All theories as to the primitive man must be very uncertain. Granting
the doctrine of evolution to be true, man must be held to have a common
ancestor with the rest of the Primates. But then we do not know what
their common ancestor was like. If ever we are to have a distinct
conception of him, it can only be after long years of future researches
and the laborious accumulation of materials, scarcely the beginning of
which now exists. But science has already done something for us. It
cannot yet tell us our first ancestor, but it can tell us much of an
ancestor very high up in the line of descent. We cannot get the least
idea (even upon the full assumption of the theory of evolution) of the
first man; but we can get a very tolerable idea of the
Paulo-prehistoric man, if I may so say--of man as he existed some short
time (as we now reckon shortness), some ten thousand years, before
history began. Investigators whose acuteness and diligence can hardly
be surpassed--Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor are the chiefs among
them--have collected so much and explained so much that they have left
a fairly vivid result.
That result is, or seems to me to be, if I may sum it up in my own
words, that the modern pre-historic men--those of whom we have
collected so many remains, and to whom are due the ancient, strange
customs of historical nations (the fossil customs, we might call them,
for very often they are stuck by themselves in real civilisation, and
have no more part in it than the fossils in the surrounding
strata)--pre-historic men in this sense were 'savages without the fixed
habits of savages;' that is, that, like savages, they had strong
passions and weak reason; that, like savages, they preferred short
spasms of greedy pleasure to mild and equable enjoyment; that, like
savages, they could not postpone the present to the future; that, like
savages, their ingrained sense of morality was, to say the best of it,
rudimentary and defective. But that, unlike present savages, they had
not complex customs and singular customs, odd and seemingly
inexplicable rules guiding all human life. And the reasons for these
conclusions as to a race too ancient to leave a history, but not too
ancient to have left memorials, are briefly these:--First, that we
cannot imagine a strong reason without attainments; and, plainly,
pre-historic men had not attainments. They would never have lost them
if they had. It is utterly incredible that whole races of men in the
most distant parts of the world (capable of counting, for they quickly
learn to count) should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever
possessed it. It is incredible that whole races could lose the elements
of common sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and
things mental--the Benjamin Franklin philosophy--if they had ever known
it. Without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. As
Lord Bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' And in the
absence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of
reason as far as we are trained, they had no 'stuff.' Even, therefore,
if their passions were not absolutely stronger than ours, relatively
they were stronger, for their reason was weaker than our reason. Again,
it is certain that races of men capable of postponing the present to
the future (even if such races were conceivable without an educated
reason) would have had so huge an advantage in the struggles of
nations, that no others would have survived them. A single Australian
tribe (really capable of such a habit, and really practising it) would
have conquered all Australia almost as the English have conquered it.
Suppose a race of long-headed Scotchmen, even as ignorant as the
Australians, and they would have got from Torres to Bass's Straits, no
matter how fierce was the resistance of the other Australians. The
whole territory would have been theirs, and theirs only. We cannot
imagine innumerable races to have lost, if they had once had it, the
most useful of all habits of mind--the habit which would most ensure
their victory in the incessant contests which, ever since they began,
men have carried on with one another and with nature, the habit, which
in historical times has above any other received for its possession the
victory in those contests. Thirdly, we may be sure that the morality of
pre-historic man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason. The
same sort of arguments apply to a self-restraining morality of a high
type as apply to a settled postponement of the present to the future
upon grounds recommended by argument. Both are so involved in difficult
intellectual ideas (and a high morality the most of the two) that it is
all but impossible to conceive their existence among people who could
not count more than five--who had only the grossest and simplest forms
of language--who had no kind of writing or reading--who, as it has been
roughly said, had 'no pots and no pans'--who could indeed make a fire,
but who could hardly do anything else--who could hardly command nature
any further. Exactly also like a shrewd far-sightedness, a sound
morality on elementary transactions is far too useful a gift to the
human race ever to have been thoroughly lost when they had once
attained it. But innumerable savages have lost all but completely many
of the moral rules most conducive to tribal welfare. There are many
savages who can hardly be said to care for human life--who have
scarcely the family feelings--who are eager to kill all old people
(their own parents included) as soon as they get old and become a
burden--who have scarcely the sense of truth--who, probably from a
constant tradition of terror, wish to conceal everything, and would (as
observers say) 'rather lie than not'--whose ideas of marriage are so
vague and slight that the idea, 'communal marriage' (in which all the
women of the tribe are common to all the men, and them only), has been
invented to denote it. Now if we consider how cohesive and how
fortifying to human societies are the love of truth, and the love of
parents, and a stable marriage tie, how sure such feelings would be to
make a tribe which possessed them wholly and soon victorious over
tribes which were destitute of them, we shall begin to comprehend how
unlikely it is that vast masses of tribes throughout the world should
have lost all these moral helps to conquest, not to speak of others. If
any reasoning is safe as to pre-historic man, the reasoning which
imputes to him a deficient sense of morals is safe, for all the
arguments suggested by all our late researches converge upon it, and
concur in teaching it.
Nor on this point does the case rest wholly on recent investigations.
Many years ago Mr. Jowett said that the classical religions bore relics
of the 'ages before morality.' And this is only one of several cases in
which that great thinker has proved by a chance expression that he had
exhausted impending controversies years before they arrived, and had
perceived more or less the conclusion at which the disputants would
arrive long before the public issue was joined. There is no other
explanation of such religions than this. We have but to open Mr.
Gladstone's 'Homer' in order to see with how intense an antipathy a
really moral age would regard the gods and goddesses of Homer; how
inconceivable it is that a really moral age should first have invented
and then bowed down before them; how plain it is (when once explained)
that they are antiquities, like an English court-suit, or a
STONE-sacrificial knife, for no one would use such things as implements
of ceremony, except those who had inherited them from a past age, when
there was nothing better.
