
out to find and slay him; then of course there is retaliation from the
other side, and a hereditary feud sets in. This is one great cause of
the rancorous hatred between neighbouring tribes which keeps savages in
ceaseless fear and trouble.
Passing to higher levels of civilization, among the nations of the
ancient world we still find the law of blood-vengeance, but it is being
gradually modified by the civilization which in time ousts it altogether.
Thus the law of the Israelites, while still authorizing the avenger
of blood, provides that there shall be cities of refuge, and that the
morally innocent manslayer shall not be as the wilful murderer. Among
nations where wealth has been gathered together, and especially where it
has come to be measured by money, the old fierce cry for vengeance sinks
into a claim for compensation. In Arabia to this day the earlier and
later stages may be seen side by side; while the roaming Beduin tribes
of the desert carry on blood-feuds from generation to generation with
savage ferocity, the townsfolk feel that life can hardly go on with an
assassin round every street-corner, so they take the blood-money and
loose the feud. This state of things is instructive as being like that
of our own early ancestors when the Teutonic law was still that a man
took vengeance for hurt done to him or his, unless he compounded it. The
Anglo-Saxon word for such composition was _wér-gild_, probably meaning
“man-money,” 200 shillings for a free man, less for lower folk, and less
for a Welshman than an Englishman. Again, where the rule of vengeance is
a life for a life, lesser hurts are also repaid in kind, which is the
Roman _lex talionis_, or “law of the like”—_retaliation_. This is plainly
set forth in the Jewish law, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
wound for wound, stripe for stripe. It is still law in Abyssinia, where
not long since a mother prosecuted a lad who had accidentally fallen
from a fruit-tree on her little son and killed him; the judges decided
that she had a right to send another son up into the tree to drop on the
boy who had unintentionally caused the first one’s death, which remedy
however she did not care to avail herself of. Of course retaliation came
to be commuted into money, as when old English laws provide that, if any
one happen to cut off the fist or foot of a person, let him render to him
the half of a man’s price, for a thumb half the price of a hand, and so
on down to 5_s._ for a little finger and 4_d._ for a little-finger nail.
In the times we live in, justice has passed into a higher stage, where
the State takes the duty of punishing any serious wilful hurt done to
its citizens. Reading some murderous tale of a Corsican “vendetta,” we
hardly stop to think of it as a relic of ancient law lingering in a wild
mountain island. Yet our criminal law grew out of such private vengeance,
as is still plain to those who attend to traces of the past, when they
hear such phrases as “the vengeance of the law,” or think what is meant
by the legal form by which a private person is bound over to prosecute,
as though he must still be suing, as he would have done in long-past
ages, for his own revenge or compensation. It is now really the State
that is seeking to punish the criminal for the ends of public justice.
The avenger of blood, once the guardian of public safety, would now be
himself punished as a criminal for taking the law into his own hands,
while the moralists, now that the conditions of society are changed, lay
it down that vengeance is sinful.
Law, however, though it has so beneficially taken the place of private
vengeance, has not fully extended its sway over the larger quarrels
between State and State. The relation of private vengeance to public war
is well seen among rude tribes, such as inhabit the forests of Brazil.
When a murder is done within the tribe, then of course vengeance lies
between the two families concerned; but if the murderer is of another
clan or tribe, then it becomes a public wrong. The injured community
hold council, and mostly decide for war if they dare; then a war-party
sets forth, in which the near kinsmen of the murdered man, their bodies
painted with black daubs to show their deadly office, rush foremost
into the fight. Among neighbouring tribes the ordinary way in which war
begins is by some quarrel or trespass, then a man is killed on one side
or the other, and the vengeance for his death spreads into blood-feud
and tribal war ever ready to break out from generation to generation.
This barbaric state of things lasted far on into the history of Europe.
It was old German law that any freeman who had been injured in body,
honour, or estate might, with the help of his own people, avenge himself
if he would not take the legal commutation; that is to say, he had the
right of private war. It was a turning-point in English history when
King Edmund made a law to restrain this “unrighteous fighting,” but it
was not stopped at once, especially in Northumberland, and we know how
it went on into modern times between clan and clan in the wild Scotch
Highlands. Long after the mere freeman ceased to go to war with his
neighbours, there were nobles who stood to their old right. As late as
the time of Edward IV. Lord Berkeley and his followers fought a battle
with Lord Lisle at Nibley Green in Gloucestershire. Lord Lisle was slain,
and in the end Lord Berkeley compounded by a money payment to the widow.
Freeman, who in his _Comparative Politics_ mentions this curious incident
of fifteenth-century history, thinks it the last English example either
of private war or the payment of the wér-gild. The law of England which
forbids the levying of private war represents one of the greatest steps
in national progress. The State now replaces, by the justice of legal
tribunals, the barbaric expedients of private vengeance and private war.
But State and State still fight out their quarrels in public war, which
then becomes on a larger scale much what deadly feud used to be between
clan and clan.
The civil law of property may, like the criminal law, be traced from
the ideas of old times. A fair notion may be had of what early rules of
property were like, by noticing what they are in the uncivilised world
still. Among the lower races, the distinction which our lawyers make
between real and personal property appears in a very intelligible way.
Of the land all have the use, but no man can be its absolute owner. The
simplest land-law, which is also a game-law, is found among tribes who
live chiefly by hunting and fishing. Thus in Brazil each tribe had its
boundaries marked by rocks, trees, streams, or even artificial landmarks,
and trespass in pursuit of game was held so serious that the offender
might be slain on the spot. At this stage of society in any part of the
world, every man has the right to hunt within the bounds of his own
tribe, and the game only becomes private property when struck. Thus there
is a distinct legal idea of common property in land belonging to the
clan or tribe. There is also a clear idea of family property: the hut
belongs to the family or group of families who built it; and when they
fenced in and tilled the plot of ground hard by, this also ceased to be
common land, and became the property of the families, at least while
they occupied it. To each family belonged also the hut-furniture, such
as hammocks, mealing-stones, and earthen pots. At the same time personal
ownership appears, though still under the power of the family, through
the father or head. Personal or individual property was chiefly what each
wore or carried—the man’s weapons, the ornaments and scanty clothing of
both sexes, things which they had some power to do as they liked with
during life, and at death very commonly took away with them to the world
beyond the grave (see p. 346). Here then we find barbarians already
acquainted with the ideas of common land, family freehold, family and
personal property in movables, which run through the systems of old-world
law. Not that they are worked out in the same way everywhere. Thus in
the village communities which had so great a part in settling Asia and
Europe, and whose traces still remain in modern England, not only the
hunting-grounds and meadows were held in common, but the families did
not even own the ploughed fields, which were tilled by common labour or
re-allotted from time to time among the households, so that the family
freehold did not reach beyond its house and garden-plot. At various times
in history, the rise of military nations revolutionised the earlier
ways of land-holding. In invaded countries, lands of the conquered were
distributed by the king or leader to be held by his captains or soldiers
doing military service in return; the greatest and best-known example
is the feudal system of Europe in the Middle Ages. It is instructive to
notice how in England, before the Norman Conquest, the folk-land, the
common property of the state, was already passing into the hands of
the king to grant at his pleasure. Or in a military state the sovereign
may become the universal landlord, allowing his subjects to hold lands
on payment of an annual tribute or tax—a system well known in ancient
Egypt and modern India. In Roman history we find the state, or families
owning large lands, letting portions of them as farms to tenants who
paid part of the produce in return. This shows the beginning of rent,
a thing unknown to primitive law. While these changes were coming on
as to the land, movable property was becoming more and more important.