Nor is there anything inconsistent with our present moral theories of
whatever kind in so thinking about our ancestors. The intuitive theory
of morality, which would be that naturally most opposed to it, has
lately taken a new development. It is not now maintained that all men
have the same amount of conscience. Indeed, only a most shallow
disputant who did not understand even the plainest facts of human
nature could ever have maintained it; if men differ in anything they
differ in the fineness and the delicacy of their moral intuitions,
however we may suppose those feelings to have been acquired. We need
not go as far as savages to learn that lesson; we need only talk to the
English poor or to our own servants, and we shall be taught it very
completely. The lower classes in civilised countries, like all classes
in uncivilised countries, are clearly wanting in the nicer part of
those feelings which, taken together, we call the SENSE of morality.
All this an intuitionist who knows his case will now admit, but he will
add that, though the amount of the moral sense may and does differ in
different persons, yet that as far as it goes it is alike in all. He
likens it to the intuition of number, in which some savages are so
defective that they cannot really and easily count more than three. Yet
as far as three his intuitions are the same as those of civilised
people. Unquestionably if there are intuitions at all, the primary
truths of number are such. There is a felt necessity in them if in
anything, and it would be pedantry to say that any proposition of
morals was MORE certain than that five and five make ten. The truths of
arithmetic, intuitive or not, certainly cannot be acquired
independently of experience nor can those of morals be so either.
Unquestionably they were aroused in life and by experience, though
after that comes the difficult and ancient controversy whether anything
peculiar to them and not to be found in the other facts of life is
superadded to them independently of experience out of the vigour of the
mind itself. No intuitionist, therefore, fears to speak of the
conscience of his pre-historic ancestor as imperfect, rudimentary, or
hardly to be discerned, for he has to admit much the same so as to
square his theory to plain modern facts, and that theory in the modern
form may consistently be held along with them. Of course if an
intuitionist can accept this conclusion as to pre-historic men, so
assuredly may Mr. Spencer, who traces all morality back to our
inherited experience of utility, or Mr. Darwin, who ascribes it to an
inherited sympathy, or Mr. Mill, who with characteristic courage
undertakes to build up the whole moral nature of man with no help
whatever either from ethical intuition or from physiological instinct.
Indeed of the everlasting questions, such as the reality of free will,
or the nature of conscience, it is, as I have before explained,
altogether inconsistent with the design of these papers to speak. They
have been discussed ever since the history of discussion begins; human
opinion is still divided, and most people still feel many difficulties
in every suggested theory, and doubt if they have heard the last word
of argument or the whole solution of the problem in any of them. In the
interest of sound knowledge it is essential to narrow to the utmost the
debatable territory; to see how many ascertained facts there are which
are consistent with all theories, how many may, as foreign lawyers
would phrase it, be equally held in condominium by them.
But though in these great characteristics there is reason to imagine
that the pre-historic man--at least the sort of pre-historic man I am
treating of, the man some few thousand years before history began, and
not at all, at least not necessarily, the primitive man--was identical
with a modern savage, in another respect there is equal or greater
reason to suppose that he was most unlike a modern savage. A modern
savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the
eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is
twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a
thousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand
cruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say,
tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place
anywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of
pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation
of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken
ages. In his nature, it may be said, pre-historic man was the same as a
modern savage; it is only in his acquisition that he was different.
It may be objected that if man was developed out of any kind of animal
(and this is the doctrine of evolution which, if it be not proved
conclusively, has great probability and great scientific analogy in its
favour) he would necessarily at first possess animal instincts; that
these would only gradually be lost; that in the meantime they would
serve as a protection and an aid, and that pre-historic men, therefore,
would have important helps and feelings which existing savages have
not. And probably of the first men, the first beings worthy to be so
called, this was true: they had, or may have had, certain remnants of
instincts which aided them in the struggle of existence, and as reason
gradually came these instincts may have waned away. Some instincts
certainly do wane when the intellect is applied steadily to their
subject-matter. The curious 'counting boys,' the arithmetical
prodigies, who can work by a strange innate faculty the most wonderful
sums, lose that faculty, always partially, sometimes completely, if
they are taught to reckon by rule like the rest of mankind. In like
manner I have heard it said that a man could soon reason himself out of
the instinct of decency if he would only take pains and work hard
enough. And perhaps other primitive instincts may have in like manner
passed away. But this does not affect my argument. I am only saying
that these instincts, if they ever existed, DID pass away--that there
was a period; probably an immense period as we reckon time in human
history, when pre-historic men lived much as savages live now, without
any important aids and helps.
The proofs of this are to be found in the great works of Sir John
Lubbock and Mr. Tylor, of which I just now spoke. I can only bring out
two of them here. First, it is plain that the first pre-historic men
had the flint tools which the lowest savages use, and we can trace a
regular improvement in the finish and in the efficiency of their simple
instruments corresponding to that which we see at this day in the
upward transition from the lowest savages to the highest. Now it is not
conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting
their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple
tools. They are exactly those needed by very poor people who have no
instincts, and those were used by such, for savages are the poorest of
the poor. It would be very strange if these same utensils, no more no
less, were used by beings whose discerning instincts made them in
comparison altogether rich. Such a being would know how to manage
without such things, or if it wanted any, would know how to make better.
And, secondly, on the moral side we know that the pre-historic age was
one of much licence, and the proof is that in that age descent was
reckoned through the female only, just as it is among the lowest
savages. 'Maternity,' it has been said, 'is a matter of fact, paternity
is a matter of opinion;' and this not very refined expression exactly
conveys the connection of the lower human societies. In all
slave-owning communities--in Rome formerly, and in Virginia
yesterday--such was the accepted rule of law; the child kept the
condition of the mother, whatever that condition was; nobody inquired
as to the father; the law, once for all, assumed that he could not be
ascertained. Of course no remains exist which prove this or anything
else about the morality of pre-historic man; and morality can only be
described by remains amounting to a history. But one of the axioms of
pre-historic investigation binds us to accept this as the morality of
the pre-historic races if we receive that axiom. It is plain that the
wide-spread absence of a characteristic which greatly aids the
possessor in the conflicts between race and race probably indicates
that the primary race did not possess that quality. If one-armed people
existed almost everywhere in every continent; if people were found in
every intermediate stage, some with the mere germ of the second arm,
some with the second arm half-grown, some with it nearly complete; we
should then argue--'the first race cannot have had two arms, because
men have always been fighting, and as two arms are a great advantage in
fighting, one-armed and half-armed people would immediately have been
killed off the earth; they never could have attained any numbers. A
diffused deficiency in a warlike power is the best attainable evidence
that the pre-historic men did not possess that power.' If this axiom be
received it is palpably applicable to the marriage-bond of primitive
races. A cohesive 'family' is the best germ for a campaigning nation.
In a Roman family the boys, from the time of their birth, were bred to
a domestic despotism, which well prepared them for a subjection in
after life to a military discipline, a military drill, and a military
despotism. They were ready to obey their generals because they were
compelled to obey their fathers; they centered the world in manhood
because as children they were bred in homes where the tradition of
passionate valour was steadied by the habit of implacable order. And
nothing of this is possible in loosely-bound family groups (if they can
be called families at all) where the father is more or less uncertain,
where descent is not traced through him, where, that is, property does
not come from him, where such property as he has passes to his SURE
relations--to his sister's children. An ill-knit nation which does not
recognise paternity as a legal relation, would be conquered like a mob
by any other nation which had a vestige or a beginning of the patria
potestas. If, therefore, all the first men had the strict morality of
families, they would no more have permitted the rise of SEMI-moral
nations anywhere in the world than the Romans would have permitted them
to arise in Italy. They would have conquered, killed, and plundered
them before they became nations; and yet semi-moral nations exist all
over the world.
It will be said that this argument proves too much. For it proves that
not only the somewhat-before-history men, but the absolutely first men,
could not have had close family instincts, and yet if they were like
most though not all of the animals nearest to man they had such
instincts. There is a great story of some African chief who expressed
his disgust at adhering to one wife, by saying it was 'like the
monkeys.' The semi-brutal ancestors of man, if they existed, had very
likely an instinct of constancy which the African chief, and others
like him, had lost. How, then, if it was so beneficial, could they ever
lose it? The answer is plain: they could lose it if they had it as an
irrational propensity and habit, and not as a moral and rational
feeling. When reason came, it would weaken that habit like all other
irrational habits. And reason is a force of such infinite vigour--a
victory-making agent of such incomparable efficiency--that its
continually diminishing valuable instincts will not matter if it grows
itself steadily all the while. The strongest competitor wins in both
the cases we are imagining; in the first, a race with intelligent
reason, but without blind instinct, beats a race with that instinct but
without that reason; in the second, a race with reason and high moral
feeling beats a race with reason but without high moral feeling. And
the two are palpably consistent.
There is every reason, therefore, to suppose pre-historic man to be
deficient in much of sexual morality, as we regard that morality. As to
the detail of 'primitive marriage' or 'NO marriage,' for that is pretty
much what it comes to, there is of course much room for discussion.
Both Mr. M'Clennan and Sir John Lubbock are too accomplished reasoners
and too careful investigators to wish conclusions so complex and
refined as theirs to be accepted all in a mass, besides that on some
critical points the two differ. But the main issue is not dependent on
nice arguments. Upon broad grounds we may believe that in pre-historic
times men fought both to gain and to keep their wives; that the
strongest man took the best wife away from the weaker man; and that if
the wife was restive, did not like the change, her new husband beat
her; that (as in Australia now) a pretty woman was sure to undergo many
such changes, and her back to bear the marks of many such
chastisements; that in the principal department of human conduct (which
is the most tangible and easily traced, and therefore the most
obtainable specimen of the rest) the minds of pre-historic men were not
so much immoral as UNmoral: they did not violate a rule of conscience,
but they were somehow not sufficiently developed for them to feel on
this point any conscience, or for it to prescribe to them any rule.
The same argument applies to religion. There are, indeed, many points
of the greatest obscurity, both in the present savage religions and in
the scanty vestiges of pre-historic religion. But one point is clear.
All savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck. Savages
believe that casual omens are a sign of coming events; that some trees
are lucky, that some animals are lucky, that some places are lucky,
that some indifferent actions--indifferent apparently and indifferent
really--are lucky, and so of others in each class, that they are
unlucky. Nor can a savage well distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or
ill-luck, as we should say, and a deity which causes the good or the
ill; the indicating precedent and the causing being are to the savage
mind much the same; a steadiness of head far beyond savages is required
consistently to distinguish them. And it is extremely natural that they
should believe so. They are playing a game--the game of life--with no
knowledge of its rules. They have not an idea of the laws of nature; if
they want to cure a man, they have no conception at all of true
scientific remedies. If they try anything they must try it upon bare
chance. The most useful modern remedies were often discovered in this
bare, empirical way. What could be more improbable--at least, for what
could a pre-historic man have less given a good reason--than that some
mineral springs should stop rheumatic pains, or mineral springs make
wounds heal quickly? And yet the chance knowledge of the marvellous
effect of gifted springs is probably as ancient as any sound knowledge
as to medicine whatever. No doubt it was mere casual luck at first that
tried these springs and found them answer. Somebody by accident tried
them and by that accident was instantly cured. The chance which happily
directed men in this one case, misdirected them in a thousand cases.