War-captives kept as slaves to till the soil became part of the wealth
of the family, and the pastoral life brought in cattle, not only for
food, but to plough the fields. The manufacture of valuable goods, the
growth of commerce, the accumulation of treasure, and the use of money,
added other possessions. If now we look at our modern ways of dealing
with property, it is seen what great changes we have made by taking it
out of the hands of the family and allowing an individual owner to hold
and dispose of it—an arrangement suited to our age of shifting trading
enterprise. Even land is bought and sold by individuals, though the law,
by making a field and cottage transferable by a different process and
with greater formality and cost than a diamond necklace or a hundred
chests of tea, keeps up traces of the old system under which it could
only have changed hands, if at all, with difficulty and by the consent
of many parties. Through all changes it is instructive to notice how far
the old family system of property holds its place. This is well seen by
considering what becomes of a man’s property when he dies. The two most
usual arrangements made in early times are the simplest, namely, either
that the family shall go on living on the undivided property, or that
it shall be divided among the children, or sons. When the eldest son
is patriarchal head of the family, to keep up this dignity he may have
an extra or double portion for his “birth-right”; this is a well-known
ancient rule, common to the Aryan and Semitic nations, for it is both
in the Hindu laws of Manu and in Deuteronomy. In France at this day the
ancient principle of division is legally enforced, and the family take
their shares as a matter of right. In England the power of wills has
become so great, that in theory a man may leave his property to whom he
pleases; but practically this is kept within bounds by moral feeling and
public opinion, which condemn it as an unnatural act for a man to strip
his own children to endow a stranger or a hospital. If the Englishman
dies without leaving a will, the law recognises the rights of his family
by fairly dividing among them his personal property. It is otherwise with
the land or real estate, which in most cases will pass to the eldest son.
Why the law should thus allow the claims of the rest of the family to
the money, but not to the land, is an interesting point of history. The
reader of Maine’s _Ancient Law_ will find how, in Europe about a thousand
years ago, lands held as fiefs came to pass to the eldest son, not by any
means for the purpose of enriching him by disinheriting the others, but
that the united kinsfolk might live upon the land and defend it under
him as chief of the little clan. If in modern times the head of the
family has become possessed of the family estate for his own use, this
is because old laws working under new circumstances are apt to produce
results which those who framed them never foresaw. Primogeniture did not
prevail over the whole of England, but older rules of family inheritance
have in some parts lasted on from times before feudalism. The best known
of these is where at the father’s death the land is divided among the
sons, as Domesday Book shows was usual in Edward the Confessor’s time.
This is now known as gavelkind, or the custom of Kent, but it appears
elsewhere; for instance, Kentish Town in the north of London is supposed
to have its name from lands so held there. There even exists in England
a rule of inheritance which seems to belong to a yet earlier state of
society. This is the custom of borough-english, by which, for instance
at Hackney or Edmonton, if a man die intestate the land passes to his
youngest son. This right of the youngest, strange as it seems to us, is
still found here and there in Europe and Asia. It is a reasonable law of
inheritance of the settlers in a new country, where there is yet plenty
of land to be had for the taking, and the sons as they grow up and marry
go out and found new homesteads of their own. But the youngest stays at
home and takes care of the old father and mother; he is, as the Mongols
say, the “fire-keeper,” and at their death he naturally succeeds to the
family home. This is one of the hundreds of cases of customs which seem
arbitrary and unreasonable, because they have lost their sense by lasting
on from the state of life to which they properly belonged.
In the old days before there were lawyers and law books, solemn acts
and rights were made plain to all men by picturesque ceremonies suited
to lay hold of unlettered minds. Many of these old ceremonies are still
kept up and show their meaning as plainly as ever. For example, when two
parties wish to make firm peace or friendship, they will go through the
ceremony of mixing their blood, so as to make themselves blood-relations.
Travellers often now ally themselves in such blood-brotherhood with
barbarous tribes; an account of East Africans performing the rite
describes the two sitting together on a hide so as to become “of one
skin,” and then they made little cuts in one another’s breasts, tasted
the mixed blood, and rubbed it into one another’s wounds. Thus we find
still going on in the world a compact which Herodotus describes among the
ancient Lydians and Scythians, and which is also mentioned in the Sagas
of the old Northmen and the ancient Irish legends. It would be impossible
to put more clearly the great principle of old-world morals, that a man
owes friendship not to mankind at large but only to his own kin, so
that to entitle a stranger to kindness and good faith he must become
a kinsman by blood. With much the same thought even rude tribes hold
that eating and drinking together is a covenant of friendship, for the
guest becomes in some sort one of the household, and has to be treated
as morally one of the family. This helps to explain the vast importance
people everywhere give to the act of dining together. Among the millions
of India at this day the very constitution of society turns on the caste
rules whom a man may or may not eat with. Among the marriage ceremonies
of the world, one well known in the far East is that the couple by eating
together out of one dish become man and wife. How ceremony expresses
meaning in still more striking metaphor is seen in the Hindu marriage,
where the skirts of the bridegroom and bride’s garments are tied together
as a sign of union, and the bride steps on a stone to show she will be as
firm as stone. A custom is described among English vagrants of the last
century, where a man and woman would join hands across the body of a dead
beast, thus promising that they would be joined till death should part
them. Among the dramatic ceremonies known to European law is the scene in
an ancient Roman law-court, where a man put in his claim to a slave by
stepping forward and touching him with a rod which represented a spear;
or when in old Germany a piece of land was transferred by the owner
handing over a sod of the turf with a green twig stuck up in it; or when
in feudal times the vassal placed his hands between the lord’s, and so
“putting himself in his hands” became his man.