Some expedition had answered when the resolution to undertake it was
resolved on under an ancient tree, and accordingly that tree became
lucky and sacred. Another expedition failed when a magpie crossed its
path, and a magpie was said to be unlucky. A serpent crossed the path
of another expedition, and it had a marvellous victory, and accordingly
the serpent became a sign of great luck (and what a savage cannot
distinguish from it--a potent deity which makes luck). Ancient medicine
is equally unreasonable: as late down as the Middle Ages it was full of
superstitions founded on mere luck. The collection of prescriptions
published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls abounds in
such fancies as we should call them. According to one of them, unless I
forget, some disease--a fever, I think--is supposed to be cured by
placing the patient between two halves of a hare and a pigeon recently
killed.[7] Nothing can be plainer than that there is no ground for this
kind of treatment, and that the idea of it arose out of a chance hit,
which came right and succeeded. There was nothing so absurd or so
contrary to common sense as we are apt to imagine about it. The lying
between two halves of a hare or a pigeon was a priori, and to the
inexperienced mind, quite as likely to cure disease as the drinking
certain draughts of nasty mineral water. Both, somehow, were tried;
both answered--that is. Both were at the first time, or at some
memorable time, followed by a remarkable recovery; and the only
difference is, that the curative power of the mineral is persistent,
and happens constantly; whereas, on an average of trials, the proximity
of a hare or pigeon is found to have no effect, and cures take place as
often in cases where it is not tried as in cases where it is. The
nature of minds which are deeply engaged in watching events of which
they do not know the reason, is to single out some fabulous
accompaniment or some wonderful series of good luck or bad luck, and to
dread ever after that accompaniment if it brings evil, and to love it
and long for it if it brings good. All savages are in this position,
and the fascinating effect of striking accompaniments (in some single
case) of singular good fortune and singular calamity, is one great
source of savage religions.
[7] Readers of Scott's life will remember that an admirer of his in
humble life proposed to cure him of inflammation of the bowels by
making him sleep a whole night on twelve smooth stones, painfully
collected by the admirer from twelve brooks, which was, it appeared, a
recipe of sovereign traditional power. Scott gravely told the proposer
that he had mistaken the charm, and that the stones were of no virtue
unless wrapped up in the petticoat of a widow who never wished to marry
again, and as no such widow seems to have been forthcoming, he escaped
the remedy.
Gamblers to this day are, with respect to the chance part of their
game, in much the same plight as savages with respect to the main
events of their whole lives. And we well know how superstitious they
all are. To this day very sensible whist-players have a certain
belief--not, of course, a fixed conviction, but still a certain
impression--that there is 'luck under a black deuce,' and will half
mutter some not very gentle maledictions if they turn up as a trump the
four of clubs, because it brings ill-luck, and is 'the devil's
bed-post.' Of course grown-up gamblers have too much general knowledge,
too much organised common sense to prolong or cherish such ideas; they
are ashamed of entertaining them, though, nevertheless, they cannot
entirely drive them out of their minds. But child gamblers--a number of
little boys set to play loo-are just in the position of savages, for
their fancy is still impressible, and they have not as yet been
thoroughly subjected to the confuting experience of the real world and
child gamblers have idolatries--at least I know that years ago a set of
boy loo-players, of whom I was one, had considerable faith in a certain
'pretty fish' which was larger and more nicely made than the other fish
we had. We gave the best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring
luck;' we fought for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered
to buy it with many other fish from the envied holder, and I am sure I
have often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from
me. Persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such
there still are, will say that I ought not to mention this, because it
seems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly
teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional
little facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate
explanations of the totem--the 'clan' deity--the beast or bird which in
some supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it--do not
seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives
among--the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early boyhood. And
very naturally so, for a grave philosopher is separated from primitive
thought by the whole length of human culture; but an impressible child
is as near to, and its thoughts are as much like, that thought as
anything can now be.
The worst of these superstitions is that they are easy to make and hard
to destroy. A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm
and many idols. I doubt if even a single run of luck be necessary. I am
sure that if an elder boy said that 'the pretty fish was lucky--of
course it was,' all the lesser boys would believe it, and in a week it
would be an accepted idol. And I suspect the Nestor of a savage
tribe--the aged repository of guiding experience--would have an equal
power of creating superstitions. But if once created they are most
difficult to eradicate. If any one said that the amulet was of certain
efficacy--that it always acted whenever it was applied--it would of
course be very easy to disprove; but no one ever said that the 'pretty
fish' always brought luck; it was only said that it did so on the
whole, and that if you had it you were more likely to be lucky than if
you were without it. But it requires a long table of statistics of the
results of games to disprove this thoroughly; and by the time people
can make tables they are already above such beliefs, and do not need to
have them disproved. Nor in many cases where omens or amulets are used
would such tables be easy to make, for the data could not be found; and
a rash attempt to subdue the superstition by a striking instance may
easily end in confirming it. Francis Newman, in the remarkable
narrative of his experience as a missionary in Asia, gives a curious
example of this. As he was setting out on a distant and somewhat
hazardous expedition, his native servants tied round the neck of the
mule a small bag supposed to be of preventive and mystic virtue. As the
place was crowded and a whole townspeople looking on, Mr. Newman
thought that he would take an opportunity of disproving the
superstition. So he made a long speech of explanation in his best
Arabic, and cut off the bag, to the horror of all about him. But as
ill-fortune would have it, the mule had not got thirty yards up the
street before she put her foot into a hole and broke her leg; upon
which all the natives were confirmed in their former faith in the power
of the bag, and said, 'You see now what happens to unbelievers.'
Now the present point as to these superstitions is their military
inexpediency. A nation which was moved by these superstitions as to
luck would be at the mercy of a nation, in other respects equal, which,
was not subject to them. In historical times, as we know, the panic
terror at eclipses has been the ruin of the armies which have felt it;
or has made them delay to do something necessary, or rush to do
something destructive. The necessity of consulting the auspices, while
it was sincerely practised and before it became a trick for disguising
foresight, was in classical history very dangerous. And much worse is
it with savages, whose life is one of omens, who must always consult
their sorcerers, who may be turned this way or that by some chance
accident, who, if they were intellectually able to frame a consistent
military policy--and some savages in war see farther than in anything
else--are yet liable to be put out, distracted, confused, and turned
aside in the carrying out of it, because some event, really innocuous
but to their minds foreboding, arrests and frightens them. A religion
full of omens is a military misfortune, and will bring a nation to
destruction if set to fight with a nation at all equal otherwise, who
had a religion without omens. Clearly then, if all early men
unanimously, or even much the greater number of early men, had a
religion WITHOUT omens, no religion, or scarcely a religion, anywhere
in the world could have come into existence WITH omens; the immense
majority possessing the superior military advantage, the small minority
destitute of it would have been crushed out and destroyed. But, on the
contrary, all over the world religions with omens once existed, in most
they still exist; all savages have them, and deep in the most ancient
civilisations we find the plainest traces of them. Unquestionably
therefore the pre-historic religion was like that of savages--viz., in
this that it largely consisted in the watching of omens and in the
worship of lucky beasts and things, which are a sort of embodied and
permanent omens.