There were ceremonies in old-world law which were more than such
gesture-language. Barbaric law early began to call on magical and divine
powers to help in the difficult tasks of discovering the guilty, getting
the truth out of witnesses, and making a promise binding. This led to the
wide-spread system of ordeals and oaths. Some ordeals have really served
to discover truth by their effect on the conscience of the evil-doer.
It is thus with the mouthful of rice taken by all of a suspected
household in India, which the thief’s nervous fear often prevents him
from swallowing. This used to be done in England with the corsnæd or
trial-slice of consecrated bread or cheese; even now peasants have not
forgotten the old formula, “May this bit choke me if I lie!” Another of
the few ordeals that linger in popular memory may be seen when, in some
out-of-the-way farmhouse, all suspected of a theft are made to hold a
bible hanging to a key, which is to turn in the hands of the thief; this
keeps up a form of divination practised in the classic world with a sieve
hanging by the points of an open pair of shears. Ordeals have had their
day, and are now discarded from the laws of the most civilised nations.
Nowadays one has to go to such countries as Arabia to find the ordeal by
hot iron recognised by law, as it was in England in the days when the
legend was told of Queen Emma walking over the red-hot ploughshares; the
conjurors now go through this ancient performance as a circus-show. Yet
even of late years, English rustics have been known to duck some wretched
old woman supposed to be a witch, little knowing that they were keeping
up the ancient water-ordeal, where the sacred element rejects the wrong
and accepts the right, so that the guilty floats and the innocent sinks—a
judicial rite which forms part of the old Hindu law-book of Manu, and
which in English law, till the beginning of the 13th century, was a legal
means of trying those accused of murder or robbery. Ordeals by which
the taker brings down present harm on himself if he is guilty, are of
much the same nature as oaths. It is usual, however, for oaths to call
down future punishment, in this life or after death, as when, in Russian
law-courts in Siberia, the curious spectacle may be seen of bringing in
a bear’s head that an Ostyak may bite at it, thereby calling on a bear
to bite him if he is forsworn. The legal oaths in our own country bear
in their gestures the traces of high antiquity. In Scotland the witness
holds up his hand toward heaven, the gesture by which Greek and Jew took
the supreme Deity to witness, and called down divine vengeance on the
perjurer. In England the kissing of the book comes from the practice of
touching a halidome, or sacred object, as an ancient Roman touched the
altar, or Harold the casket of relics. The form “So help me God,” is
inherited from ancient Teutonic-Scandinavian law, under which the old
Northman, touching the blood-daubed ring on the altar, swore “So help
me Frey, and Niordh, and the almighty god” (that is, Thor). The first
and last of these are the two old English gods whose names we keep up in
_Friday_ and _Thursday_.
To come now to the last subject of this volume, the history of
government. Complicated as are the political arrangements of civilised
nations, their study is made easier by their simple forms being already
found in savage and barbaric life. The foundation of society, as has been
already seen, is the self-government of each family. Its authority is
apt to be vested in the head of the household; thus among low barbaric
tribes in the Brazilian forests, the father may do as he pleases with his
own wives and children, even selling them for slaves, and the neighbours
have no right or wish to interfere. Even what civilised nations now take
as a matter of course, that every human being coming into the world has a
right to live, is scarcely recognised by the lower races. In such a life
of hardship as the Australians and many savages lead, new-born children
are often put out of the way from sheer need, because the parents have
already as many mouths as they can feed. That among such tribes this
comes of hardness of life, rather than hardness of heart, is often seen
when the parents will go through fire and water to save the very child
they were doubting about, a few weeks before, whether it should live
or die. Even where the struggle for existence is not so severe, the
wretched custom of infanticide remains still common in the world. Nothing
more clearly shows that European nations came up from a barbaric stage
than the law which the ancient Romans had in common with our Teutonic
ancestors, that it was for the father of the family to say whether the
new-born child should be brought up or exposed. Once become a member of
the household, the child has a firmer assurance of life; and when the
young barbarian grows up to be a warrior, and becomes himself the head of
a new household, he is usually a free man. But the oldest Roman law shows
the head of the family ruling with a strictness hardly imaginable to our
modern minds, for the father might chastise or put to death his grown-up
sons, give them in marriage or divorce them, and even sell them. With the
advance of civilization, in Rome as elsewhere, the sons gradually gained
their rights of person and property; and in comparing old-world life
with our own, it is plainly seen how Christianity, looking not to family
rights but to individual souls, tended toward personal freedom. With all
the growth of individual freedom in modern life, the best features of
family despotism remain in force; it is under parental authority that
children are trained for their future duties, and the law is careful how
it gives the child personal rights against the parent, lest it should
weaken the very cement which binds society together. As, however, the
family ceased to be so perfect a little kingdom within itself, the
individual became responsible for his own doings. We have seen how, in
rude society, when a crime is committed, the family of the aggrieved take
vengeance on the culprit’s family. Modern ideas of justice may teach us
that this is wrong, that it is punishing the innocent for the guilty.
But in the lower barbaric life it is practically the best way to keep
order, and to those who live under it it seems right and natural, as
where, among the Australians, when one of a family has done a murder the
others take it as a matter of course that they are guilty too. Far from
this idea being confined to savages, the student becomes familiar with it
in the law of ancient nations, such as Greece and Rome. Here it will be
enough to quote the remarkable passage from the Hebrew law which at once
records what the old principle was, and reforms it by bringing in the
ideas of higher jurisprudence:—“The fathers shall not be put to death for
the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers:
every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” (Deut. xxiv. 16.)
Wherever the traveller in wild regions meets a few families roaming
together over the desert, or comes upon a cluster of huts by a stream
in the tropical forest, he may find, if he looks closely enough, some
rudiments of government; for there is business which concerns the whole
little community, such as a camping-ground to be chosen, or a fishery
quarrel to be settled with the next tribe down the river. Even among
the Greenlanders, as little governed a people as almost any in the
world, it was noticed that when several families lived together all the
winter, one weather-wise old fisherman would have the north end of the
snow-house for his place and be appointed to look after the inmates,
taking care about their keeping the snow walls in repair, and going out
and coming in together so as not to waste heat; also when they went out
in hunting parties an experienced pathfinder would be chosen as leader.