It may indeed be objected--an analogous objection was taken as to the
ascertained moral deficiencies of pre-historic mankind--that if this
religion of omens was so pernicious and so likely to ruin a race, no
race would ever have acquired it. But it is only likely to ruin a race
contending with another race otherwise equal. The fancied discovery of
these omens--not an extravagant thing in an early age, as I have tried
to show, not a whit then to be distinguished as improbable from the
discovery of healing herbs or springs which pre-historic men also did
discover--the discovery of omens was an act of reason as far as it
went. And if in reason the omen-finding race were superior to the races
in conflict with them, the omen-finding race would win, and we may
conjecture that omen-finding races were thus superior since they won
and prevailed in every latitude and in every zone.
In all particulars therefore we would keep to our formula, and say that
pre-historic man was substantially a savage like present savages, in
morals, intellectual attainments, and in religion; but that he differed
in this from our present savages, that he had not had time to ingrain
his nature so deeply with bad habits, and to impress bad beliefs so
unalterably on his mind as they have. They have had ages to fix the
stain on them selves, but primitive man was younger and had no such
time.
I have elaborated the evidence for this conclusion at what may seem
needless and tedious length, but I have done so on account of its
importance. If we accept it, and if we are sure of it, it will help us
to many most important conclusions. Some of these I have dwelt upon in
previous papers, but I will set them down again.
First, it will in part explain to us what the world was about, so to
speak, before history. It was making, so to say, the intellectual
consistence--the connected and coherent habits, the preference of
equable to violent enjoyment, the abiding capacity to prefer, if
required, the future to the present, the mental pre-requisites without
which civilisation could not begin to exist, and without which it would
soon cease to exist even had it begun. The primitive man, like the
present savage, had not these pre-requisites, but, unlike the present
savage, he was capable of acquiring them and of being trained in them,
for his nature was still soft and still impressible, and possibly,
strange as it may seem to say, his outward circumstances were more
favourable to an attainment of civilisation than those of our present
savages. At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men
capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it
is written, and we can see how it was done.
Two preliminary processes indeed there are which seem inscrutable.
There was some strange preliminary process by which the main races of
men were formed; they began to exist very early, and except by
intermixture no new ones have been formed since. It was a process
singularly active in early ages, and singularly quiescent in later
ages. Such differences as exist between the Aryan, the Turanian, the
negro, the red man, and the Australian, are differences
greater--altogether than any causes now active are capable of creating
in present men, at least in any way explicable by us. And there is,
therefore, a strong presumption that (as great authorities now hold)
these differences were created before the nature of men, especially
before the mind and the adaptive nature of men had taken their existing
constitution. And a second condition precedent of civilisation seems,
at least to me, to have been equally inherited, if the doctrine of
evolution be true, from some previous state or condition. I at least
find it difficult to conceive of men, at all like the present men,
unless existing in something like families, that is, in groups avowedly
connected, at least on the mother's side, and probably always with a
vestige of connection, more or less, on the father's side, and unless
these groups were like many animals, gregarious, tinder a leader more
or less fixed. It is almost beyond imagination how man, as we know man,
could by any sort of process have gained this step in civilisation. And
it is a great advantage, to say the least of it, in the evolution
theory that it enables us to remit this difficulty to a pre-existing
period in nature, where other instincts and powers than our present
ones may perhaps have come into play, and where our imagination can
hardly travel. At any rate, for the present I may assume these two
steps in human progress made, and these two conditions realized.
The rest of the way, if we grant these two conditions, is plainer. The
first thing is the erection of what--we may call a custom-making power,
that is, of an authority which can enforce a fixed rule of life, which,
by means of that fixed rule, can in some degree create a calculable
future, which can make it rational to postpone present violent but
momentary pleasure for future continual pleasure, because it ensures,
what else is not sure, that if the sacrifice of what is in hand be
made, enjoyment of the contingent expected recompense will be received.
Of course I am not saying that we shall find in early society any
authority of which these shall be the motives. We must have travelled
ages (unless all our evidence be wrong) from the first men before there
was a comprehension of such motives. I only mean that the first thing
in early society was an authority of whose action this shall be the
result, little as it knew what it was doing, little as it would have
cared if it had known. The conscious end of early societies was not at
all, or scarcely at all, the protection of life and property, as it was
assumed to be by the eighteenth-century theory of government. Even in
early historical ages--in the youth of the human race, not its
childhood--such is not the nature of early states. Sir Henry Maine has
taught us that the earliest subject of jurisprudence is not the
separate property of the individual, but the common property of the
family group; what we should call private property hardly then existed;
or if it did, was so small as to be of no importance: it was like the
things little children are now allowed to CALL their own, which they
feel it very hard to have taken from them, but which they have no real
right to hold and keep. Such is our earliest property-law, and our
earliest life--law is that the lives of all members of the family group
were at the mercy of the head of the group. As far as the individual
goes, neither his goods nor his existence were protected at all. And
this may teach us that something else was lacked in early societies
besides what in our societies we now think of.
I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if
not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement
of LUCKY rites. I do not like to say religious rites, because that
would involve me in a great controversy as to the power, or even the
existence, of early religions. But there is no savage tribe without a
notion of luck; and perhaps there is hardly any which has not a
conception of luck for the tribe as a tribe, of which each member has
not some such a belief that his own action or the action of any other
member of it--that he or the others doing anything which was unlucky or
would bring a 'curse'--might cause evil not only to himself, but to all
the tribe as well. I have said so much about 'luck' and about its
naturalness before, that I ought to say nothing again. But I must add
that the contagiousness of the idea of 'luck' is remarkable. It does
not at all, like the notion of desert, cleave to the doer. There are
people to this day who would not permit in their house people to sit
down thirteen to dinner. They do not expect any evil to themselves
particularly for permitting it or sharing in it, but they cannot get
out of their heads the idea that some one or more of the number will
come to harm if the thing is done. This is what Mr. Tylor calls
survival in culture. The faint belief in the corporate liability of
these thirteen is the feeble relic and last dying representative of
that great principle of corporate liability to good and ill fortune
which has filled such an immense place in the world.