It is common to find among rude tribes such a headman or chief, chosen
as the most important or shrewdest; but he has little or no actual
authority over the families, and gets his way by persuasion and public
opinion. Naturally such a headman’s family is of consequence already,
or, if not, he makes them so, and thus there is a tendency for his
office to become hereditary. In tribes formed under the rule of female
kinship, where the chief’s own son may be out of the succession, the
new chosen chief will probably be a younger brother or a nephew on the
mother’s side. Under the rule of succession on the father’s side, which
is so much more familiar to us, the very growth of the family brings on
a patriarchal government. Suppose a single household to move out into
the wilds and found a new settlement, it begins under the rule of the
father, who, as new huts are built round the first home, remains head
of the growing clan; but as old age comes on, his eldest son more and
more acts in his name, and at his death will be recognised as succeeding
him in the headship of the community. Here then is seen the rise of the
hereditary chief or patriarch of the tribe, first in rank as representing
the ancestor, and with more or less of real authority. But here also
there is a practical power of setting the successor aside if he is too
timid or wilful or dull, when perhaps his uncle or brother will be put in
his place, though the line of succession is not set aside by this. The
patriarchal system extends far on in civilization. It is not confined
to one particular race or nation, but may at this day be studied alike
among the brown hill-men of India and the negroes of West Africa. To
us it is especially well known from the Old Testament, which shows it
in the form it takes in a pastoral nation, and which still may be seen
with little change among the Arabs of the desert, whose clans and tribes
are governed by their patriarchs, the sheykhs or old men. Not less does
it lie at the foundation of the politics of the Aryan race, where its
remains may still be traced in the village communities of India and
Russia, the village elder presiding in the council of “white-heads” being
the modern representative of the earlier patriarch with the chiefs of
younger branches of the clan around him. Under such mild rule, people
of few wants may prosper in time of peace, in the kindly communism
which is possible where there are no rich and no poor. The weak point
of such a society is that it can hardly advance, for civilization is at
a standstill where it is regulated by ancestral custom administered by
great-grandfathers. Everywhere in the world, in war some stronger and
more intelligent rule than this is needed and found. The changes which
have shaped the descendants of wild hordes into civilized nations have
been in great measure the work of the war-chief.
When among such uncultured tribes war breaks out, the peace-chief is
pushed aside and a leader chosen, or in warlike tribes the war-chief may
be the acting head at all times. Of course he is a tried warrior, and
his endurance may even be put to a special examination, as when the
Caribs would test a candidate for war-chief by mercilessly flogging and
scratching him, smoking him in a hammock over a fire of green leaves, or
burying him up to the middle in a nest of stinging-ants. We even find in
America the principle of competitive examination for king, when Chilian
tribes would choose as their chief the man who could lift the biggest
tree on his shoulder and carry it longest. In these rude countries the
change is wonderful when war turns the loose crowd into an army under
a leader, with powers of life and death to enforce discipline. When
Martius the naturalist was travelling through a Brazilian forest with
a Miranha chief, they came to a fig-tree where the skeleton of a man
was bound to the trunk with cords of creepers, and the chief grimly
explained that this was one of his men who had disobeyed orders by not
summoning a neighbouring tribe to help against the invading Umauas, and
he had him tied up there and shot to death with arrows. In barbarous
countries the tribe-chief and the war-chief may be found side by side;
but when the power of the bow and spear once asserts itself, it is apt
to grow further. Throughout history, war gives the bold and able leader
a supremacy which may nominally end with the campaign, but which tends
to pass into dictatorship for life. Military government in civil affairs
is, in fact, despotism; and if the military leader can thus become
the tyrant of his own land, still more can he rule with a rod of iron
a conquered country. The negro kingdom of Dahome, the result of two
centuries of barbaric military rule, is an astounding specimen of what a
people will submit to from a despot whom they regard as a kind of deity;
they approach him grovelling on all-fours, and throwing dust over their
heads; the whole nation are his slaves, whose lives he takes at will;
the women are all his, to give or sell; the land is all his, and none
owns anything but at his pleasure. The kings of Asiatic nations have
been theoretically as absolute as this, but practically in advancing
civilization the king makes or sanctions laws which bind himself and his
successors, making society more fixed and life more tolerable. Also, as
soon as religion becomes a power in the state, it becomes joined or mixed
with civil and military government. Thus among negroes the high-priest
and war-chief may be the two heads of the government, while the Incas of
Peru, as descendants and representatives of the divine sun, ruled their
nation with paternal despotism which settled for the people what they
should do and eat and wear, and whom they should marry. In such a kingdom
royalty must be hereditary in the divine ruling family. Indeed, monarchy,
however gained, tends to become hereditary, and especially the military
usurper will found a dynasty on the model of a patriarchal chief. Thus
sovereignty may be elective, hereditary, military, ecclesiastical, and,
difficult as is the history of kingdoms, some combination of these causes
can always be traced in them.
The effects of war in consolidating a loosely formed society are
described by travellers who have seen a barbaric tribe prepare to
invade an enemy or defend their own borders. Provisions and property
are brought into the common stock; the warriors submit their unruly
wills to a leader, and private quarrels are sunk in a larger patriotism.
Distant clans of kinsfolk come together against the common enemy, and
neighbouring tribes with no such natural union make an alliance, their
chiefs serving under the orders of a leader chosen by them all. Here are
seen in their simplest forms two of the greatest facts in history,—the
organised army, where the several forces are led by their own captains
under a general, and the confederation of tribes, such as in higher
civilisation brings on political federations of states like those in
Greece and Switzerland. Out of such alliances of tribes, when they
last beyond the campaign, there arise nations, where often, as in old
Mexico, the head of the strongest tribe will become king. Tribes which
thus unite are apt to be of common race, speaking kindred dialects, for
this is everywhere a natural bond of union; and when they have allied
themselves into one people, and come to bear a common name, such as
Dorians or Hellenes, they willingly take up the old patriarchal idea,
and imagine themselves more closely of one _nation_ or “birth” than they
really are, even setting up, as we have seen (p. 389), a fictitious as a
national ancestor. Events take a different course, but with a somewhat
like effect, when some Kafir leader conquers other tribes around, and,
setting himself above them all, forces the conquered chiefs to bring him
tribute and warriors to fight his battles. This is empire on a small
scale and with rude surroundings, but on the same principles as that of
a Cæsar or a Napoleon. Thus one understands why in the early history of
nations it is so inextricably difficult to make out how far any people
have grown up from a single unmixed tribe, or have been built up by
alliance and conquest. What shows how this piecing together of nations
must have gone on, is the number and variety of their gods. While a
tribe grows of itself, the names and worship of the same tribe-gods will
be a bond of union in all the clans, and even when they move far off
they will sometimes go on pilgrimage to the shrines of their old home.
But when peoples amalgamate, their different gods are kept up, as when
the Peruvians gave places to the gods of conquered tribes under their
own great deities. Every district in ancient Egypt shows by its varied
combination of gods how many little states and local religions went to
make up the great despotism and hierarchy. It was plainly through this
growth of nations, which had been going on we know not how long before
history began, that the higher civilization of mankind arose. Scattered
families of barbarians in a land where there is still elbow room may
thrive without strong government; but when men live in populous nations
and crowded cities, there has to be public order. That this political
order came out of military order cannot be doubted. War not only put
into the hands of the sovereign the power over a whole nation, but his
army served as his model on which to organize his nation. It is one of
the plainest lessons of history that through military discipline mankind
were taught to submit to authority and act in masses under command. Egypt
and Babylon, with military system pervading not only the standing army,
but the orders of priests and civilians, developed industry and wealth
highest in the ancient world, and were the very founders of literature
and science. They built up for future ages the framework of government,
which we freer moderns of our own will submit ourselves to for our own
benefit. A constitutional government, whether called republic or kingdom,
is an arrangement by which the nation governs itself by means of the
machinery of a military despotism.
As society in tribes and nations became a more complex system, it early
began to divide into classes or ranks. If we look for an example of the
famous first principle of the United States, “that all men are created
equal,” we shall in fact scarcely find such equality except among savage
hunters and foresters, and by no means always then. The greatest of
all divisions, that between freeman and slave, appears as soon as the
barbaric warrior spares the life of his enemy when he has him down,
and brings him home to drudge for him and till the soil. How low in
civilization this begins appears by a slave caste forbidden to bear arms
forming part of several of the lower American tribes. How thoroughly
slavery was recognized as belonging to old-world society may be seen
by the way it formed part of the Hebrew patriarchal system, where the
man-servant and maid-servant are reckoned as a man’s wealth just before
his ox and his ass. It was no less so under Roman law, as is evident from
the very word _family_, which at first meant not the children but the
slaves (_famulus_). We live in days when the last remains of slavery are
disappearing from the higher nations; but though the civilized world has
outgrown the ancient institution, the benefits which early society gained
from it still remain. It was through slave labour that agriculture and
industry increased, that wealth accumulated, and leisure was given to
priests, scribes, poets, philosophers, to raise the level of men’s minds.
Out of slavery probably arose the later custom of hired _service_, the
very name of which, as derived from _servus_, a slave, tells the story
of a great social change. The master at first let out his slaves to work
for his profit, and then free men found it to their advantage to work
for their own profit, so that there grew up the great wage-earning class
whose numbers and influence make so marked a difference between ancient
and modern society. In all communities, except the smallest and simplest,
the freemen divide themselves into ranks. The old Northmen divided men
into three classes, “earls, churls, and thralls,” which roughly match
what we should now call nobles, freemen, and slaves. Nobles again fall
into different orders, especially those who can claim royal blood forming
a princely order, and looking down on the chieftains and officers of the
army, state, and church who fill the lower ranks of nobility.
As nations become more populous, rich, and intelligent, the machinery
of government has to be improved. The old rough-and-ready methods no
longer answer, and the division of labour has to be applied to politics.
Thus, one of the chief’s early duties was to be judge. A Kafir chieftain
will make it his business to hear suits between his people; each side
brings him a gift of oxen. At higher levels of civilization the Eastern
monarch sits in the gate of justice; and it was so among the ancient
Germans, where the king sat crowned and gave judgment in his own court.
It is still the king’s court, but the actual administration has long
passed into the hands of professional judges. So with other departments
of government. By the time civilization had come to the level of ancient
Egypt and Babylon public affairs were administered by officials in grades
like an army, who collected the taxes, attended to public works, punished
offences, and did justice between man and man. It has just been noticed
how far a modern nation is worked by an official system similar to that
of the ancients, and how we, really among the freest of peoples, preserve
the forms of an absolute monarchy, where sovereign power is administered
through servants of the Crown down to the exciseman and constable. In
the politics of savages and barbarians, the outlines of the civilized
system of government already come into view. We have seen how among such
rude tribes the chief or king appears, who holds his place in some form
through higher nations. Even the consul or president of a republic is a
kind of temporary elective king. Of not less antiquity is the senate.
The old men squatting round the council fire of an Indian tribe on the
prairies have in their way a greater influence than a civilized senate,
for where there are no written records and books the old men are the very
sources and treasuries of wisdom. In the nations of the world, seats at
such councils are given to wise old men, priests and officers of high
rank, and heads of great families, so that the two terms _senate_ and
_house of lords_ both have their proper meaning, and the two claims of
wisdom and rank are more or less combined. With the very beginning of
political life appears also the popular assembly. In small tribes the
whole community, or at least the freemen, come together. It may be only
a forest tribe in Brazil called together by the chief to decide some
question of an expedition to net wildfowl or attack a neighbouring tribe,
yet solemn form will be observed. There is silence for the orators, and
if the assembly approve they will at last cry “good!” or “be it so!”
More civilized forms of the assembly of the people may be studied in
Freeman’s comparison of the Achaian _agora_ described in the second book
of the Iliad, with the “great meeting” held outside London in Edward the
Confessor’s time. Even in our own day the great meeting of the people
has not disappeared from Europe. The wonderful sight is still to be seen
of the people of a Swiss canton gathered together in a wide meadow or
market-place to vote Yes or No on the great questions which their supreme
authority decides. With the growth of nations the folk-moot or assembly
of the whole people, never a good deliberative body, soon becomes
unmanageable by mere numbers; but there is a way by which its authority
may be kept in a less unwieldy form when the people, no longer able to
go themselves, send chosen representatives to act for them. This seems a
simple device enough, and indeed the first savage tribe that ever sent a
discreet orator to negotiate peace or war on its behalf had seized the
idea of a political representative. But in fact it is one of the most
remarkable points in political history, how the principle of popular
representation has been worked out in England from the time of Simon de
Montfort’s famous parliament in the 13th century. It is for historians
to discuss how the knights and burgesses who came up to grant the king’s
supplies passed into the lower house of parliament as it is now; what
has to be noticed here is the change which, while the huge promiscuous
assembly of the people shrank into an aristocratic upper house, gave us
a new elective popular body, the _house of commons_. It is not too much
to say that no event in English history has had so great an effect in
shaping the course of modern civilization. On the whole, looking at what
government is coming to among the most enlightened nations, it will be
seen that it attains its ends, not so much by casting off the methods of
our remote barbaric ancestors, as by improving and regulating them. The
administration of the state under the system of sovereign authority, the
control of the senate, and the source of political power in the will of
the nation itself, are made to work together and restrain one another so
as fairly to keep the benefits and neutralize the excesses of all, while
the constitution has within it the power of continual reform, so that
the machine of government may be ever shaping itself into more perfect
fitness to its work.