The traces of it are endless. You can hardly take up a book of travels
in rude regions without finding 'I wanted to do so and so. But I was
not permitted, for the natives feared it might bring ill luck on the
"party," or perhaps the tribe.' Mr. Galton, for instance, could hardly
feed his people. The Damaras, he says, have numberless superstitions
about meat which are very troublesome. In the first place, each tribe,
or rather family, is prohibited from eating cattle of certain colours,
savages 'who come from the sun' eschewing sheep spotted in a particular
way, which those 'who come from the rain' have no objection to. 'As,'
he says, 'there are five or six eandas or descents, and I had men from
most of them with me, I could hardly kill a sheep that everybody would
eat;' and he could not keep his meat, for it had to be given away
because it was commanded by one superstition, nor buy milk, the staple
food of those parts, because it was prohibited by another. And so on
without end. Doing anything unlucky is in their idea what putting on
something that attracts the electric fluid is in fact, you cannot be
sure that harm will not be done, not only to the person in fault, but
to those about him too. As in the Scriptural phrase, doing what is of
evil omen is 'like one that letteth out water.' He cannot tell what are
the consequences of his act, who will share them, or how they can be
prevented.
In the earliest historical nations I need not say that the corporate
liabilities of states is to a modern student their most curious
feature. The belief is indeed raised far above the notion of mere
'luck,' because there is a distinct belief in gods or a god whom the
act offends, But the indiscriminate character of the punishment still
survives; not only the mutilator of the Hermae, but all the
Athenians--not only the violator of the rites of the Bona dea, but all
the Romans--are liable to the curse engendered; and so all through
ancient history. The strength of the corporate anxiety so created is
known to every one. Not only was it greately than any anxiety about
personal property, but it was immeasurably greater. Naturally, even
reasonably we may say, it was greater. The dread of the powers of
nature, or of the beings who rule those powers, is properly, upon
grounds of reason, as much greater than any other dread as the might of
the powers of nature is superior to that of any other powers. If a
tribe or a nation have, by a contagious fancy, come to believe that the
doing of any one thing by any number will be 'unlucky,' that is, will
bring an intense and vast liability on them all, then that tribe and
that nation will prevent the doing of that thing more than anything
else. They will deal with the most cherished chief who even by chance
should do it, as in a similar case the sailors dealt with Jonah.
I do not of course mean that this strange condition of mind as it seems
to us was the sole source of early customs. On the contrary, man might
be described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many
of the short descriptions. In whatever way a man has done anything
once, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times
he has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great
tendency to make others do it also. He transmits his formed customs to
his children by example and by teaching. This is true now of human
nature, and will always be true, no doubt. But what is peculiar in
early societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner
or later a semi-supernatural sanction. The whole community is possessed
with the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm
unspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources
you cannot imagine. As people now-a-days believe that 'murder will
out,' and that great crime will bring even an earthly punishment, so in
early times people believed that for any breach of sacred custom
certain retribution would happen. To this day many semi-civilised races
have great difficulty in regarding any arrangement as binding and
conclusive unless they can also manage to look at it as an inherited
usage. Sir H. Maine, in his last work, gives a most curious case. The
English Government in India has in many cases made new and great works
of irrigation, of which no ancient Indian Government ever thought; and
it has generally left it to the native village community to say what
share each man of the village should have in the water; and the village
authorities have accordingly laid down a series of most minute rules
about it. But the peculiarity is that in no case do these rules
'purport to emanate from the personal authority of their author or
authors, which rests on grounds of reason not on grounds of innocence
and sanctity; nor do they assume to be dictated by a sense of equity;
there is always, I am assured, a sort of fiction under which some
customs as to the distribution of water are supposed to have emanated
from a remote antiquity, although, in fact, no such artificial supply
had ever been so much as thought of.' So difficult does this ancient
race--like, probably, in this respect so much of the ancient world-find
it to imagine a rule which is obligatory, but not traditional.
The ready formation of custom-making groups in early society must have
been greatly helped by the easy divisions of that society. Much of the
world--all Europe, for example--was then covered by the primeval
forest; men had only conquered, and as yet could only conquer, a few
plots and corners from it. These narrow spaces were soon exhausted, and
if numbers grew some of the new people must move. Accordingly,
migrations were constant, and were necessary. And these migrations were
not like those of modern times. There was no such feeling as binds even
Americans who hate, or speak as if they hated, the present political
England--nevertheless to 'the old home.' There was then no organised
means of communication--no practical communication, we may say, between
parted members of the same group; those who once went out from the
parent society went out for ever; they left no abiding remembrance, and
they kept no abiding regard. Even the language of the parent tribe and
of the descended tribe would differ in a generation or two. There being
no written literature and no spoken intercourse, the speech of both
would vary (the speech of such communities is always varying), and
would vary in different directions. One set of causes, events, and
associations would act on one, and another set on another; sectional
differences would soon arise, and, for speaking purposes, what
philologists call a dialectical difference often amounts to real and
total difference: no connected interchange of thought is possible any
longer. Separate groups soon 'set up house;' the early societies begin
a new set of customs, acquire and keep a distinct and special 'luck.'
If it were not for this facility of new formations, one good or bad
custom would long since have 'corrupted' the world; but even this would
not have been enough but for those continual wars, of which I have
spoken at such length in the essay on 'The Use of Conflict,' that I
need say nothing now. These are by their incessant fractures of old
images, and by their constant infusion of new elements, the real
regenerators of society. And whatever be the truth or falsehood of the
general dislike to mixed and half-bred races, no such suspicion was
probably applicable to the early mixtures of primitive society.
Supposing, as is likely, each great aboriginal race to have had its own
quarter of the world (a quarter, as it would seem, corresponding to the
special quarters in which plants and animals are divided), then the
immense majority of the mixtures would be between men of different
tribes but of the same stock, and this no one would object to, but
every one would praise.
In general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered
(most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but
they would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder
of civilisation are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow
and tedious. And this is probably the better if they are to produce a
good and quick effect in civilising those they have conquered. The
experience of the English in India shows--if it shows anything--that a
highly civilised race may fail in producing a rapidly excellent effect
on a less civilised race, because it is too good and too different. The
two are not en rapport together; the merits of the one are not the
merits prized by the other; the manner-language of the one is not the
manner-language of the other. The higher being is not and cannot be a
model for the lower; he could not mould himself on it if he would, and
would not if he could. Consequently, the two races have long lived
together, 'near and yet far off,' daily seeing one another and daily
interchanging superficial thoughts, but in the depths of their mind
separated by a whole era of civilisation, and so affecting one another
only a little in comparison with what might have been hoped. But in
early societies there were no such great differences, and the rather
superior conqueror must have easily improved the rather inferior
conquered.
It is in the interior of these customary groups that national
characters are formed. As I wrote a whole essay on the manner of this
before, I cannot speak of it now. By proscribing nonconformist members
for generations, and cherishing and rewarding conformist members,
nonconformists become fewer and fewer, and conformists more and more.
Most men mostly imitate what they see, and catch the tone of what they
hear, and so a settled type--a persistent character--is formed. Nor is
the process wholly mental. I cannot agree, though the greatest
authorities say it, that no 'unconscious selection' has been at work at
the breed of man. If neither that nor conscious selection has been at
work, how did there come to be these breeds, and such there are in the
greatest numbers, though we call them nations? In societies
tyrannically customary, uncongenial minds become first cowed, then
melancholy, then out of health, and at last die. A Shelley in New
England could hardly have lived, and a race of Shelleys would have been
impossible. Mr. Galton wishes that breeds of men should be created by
matching men with marked characteristics with women of like
characteristics. But surely this is what nature has been doing time out
of mind, and most in the rudest nations and hardest times. Nature
disheartened in each generation the ill-fitted members of each
customary group, so deprived them of their full vigour, or, if they
were weakly, killed them. The Spartan character was formed because none
but people with, a Spartan make of mind could endure a Spartan
existence. The early Roman character was so formed too. Perhaps all
very marked national characters can be traced back to a time of rigid
and pervading discipline. In modern times, when society is more
tolerant, new national characters are neither so strong, so featurely,
nor so uniform.
In this manner society was occupied in pre-historic times,--it is
consistent with and explicable by our general principle as to savages,
that society should for ages have been so occupied, strange as that
conclusion is, and incredible as it would be, if we had not been taught
by experience to believe strange things.
Secondly, this principle and this conception of pre-historic times
explain to us the meaning and the origin of the oldest and strangest of
social anomalies--an anomaly which is among the first things history
tells us--the existence of caste nations. Nothing is at first sight
stranger than the aspect of those communities where several nations
seem to be bound up together--where each is governed by its own rule of
law, where no one pays any deference to the rule of law of any of the
others. But if our principles be true, these are just the nations most
likely to last, which would have a special advantage in early times,
and would probably not only maintain themselves, but conquer and kill
out others also. The characteristic necessity of early society as we
have seen, is strict usage and binding coercive custom. But the obvious
result and inevitable evil of that is monotony in society; no one can
be much different from his fellows, or can cultivate his difference.
Such societies are necessarily weak from the want of variety in their
elements. But a caste nation is various and composite; and has in a
mode suited to early societies the constant co-operation of contrasted
persons, which in a later age is one of the greatest triumphs of
civilisation. In a primitive age the division between the warrior caste
and the priestly caste is especially advantageous. Little popular and
little deserving to be popular now-a-days as are priestly hierarchies,
most probably the beginnings of science were made in such, and were for
ages transmitted in such. An intellectual class was in that age only
possible when it was protected by a notion that whoever hurt them would
certainly be punished by heaven. In this class apart discoveries were
slowly made and some beginning of mental discipline was slowly matured.
But such a community is necessarily unwarlike, and the superstition
which protects priests from home murder will not aid them in conflict
with the foreigner. Few nations mind killing their enemies' priests,
and many priestly civilisations have perished without record before
they well began. But such a civilisation will not perish if a warrior
caste is tacked on to it and is bound to defend it. On the contrary,
such a civilisation will be singularly likely to live. The head of the
sage will help the arm of the soldier.
That a nation divided into castes must be a most difficult thing to
found is plain. Probably it could only begin in a country several times
conquered, and where the boundaries of each caste rudely coincided with
the boundaries of certain sets of victors and vanquished. But, as we
now see, when founded it is a likely nation to last. A party-coloured
community of many tribes and many usages is more likely to get on, and
help itself, than a nation of a single lineage and one monotonous rule.
I say 'at first,' because I apprehend that in this case, as in so many
others in the puzzling history of progress, the very institutions which
most aid at step number one are precisely those which most impede at
step number two. The whole of a caste nation is more various than the
whole of a non-caste nation, but each caste itself is more monotonous
than anything is, or can be, in a non-caste nation. Gradually a habit
of action and type of mind forces itself on each caste, and it is
little likely to be rid of it, for all who enter it are taught in one
way and trained to the same employment. Several non-caste nations have
still continued to progress. But all caste nations have stopped early,
though some have lasted long. Each colour in the singular composite of
these tesselated societies has an indelible and invariable shade.
Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how
many have become stationary. It is in the process of becoming a nation,
and in order to become such, that they subjected themselves to the
influence which has made them stationary. They could not become a real
nation without binding themselves by a fixed law and usage, and it is
the fixity of that law and usage which has kept them as they were ever
since. I wrote a whole essay on this before, so I need say nothing now;
and I only name it because it is one of the most important consequences
of this view of society, if not indeed the most important.