Here this sketch of Anthropology may close. The examination of man’s age
on the earth, his bodily structure and varieties of race and language,
has led us on to enquire into his intellectual and social history. In
his many-sided life there may be clearly traced a development, which,
notwithstanding long periods of stoppage and frequent falling back, has
on the whole adapted modern civilized man for a far higher and happier
career than his ruder ancestors. In this development, the preceding
chapters have shown a difference between low and high nations, which it
only remains to put before the reader as a practical moral to the tale
of civilization. It is true that both among savage and civilized peoples
progress in culture takes place, but not under the same conditions. The
savage by no means goes through life with the intention of gathering more
knowledge and framing better laws than his fathers. On the contrary,
his tendency is to consider his ancestors as having handed down to him
the perfection of wisdom, which it would be impiety to make the least
alteration in. Hence among the lower races there is obstinate resistance
to the most desirable reforms, and progress can only force its way with
a slowness and difficulty which we of this century can hardly imagine.
Looking at the condition of the rude man, it may be seen that his
aversion to change was not always unreasonable, and indeed may often have
arisen from a true instinct. With his ignorance of any life but his own,
he would be rash to break loose from the old tried machinery of society,
to plunge into revolutionary change, which might destroy the present good
without putting better in its place. Had the experience of ancient men
been larger, they would have seen their way to faster steps in culture.
But we civilized moderns have just that wider knowledge which the rude
ancients wanted. Acquainted with events and their consequences far and
wide over the world, we are able to direct our own course with more
confidence toward improvement. In a word, mankind is passing from the age
of unconscious to that of conscious progress. Readers who have come thus
far need not be told in many words of what the facts must have already
brought to their minds—that the study of man and civilization is not only
a matter of scientific interest, but at once passes into the practical
business of life. We have in it the means of understanding our own lives
and our place in the world, vaguely and imperfectly it is true, but at
any rate more clearly than any former generation. The knowledge of man’s
course of life, from the remote past to the present, will not only help
us to forecast the future, but may guide us in our duty of leaving the
world better than we found it.
SELECTED BOOKS, &c.
PHYSICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ANTHROPOLOGY:—
Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker.
Topinard, Anthropology.
Darwin, Descent of Man.
Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature; Geographical Distribution of
Mankind (in _Journal of Ethnological Society_, Vol. II. 1870).
Vogt, Lectures on Man.
Prichard, Natural History of Man.
Wood, Natural History: Man.
Peschel, Races of Man.
Quatrefages, Human Species.
Flower, Hunterian Lectures on “The Comparative Anatomy of Man.”
_Nature_, July 1879, and May and June 1880.
Broca, Instructions Craniologiques.
Anthropological Notes and Queries for Travellers, &c. (British
Association).
Journal of the Anthropological Institute (London).
Revue d’Anthropologie (Paris).
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Berlin).
Accounts of races by travellers and missionaries, such as
Catlin, North American Indians; Ellis, Polynesian Researches;
Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, and Malay Archipelago; Burton,
Lake Regions of Central Africa; J. L. Wilson, Western Africa;
Grey, Travels in Australia; etc., etc.
GEOLOGY AND ARCHÆOLOGY OF MAN:—
Lubbock, Prehistoric Times.
Lyell, Antiquity of Man.
Dawkins, Cave-hunting; Early Man in Britain.
Evans, Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain.
Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments.
Keller and Lee, Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.
Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia.
Wilson, Prehistoric Man.
PHILOLOGY:—
Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language.
Sayce, Comparative Philology; Introduction to the Science of
Language.
Whitney, Language and the Study of Language.
Hovelacque and Vinson, The Science of Language.
Pictet, Origines Indo-Européennes.
Steinthal, Charakteristik der hauptsachlichsten Typen des
Sprachbaues.
CIVILISATION:—
Maine, Ancient Law.
Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation.
Bagehot, Physics and Politics.
Freeman, Comparative Politics; Historical Essays.
Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe.
McLennan, Studies in Ancient History.
Morgan, Ancient Society.
Spencer, Principles of Sociology.
Klemm, Allgemeine Culturgeschichte; Culturwissenchaft.
Tylor, Early History of Mankind; Primitive Culture.
INDEX.
A
Abacus, 314
Abstract ideas, 52, 119, 135
words, 135
Acclimatisation, 74
Administration, 434
Æsop, 399
Affixes, 142
Africans, 2, 57, 65, 87
languages, 164
Aged, 409
Agglutinating languages, 161
Agriculture, 214
Ainos, 73
Albinos, 68
Alchemy, 328
Alcoholic liquors, 268
Algebra, 322
Alliteration, 289