Again, we can thus explain one of the most curious facts of the present
world. 'Manner,' says a shrewd observer, who has seen much of existing
life, 'manner gets regularly worse as you go from the East to the West;
it is best in Asia, not so good in Europe, and altogether bad in the
western states of America.' And the reason is this--an imposing manner
is a dignified usage, which tends to preserve itself and also all other
existing usages along with itself. It tends to induce the obedience of
mankind. One of the cleverest novelists of the present day has a
curious dissertation to settle why on the hunting-field, and in all
collections of men, some men 'snub and some men get snubbed;' and why
society recognises in each case the ascendancy or the subordination as
if it was right. 'It is not at all,' Mr. Trollope fully explains, 'rare
ability which gains the supremacy; very often the ill-treated man is
quite as clever as the man who ill-treats him. Nor does it absolutely
depend on wealth; for, though great wealth is almost always a
protection from social ignominy, and will always ensure a passive
respect, it will not in a miscellaneous group of men of itself gain an
active power to snub others. Schoolboys, in the same way,' the novelist
adds, 'let some boys have dominion, and make other boys slaves.' And he
decides, no doubt truly, that in each case 'something in the manner or
gait' of the supreme boy or man has much to do with it. On this account
in early society a dignified manner is of essential importance; it is,
then, not only an auxiliary mode of acquiring respect, but a principal
mode. The competing institutions which have now much superseded it, had
not then begun. Ancient institutions or venerated laws did not then
exist; and the habitual ascendancy of grave manner was a primary force
in winning and calming mankind. To this day it is rare to find a savage
chief without it; and almost always they greatly excel in it. Only last
year a red Indian chief came from the prairies to see President Grant,
and everybody declared that he had the best manners in Washington. The
secretaries and heads of departments seemed vulgar to him; though, of
course, intrinsically they were infinitely above him, for he was only
'a plundering rascal.' But an impressive manner had been a tradition in
the societies in which he had lived, because it was of great value in
those societies; and it is not a tradition in America, for nowhere is
it less thought of, or of less use, than in a rough English colony; the
essentials of civilisation there depend on far different influences.
And manner, being so useful and so important, usages and customs grow
up to develop it. Asiatic society is full of such things, if it should
not rather be said to be composed of them.
'From the spirit and decision of a public envoy upon ceremonies and
forms,' says Sir John Malcolm, 'the Persians very generally form their
opinion of the character of the country he represents. This fact I had
read in books, and all I saw convinced me of its truth. Fortunately the
Elchee had resided at some of the principal courts of India, whose
usages are very similar. He was, therefore, deeply versed in that
important science denominated "Kaida-e-nishest-oo-berkhast" (or the art
of sitting and rising), in which is included a knowledge of the forms
and manners of good society, and particularly those of Asiatic kings
and their courts.
'He was quite aware, on his first arrival in Persia, of the consequence
of every step he took on such delicate points; he was, therefore,
anxious to fight all his battles regarding ceremonies before he came
near the footstool of royalty. We were consequently plagued, from the
moment we landed at Ambusheher, till we reached Shiraz, with daily
almost hourly drilling, that we might be perfect in our demeanour at
all places, and under all circumstances. We were carefully instructed
where to ride in a procession, where to stand or sit within-doors, when
to rise from our seats, how far to advance to meet a visitor, and to
what part of the tent or house we were to follow him when he departed,
if he was of sufficient rank to make us stir a step.
'The regulations of our risings and standings, and movings and
reseatings, were, however, of comparatively less importance than the
time and manner of smoking our Kellians and taking our coffee. It is
quite astonishing how much depends upon coffee and tobacco in Persia.
Men are gratified or offended, according to the mode in which these
favourite refreshments are offered. You welcome a visitor, or send him
off, by the way in which you call for a pipe or a cup of coffee. Then
you mark, in the most minute manner, every shade of attention and
consideration, by the mode in which he is treated. If he be above you,
you present these refreshments yourself, and do not partake till
commanded; if equal, you exchange pipes, and present him with coffee,
taking the next cup yourself; if a little below you, and you wish to
pay him attention, you leave him to smoke his own pipe, but the servant
gives him, according to your condescending nod, the first cup of
coffee; if much inferior, you keep your distance and maintain your
rank, by taking the first cup of coffee yourself, and then directing
the servant, by a wave of the hand, to help the guest. 'When a visitor
arrives, the coffee and pipe are called for to welcome him; a second
call for these articles announces that he may depart; but this part of
the ceremony varies according to the relative rank or intimacy of the
parties.
'These matters may appear light to those with whom observances of this
character are habits, not rules; but in this country they are of
primary consideration, a man's importance with himself and with others
depending on them.'
In ancient customary societies the influence of manner, which is a
primary influence, has been settled into rules, so that it may aid
established usages and not thwart them--that it may, above all, augment
the HABIT of going by custom, and not break and weaken it. Every aid,
as we have seen, was wanted to impose the yoke of custom upon such
societies; and impressing the power of manner to serve them was one of
the greatest aids.
And lastly, we now understand why order and civilisation are so
unstable even in progressive communities. We see frequently in states
what physiologists call 'Atavism'--the return, in part, to the unstable
nature of their barbarous ancestors. Such scenes of cruelty and horror
as happened in the great French Revolution, and as happen, more or
less, in every great riot, have always been said to bring out a secret
and suppressed side of human nature; and we now see that they were the
outbreak of inherited passions long repressed by fixed custom, but
starting into life as soon as that repression was catastrophically
removed and when sudden choice was given. The irritability of mankind,
too, is only part of their imperfect, transitory civilisation and of
their original savage nature. They could not look steadily to a given
end for an hour in their pre-historic state; and even now, when excited
or when suddenly and wholly thrown out of their old grooves, they can
scarcely do so. Even some very high races, as the French and the Irish,
seem in troubled times hardly to be stable at all, but to be carried
everywhere as the passions of the moment and the ideas generated at the
hour may determine. But, thoroughly to deal with such phenomena as
these, we must examine the mode in which national characters can be
emancipated from the rule of custom, and can be prepared for the use of
choice.