Alphabet, 175
Altar, 367
Amentum, 194
Americans, 63, 102, 168
languages, 165
Analogy, 338
Analytic languages, 139
Anatomy, 330
Ancestor-worship, 352, 358, 369
Animals, cries of, 122
domesticated, 219
quaternary, 30
succession of, 37
Animism, 371
Antiquity of Man, 1, 25, 33, 40, 113, 166
Apes and Man, 38, 48, 260
Arabs, 109
language, 11, 159
Arch, 235
Architecture, 21, 232
Aristocracy, 225, 435
Arithmetic, 17, 314
Armour, 222
Army, 226, 434
Arrow, 26, 195, 212
poisoned, 221
Artillery, 227
Aryans, 10, 109, 156, 381
languages, 10, 156
Assyrians, 22, 160, 313, 384
language, 160
Astrology, 339
Astronomy, 21, 332
Australians, 57, 91
Auxiliary words, 137
Avesta, 381
B
Babylonians, 22, 163, 172
language, 163
Baking, 266
Ball, 307
Bantu languages, 149, 164
Barbaric stage, 24, 401
Bark-clothing, 244
Barometer, 325
Barter, 281
Basuto, 165
Beast-fables, 399
Beer, 268
Berbers, 95
language, 160
Biblical history, 385
Bill-hook, 190
Bills of exchange, 284
Black races, 2, 5, 80, 87
Blood-brotherhood, 423
Blood-vengeance, 414
Blow-tube, 196
Blue Beard, 398
Boat, 252
Body-measures, 17, 316
Boiling, 266
Boomerang, 193
Borer, 192
Botany, 329
Bow, 16, 195, 212
Brachykephalic, 61
Brain, 45, 60
Brand-tillage, 218
Bread, 266
Brick, 234
Broiling, 265
Bronze, 21, 278
Bronze Age, 25, 279
Brown races, 2, 5, 91
Buddha, 399
Burial, 347
Burning-lens and mirror, 263
Bushmen, 57, 89, 165
C
Cafusos, 82
Candle, 272
Cannibalism, 224, 410
Canoe, 252
Cardinal points, 21, 334
Caribs, 78
Caste, 69
Cattle, 219
Cause, spirit, 356
Cave-men, 30, 261
Caves, 229
Celt, 26, 187
Cereals, 215
Ceremonies, 365, 403, 423
Chaldeans, 22, 384
Chemistry, 328
Chess, 308
Chiefs, 428
Children’s language, 128
Chimney, 264
Chinese, 2, 57, 63, 162, 170
language, 162
Civilisation, 13, 18, 24, 75, 180, 400
Civilised stage, 24, 401
Clicks, 165
Clothing, 15, 236
Club, 184
Coffee, 270
Coin, 283
Colour, 66, 81, 85
Comedy, 299
Commerce, 285
Common land, 419
Compass, 28, 341
Concord, 147
Consciousness, 53
Constitution of races, 73
Constitutionalism, 438
Cookery, 264
Copper, 277
Corn, 215
Counting, 18, 310
Creator, 358
Cromlech, 348
Cross-bow, 16, 196
Crossed races, 6, 80
Cultivation, 215
Cuneiform writing, 172, 31
Custom, 409
D
Dagger, 190
Dancing, 224, 296
Dark-whites, 2, 56, 68, 107
Dead, worship of, 352
Deaf-and-dumb signs, 115
Death, 343
Decimal counting, 311
Decline of culture, 19
Deformation of skull, &c., 240
Degeneration, 19, 86
Demoniacal possession, 353
Demons, 352
Demon-worship, 353
Descent, female and male, 402
Despotism, 431
Digging-stick, 216
Diseases, 73, 353
Distilling, 269, 328
Dog, 209
Dolichokephalic, 2, 61
Dolmen, 348
Domesticated animals, 219
Drama, 298
Dravidians, 94
languages, 164
Drawing, 31, 300
Dreams, 343
Drift, animals of, 30
implements of, 28, 187
Drift-period, 28
Drill, 202
Drum, 293
Dryads, 357
Dualism, 363
Dutch, 9
Dwellings, 229
E
Ear- and nose-ornaments, 242
Earth-god, 359
Echo, 357
Education, capacity for, 74
Egyptians, 3, 21, 69, 79, 95, 173, 383
language, 160
Electricity, 327
Elephants, fossil, 30, 388
Emotional sound, 120, 124
Empire, 433
English, 133
Eponymic myths, 389
Esquimaux, 105, 265
Ethiopians, 69
Etymology, 126, 134
Europeans, 60, 109
Evolution, 36, 331
Exogamy, 402
Exorcism, 354
Eyes, 2, 63, 70
F
Facial angle, 62
Fair-whites, 2, 56, 68, 107
Families of language, 9, 155
Family, 402, 426
Fates, 395
Father, power of, 427
Features, 44, 63
Federation, 433
Female succession, 429
Feudalism, 420
Fiction, 379
Fields, 218, 420
Figures, 312
Fijians, 90
Finger- and toe-counting, 18, 310
Finger-nails, 240
Finns, 98
Fire, 260
Fire-arms, 17, 197, 227
Fire-drill, 16, 261
Fire-god, 361
First man, 358
Fish-hook, 213
Fishing, 212
Flakes, stone, 26, 185
Flint-and-steel, 261
Food, 206, 264
Forests, succession of, 27
Fortification, 228
Fossil bones, 388
Fowling, 208
Freemen, 225, 434
Fruits, 216
Future life, 344, 349
G
Game law, 419
Games, 305
Garments, 249
Gas, 273
Gender, 149
Genius, 356
Geography, 335
Geology, 29, 32, 336
Geometry, 17, 318
Germans, 110
language, 9
Gesture-language, 114, 124, 310
Ghosts, 344, 349
Giants, 388
Glacial period, 30
Glass, 276
Gods, 358
Gogmagog, 390
Government, 15, 428, 437
Grain, 215
Grammar, 119, 146, 156
Grammatical words, 137
Gravitation, 325
Greeks, 158
Grimm’s law, 155
Guardian spirits, 356
Gypsies, 112
H
Hair, 2, 44, 71, 82
Hair-dressing, 238
Hammer, 185
Hand and foot, 42
counting on, 18, 310
Harmony, 293
Harp, 204
Harpoon, 214
Hatchet, 188
Hawking, 209
Heat, 327
Heaven-god, 359
Hebrew, 11, 159
Herodotus, 385
Hieroglyphics, 173
Hindus, 111, 157
Historic period, 5, 22, 375
Hoe, 216
Horatii and Curiatii, 397
Hospitality, 409
Hottentots, 89, 165
language, 165
House, 231
Houses of Lords and Commons, 437
Hungarians, 98
language, 162
Hunting, 207, 220
Hut, 230
I
Ideas, 52, 119, 135
Idols, 366
Imitative signs, 116
sounds, 124
words, 121
Implements, 183
Index, Kephalic, 61
India, hill-tribes, 2, 94
laterite, 31
races, 111, 164
Individuals, 421, 428
Infanticide, 427
Inflecting languages, 161
Inheritance, 421
Inspiration, 366
Instinct, 51
Interjections, 121, 124
Intonation, 162, 291
Iron, 21, 277
Iron Age, 25, 279
Italians, 158
J
Javelin, 193
Jews, 4, 109, 159, 385
Justice, 436
K
Keltic peoples, 28, 71, 110, 153
languages, 158
Kephalic index, 61
Killing, 412
old and infirm, 410
King, 430, 436
Knife, 189
L
Labret, 242
Lamp, 272
Lancet, 192
Land, common, 219, 419
Land-law, 218, 419
Language, 7, 53, 129, 152, 337
analytic and synthetic, 139
and race, 166
children’s, 128
connexion of, 154
development of, 130
families of, 9, 155
natural, 122
origin of, 130, 165
Lapps, 98
Lathe, 203
Latin, 7, 156
Law, 405, 412, 423
Lazo, 212
Leather, 245
Lens, 263
Libyans, 69
Life, future, 344, 349
Light, 326
Lion, cave, 30
Liquors, 268
Logic, 336
Long-bow, 16, 195
Loom, 248
Lucifer-matches, 263
M
Machines, 198
Magic, 338
Maize, 215
Malayo-Polynesians, 102
language, 163
Malays, 99
Mammoth, 30
Man, 38, 45
antiquity of, 1, 25, 33, 40, 113, 166
first, 358
primitive, 33, 40, 113
unity of, 6, 85
races of, 1, 56, 75, 85, 113
Manes, 352, 358
Manslaughter, 412
Maoris, 102, 374
Mariner’s compass, 328, 341
Marriage, 402
Masonry, 21, 233
Mathematics, 17, 321
Mats, 246
Maui, 393
Measures, 17, 316
Mechanics, 323
Medicine, 15, 330
Melanesians, 89
Melanochroi, 107
Melody, 293
Memory, 49
Menhir, 348
Mensuration, 317
Mesokephalic, 61
Metal Age, 25, 189
Metals, 20, 189, 277
Metaphor, 126, 290
Metre, 288
Mexicans, 105, 169
Micronesians, 102
Mill, 200, 204
Mind, 47
Mirror, 263, 326
Missiles, 193
Mixed races, 80, 85
Monarchy, 431
Money, 282
Mongolians, 5, 63, 96
languages, 162
Monosyllabic languages, 162
Monotheism, 364
Moon-god, 361
Moors, 111
Morals, 368, 405
Mourning, 237
Mulattos, 80
Music, 291
Mutilations, 240
Myth, 387
N
Nation, 433
Natural language, 122
Nature-myths, 391
Nature-spirits, 356, 391
Need-fire, 262
Needle, 249
Negritos, 89
Negro-European dialects, 153
Negros, 2, 57, 65, 87
Neolithic implements, 26, 187
Nets, 212
Nightmare, 357
Nobles, 435
Nomades, 219
Norns, 395
Nose, 63
Nubians, 94
Numerals, 18, 310
Nymphs, 357
O
Oar, 256
Oath, 362, 425
Oblique eyes, 2, 63
Oracle-priests, 366
Ordeal, 425
Origin of language, 130, 165
of man, 85
Ornaments, 241
Orthognathous, 62
Outrigger, 255
P
Paddle, 256
Painting, 301
body, 237
Palæolithic implements, 26, 186
Pantheism, 364
Pantomime, 114, 298
Paper-money, 284
Papuas, 72, 90
Parts of speech, 138
Pasturage, 219
Patagonians, 57
Paternal power, 427
Patriarchal system, 429
Pendulum, 324
Persians, 63, 157, 381
Personal property, 420
Personification, 395
Peruvians, 59, 105
Phœnicians, 175
language, 59
Physics, 323
Picture-writing, 168
Pipe, 294
Plaiting, 246
Plants, 214
Plough, 217
Poetry, 287, 375
Poison, arrow-, 221
fish, 213
Polynesians, 102, 374
language, 163
Polytheism, 362
Popular assembly, 437
Porcelain, 276
Possession, demoniacal, 15, 353
Potato, 215
Pottery, 274
wheel, 275
Præhistoric period, 5, 374
Prayer, 360, 364
Primogeniture, 422
Printing, 180
Private war, 419
Prognathous, 62
Prometheus, 396
Pronouns, 138
Property, 419
Proportions of body, 58
Prose, 287
Public opinion, 408
Pulley, 198
Punishment, 414
Pyramids, 21, 233, 334
Pyrites, 263
Q
Quadroons, 80
Quaternary period, 29
Quinary numeration, 311
R
Races and languages, 153, 165
characters of, 1, 56, 75, 80, 113
degeneration of, 86
mixture or crossing of, 80, 85
permanence of, 80
variation of, 80, 85
Raft, 255
Rain-god, 359
Rank, 434
Real words, 137
Reason, 50, 336
Red Ridinghood, 394
Reduplication, 128
Religion, 342, 368, 407, 432
Rent, 420
Representation, political, 437
Retaliation, 417
Retribution, future, 368
Rhyme, 289
Right of life, 427
River-god, 361
Romance languages, 7
Romulus and Remus, 380
Roots, 144
Rude stone monuments, 348
Rudimentary organs, 36
S
Sacrifice, 346, 360, 365
Sail, 256
Samoyeds, 60
Sanskrit, 10, 156
Savage stage, 24, 32, 401
Saw, 192
Scandinavians, 111, 158
Screw, 192, 203
Sculpture, 300
Sea-god, 360
Semitic nations, 4, 69, 80
languages, 11, 159
Senate, 436
Sentences, 139
Sewing, 249
Shield, 222
Ship, 257
Siamese, 97, 162
Sign-language, 114
Skin, 2, 66, 81
Skull, 2, 60
deformation, 240
Sky-god, 359
Slavery, 225, 421, 434
Sling, 194
Smell of races, 2, 70
Society, 401
Song, 224, 287, 375
Soul, 343, 350, 369
Sound, 326
South-East Asian languages, 162
Spade, 216
Spear, 186, 194, 213
Spear-throwers, 194
Species, descent of, 36, 331
Spelling, 178
Spinning, 246
Spirit, 344, 349, 356, 391
Stature, 56, 76
Steam-power, 204, 259, 271
Steel, 278
Stone Age, 25, 28, 187, 279
implements, 26, 187
monuments, 348
Stove, 264
String, 246
Succession, 429, 432
Sun-god, 360, 368
Sun-myth, 394, 397
Supreme deity, 364
Survivals, 15
Sword, 190
Symbolic sound, 126, 143
Syntax, 119, 139, 146
Synthetic languages, 141
Syrians, 69, 80
T
Tactics, 226
Tanning, 245
Tasmanians, 91
Tatars, 98
language, 161
Tatooing, 237
Tea, 270
Temperament of races, 74
Temple, 348, 367
Tent, 231
Teutons, 158
Theatre, 298
Theft, 413
Thunderbolt, 26, 359
Thunder-god, 359
Tools, 183, 192
Torch, 272
Totem, 403
Trade, 285
Tradition, 373
Tragedy, 299
Trance, 343
Transmigration of soul, 350, 369
Trapping, 211
Tree-spirits, 357
Tribe-land, 419
Trumpet, 293
Turanian languages, 161
Typical men, 76
V
Vampire, 356
Variation of races, 84
Veda, 156, 381
Veddas, 164
Vengeance, 414
Verse, 287
Vertebrates, 35, 47
Vessels, 274
Vigesimal counting, 311
Village community, 219, 420
Vishnu, 367, 397
Visions, 343
W
Wages, 435
War, 221, 418, 432
War-chief, 430
Water-wheel, 204
Weapons, 184, 221
Weaving, 247
Werewolf, 356
Wergild, 416
Wheel-carriage, 198
White race, 2, 5, 57, 69, 109, 113
Widow, 346, 404
Wife-capture, 225, 305, 403
Wife-purchase, 404
Wilhelm Tell, 397
Wind-god, 361
Wind-mill, 204
Wine, 268
Words, borrowed, 155
combination, 140
formation, 126, 140
Worship, 364
Writing, 169
X
Xanthochroic, 107
Y
Yellow race, 2, 5, 69, 96
Z
Zoology, 329
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR.