EARLY GROUP LIFE
To understand the origin and growth of moral life, it is essential to
understand primitive society. And while there is much that is uncertain,
there is one fact of capital importance which stands out clearly. This
is _the dominant influence of group life_. It is not asserted that all
peoples have had precisely the same type of groups, or the same degree
of group solidarity. It is beyond question that the ancestors of modern
civilized races lived under the general types of group life which will
be outlined, and that these types or their survivals are found among the
great mass of peoples to-day.
Sec. 1. TYPICAL FACTS OF GROUP LIFE
Consider the following incident as related by Dr. Gray:
"A Chinese aided by his wife flogged his mother. The imperial
order not only commanded that the criminals should be put to
death; it further directed that the head of the clan should be put
to death; that the immediate neighbors each receive eighty blows
and be sent into exile; that the head or representatives of the
graduates of the first degree (or B.A.) among whom the male
offender ranked should be flogged and exiled; that the granduncle,
the uncle, and two elder brothers should be put to death; that the
prefect and the rulers should for a time be deprived of their
rank; that on the face of the mother of the female offender four
Chinese characters expressive of neglect of duty towards her
daughter should be tattooed, and that she be exiled to a distant
province; that the father of the female offender, a bachelor of
arts, should not be allowed to take any higher literary degrees,
and that he be flogged and exiled; that the son of the offenders
should receive another name, and that the lands of the offender
for a time remain fallow." (J. H. GRAY, _China_, Vol. I., pp.
237 f.)
Put beside this the story of Achan:
Achan had taken for his own possession certain articles from the
spoil of Jericho which had been set apart or "devoted" to Jehovah.
Israel then suffered a defeat in battle. When Achan's act became
known, "Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of
Zerah, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons and his
daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his
tent, and all that he had.... And all Israel stoned him with
stones; and they burned them with fire and stoned them with
stones." (JOSHUA vii: 24, 25.)
The converse of these situations is brought out in the regulations of
the Kumi, a Japanese local institution comprising five or more
households:
"As members of a Kumi we will cultivate friendly feelings even
more than with our relatives, and will promote each other's
happiness as well as share each other's grief. If there is an
unprincipled or lawless person in a Kumi, we shall all share the
responsibility for him." (SIMMONS and WIGMORE, _Transactions,
Asiatic Society of Japan_, xix., 177 f.)
For another aspect of the group take Caesar's description of landholding
among the Germans:
"No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has
limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and
chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups
(_gentibus cognationibusque hominum_) and to those (_other_
groups) who live together." (_De Bell. Gall._, VI., 22.)
Of the Greeks, our intellectual ancestors, as well as fellow Aryans, it
is stated that in Attica, even to a late period, the land remained to a
large degree in possession of ideal persons, gods, phylae (tribes) or
phratries, kinships, political communities. Even when the superficies of
the land might be regarded as private, mines were reserved as
public.[3] The basis on which these kinship groups rested is thus stated
by Grote:[4]
"All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well
as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and
tendencies of the Grecian mind--a coalescence of the idea of
worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special
religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed."
"The god or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their
sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor to whom they
owed their origin."
Coulanges gives a similar statement as to the ancient family group:[5]
"The members of the ancient family were united by something more
powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the
religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused
the family to form a single body both in this life and in the
next."
Finally, the following passage on clanship among the Kafirs brings out
two points: (1) That such a group life implies feelings and ideas of a
distinctive sort; and (2) that it has a strength rooted in the very
necessities of life.
"A Kafir feels that the 'frame that binds him in' extends to the
clan. The sense of solidarity of the family in Europe is thin and
feeble compared to the full-blooded sense of corporate union of
the Kafir clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the rights
of the individual. The system of tribal solidarity, which has
worked so well in its smoothness that it might satisfy the utmost
dreams of the socialist, is a standing proof of the sense of
corporate union of the clan. In olden days a man did not have any
feeling of personal injury when a chief made him work for white
men and then told him to give all, or nearly all of his wages to
his chief; the money was kept within the clan, and what was the
good of the clan was the good of the individual and _vice versa_.
The striking thing about this unity of the clan is that it was
not a thought-out plan imposed from without by legislation upon an
unwilling people, but it was a _felt-out_ plan which arose
spontaneously along the line of least resistance. If one member of
the clan suffered, all the members suffered, not in sentimental
phraseology, but in real fact." (DUDLEY KIDD, _Savage Childhood_,
pp. 74 f.)
The above passages refer to Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian, and Kafir
peoples. They could be matched by similar statements concerning nearly
every people. They suggest a way of living, and a view of life very
different from that of the American or of most Europeans.[6] The
American or European belongs to groups of various kinds, but he "joins"
most of them. He of course is born into a family, but he does not stay
in it all his life unless he pleases. And he may choose his own
occupation, residence, wife, political party, religion, social club, or
even national allegiance. He may own or sell his own house, give or
bequeath his property, and is responsible generally speaking for no
one's acts but his own. This makes him an "individual" in a much fuller
sense than he would be if all these relations were settled for him. On
the other hand, the member of such groups as are referred to in our
examples above, has all, or nearly all, his relations fixed when he is
born into a certain clan or family group. This settles his occupation,
dwelling, gods, and politics. If it doesn't decide upon his wife, it at
least usually fixes the group from which she must be taken. His
conditions, in the words of Maine, are thus of "status," not of
"contract." This makes a vast difference in his whole attitude. It will
help to bring out more clearly by contrast the character of present
morality, as well as to see moral life in the making, if we examine more
carefully this group life. We shall find, as brought out in the
passages already quoted, that the most important type of group is at
once a kindred or family, an economic, a political, a religious, and a
moral unit. First, however, we notice briefly the most important types
of groups.
Sec. 2. KINSHIP AND HOUSEHOLD GROUPS
=1. The Kinship Group.=--The kinship group is a body of persons who
conceive of themselves as sprung from one ancestor, and hence as having
in their veins one blood. It does not matter for our study whether each
group has actually sprung from a single ancestor. It is highly probable
that the contingencies of food-supply or of war may have been an
original cause for the constitution of the group, wholly or in part. But
this is of no consequence for our purpose. The important point is that
the members of the group regard themselves as of one stock. In some
cases the ancestor is believed to have been an animal. Then we have the
so-called totem group, which is found among North American Indians,
Africans, and Australians, and was perhaps the early form of Semitic
groups. In other cases, some hero or even some god is named as the
ancestor. In any case the essential part of the theory remains the same:
namely, that one blood circulates in all the members, and hence that the
life of each is a part of the common life of the group. There are then
no degrees of kindred. This group, it should be noted, is not the same
as the family, for in the family, as a rule, husband and wife are of
different kinship groups, and continue their several kinship relations.
Among some peoples marriage ceremonies, indeed, symbolize the admission
of the wife into the husband's kinship, and in this case the family
becomes a kinship group, but this is by no means universally the case.
The feeling that one is first and foremost a member of a group, rather
than an individual, is furthered among certain kin groups by a scheme of
class relationship. According to this system, instead of having one
definite person whom I, and I alone, regard and address as father or
mother, grandfather, uncle, brother, sister, I call any one of a given
group or class of persons mother, grandfather, brother, sister. And any
one else who is in the same class with me calls the same persons,
mother, grandfather, brother, or sister.[7] The simplest form of such a
class system is that found among the Hawaiians. Here there are five
classes based upon the generations corresponding to what we call
grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and
grandchildren, but the words used to designate them do not imply any
such specific parentage as do these words with us. Bearing this in mind,
we may say that every one in the first class is equally grandparent to
every one in the third; every one in the third is equally brother or
sister to every other in the third, equally father or mother to every
one in the fourth, and so on. In Australia the classes are more numerous
and the relationships far more intricate and complicated, but this does
not, as might be supposed, render the bond relatively unimportant; on
the contrary, his relationship to every other class is "one of the most
important points with which each individual must be acquainted"; it
determines marital relations, food distribution, salutations, and
general conduct to an extraordinary degree. A kinship group was known as
"tribe" or "family" (English translation) among the Israelites; as
genos, phratria, and phyle among the Greeks, gens and curia among the
Romans; clan in Scotland; sept in Ireland; Sippe in Germany.
=2. The Family or Household Group.=--Two kinds of families may be noted
as significant for our purpose. In the _maternal family_ the woman
remains among her own kin, and the children are naturally reckoned as
belonging to the mother's kin. The husband and father is more or less a
guest or outsider. In a blood feud he would have to side with his own
clan and against that of his wife if his clan quarreled with hers. Clan
and family are thus seen to be distinct. In the _paternal_, which easily
becomes the _patriarchal_ family the wife leaves her relatives to live
in her husband's house and among his kin. She might then, as at Rome,
abjure her own kindred and be formally adopted into her husband's gens
or clan. The Greek myth of Orestes is an illustration of the clashing of
these two conceptions of father kin and mother kin, and Hamlet's sparing
of his mother under similar circumstances, shows a more modern point of
view.
It is evident that with the prevalence of the paternal type of family,
clan and household ties will mutually strengthen each other. This will
make an important difference in the father's relation to the children,
and gives a much firmer basis for ancestral religion. But in many
respects the environing atmosphere, the pressure and support, the group
sympathy and group tradition, are essentially similar. The important
thing is that every person is a member of a kindred, and likewise, of
some family group, and that he thinks, feels, and acts accordingly.[8]
Sec. 3. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS ARE ALSO ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL
UNITS
=1. The Land and the Group.=--In land, as a rule, no individual
ownership in the modern sense was recognized. Among hunting and pastoral
peoples there was, of course, no "ownership" by any group in the strict
sense of modern law. But none the less, the group, large or small, had
its fairly well-defined territory within which it hunted and fished; in
the pastoral life it had its pasture range and its wells of water. With
agriculture a more definite sense of possession arose. But possession
was by the tribe or gens or household, not by the individual:
"The land belonged to the clan, and the clan was settled upon the
land. A man was thus not a member of the clan, because he lived
upon, or even owned, the land; but he lived upon the land, and had
interests in it, because he was a member of the clan."[9]
Greek and German customs were quoted at the outset. Among the Celts the
laws of ancient Ireland show a transitional stage. "The land of the
tribe consisted of two distinct allotments, the 'fechfine' or tribeland,
and the 'orta' or inheritance land. This latter belonged as individual
property to the men of the chieftain groups."[10] The Hindoo
joint-family and the house-community of the Southern Slavonians are
present examples of group ownership. They are joint in food, worship,
and estate. They have a common home, a common table. Maxims of the Slavs
express their appreciation of community life: "The common household
waxes rich"; "The more bees in the hive, the heavier it weighs." One
difficulty in the English administration of Ireland has been this
radical difference between the modern Englishman's individualistic
conception of property and the Irishman's more primitive conception of
group or clan ownership. Whether rightly or not, the Irish tenant
refuses to regard himself as merely a tenant. He considers himself as a
member of a family or group which formerly owned the land, and he does
not admit the justice, even though he cannot disprove the legality, of
an alienation of the group possession. For such a clan or household as
we have described is not merely equivalent to the persons who compose it
at a given time. Its property belongs to the ancestors and to the
posterity as well as to the present possessors; and hence in some groups
which admit an individual possession or use during life, no right of
devise or inheritance is permitted. The property reverts at death to the
whole gens or clan. In other cases a child may inherit, but in default
of such an heir the property passes to the common possession. The right
to bequeath property to the church was long a point on which civil law
and canon law were at variance. The relations of the primitive clan or
household group to land were therefore decidedly adapted to keep the
individual's good bound up with the good of the group.
=2. Movable Goods.=--In the case of movable goods, such as tools,
weapons, cattle, the practice is not uniform. When the goods are the
product of the individual's own skill or prowess they are usually his.
Tools, weapons, slaves or women captured, products of some special craft
or skill, are thus usually private. But when the group acts as a unit
the product is usually shared. The buffalo and salmon and large game
were thus for the whole Indian group which hunted or fished together;
and in like manner the maize which was tended by the women belonged to
the household in common. Slavic and Indian house communities at the
present day have a common interest in the household property. Even women
and children among some tribes are regarded as the property of the
group.
Sec. 4. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS WERE POLITICAL BODIES
In a modern family the parents exercise a certain degree of control over
the children, but this is limited in several respects. No parent is
allowed to put a child to death, or to permit him to grow up in
ignorance. On the other hand, the parent is not allowed to protect the
child from arrest if a serious injury has been done by him. The _State_,
through its laws and officers, is regarded by us as the highest
authority in a certain great sphere of action. It must settle
conflicting claims and protect life and property; in the opinion of many
it must organize the life of its members where the cooperation of every
member is necessary for some common good. In early group life there may
or may not be some political body over and above the clan or family, but
in any case the _kin or family is itself a sort of political State_. Not
a State in the sense that the political powers are deliberately
separated from personal, religious, and family ties; men gained a new
conception of authority and rose to a higher level of possibilities when
they consciously separated and defined government and laws from the
undifferentiated whole of a religious and kindred group. But yet this
primitive group was after all a State, not a mob, or a voluntary
society, or a mere family; for (1) it was a more or less permanently
organized body; (2) it exercised control over its members which they
regarded as rightful authority, not as mere force; (3) it was not
limited by any higher authority, and acted more or less effectively for
the interest of the whole. The representatives of this political aspect
of the group may be chiefs or sachems, a council of elders, or, as in
Rome, the House Father, whose _patria potestas_ marks the extreme
development of the patriarchal family.
The control exercised by the group over individual members assumes
various forms among the different peoples. The more important aspects
are a right over life and bodily freedom, in some cases extending to
power of putting to death, maiming, chastising, deciding whether newly
born children shall be preserved or not; the right of betrothal, which
includes control over the marriage portion received for its women; and
the right to administer property of the kin in behalf of the kin as a
whole. It is probable that among all these various forms of control, the
control over the marriage relations of women has been most persistent.
One reason for this control may have been the fact that the group was
bound to resent injuries of a member of the group who had been married
to another. Hence this responsibility seemed naturally to involve the
right of decision as to her marriage.
=It is Membership in the Group Which Gives the Individual Whatever
Rights He Has.=--According to present conceptions this is still largely
true of legal rights. A State may allow a citizen of another country to
own land, to sue in its courts, and will usually give him a certain
amount of protection, but the first-named rights are apt to be limited,
and it is only a few years since Chief Justice Taney's dictum stated the
existing legal theory of the United States to be that the negro "had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." Even where legal
theory does not recognize race or other distinctions, it is often hard
in practice for an alien to get justice. In primitive clan or family
groups this principle is in full force. Justice is a privilege which
falls to a man as belonging to some group--not otherwise. The member of
the clan or the household or the village community has a claim, but the
stranger has no standing. He may be treated kindly, as a guest, but he
cannot demand "justice" at the hands of any group but his own. In this
conception of rights within the group we have the prototype of modern
civil law. The dealing of clan with clan is a matter of war or
negotiation, not of law; and the clanless man is an "outlaw" in fact as
well as in name.
=Joint Responsibility= and mutual support, as shown in the blood feud,
was a natural consequence of this fusion of political and kindred
relations. In modern life States treat each other as wholes in certain
respects. If some member of a savage tribe assaults a citizen of one of
the civilized nations, the injured party invokes the help of his
government. A demand is usually made that the guilty party be delivered
up for trial and punishment. If he is not forthcoming a "punitive
expedition" is organized against the whole tribe; guilty and innocent
suffer alike. Or in lieu of exterminating the offending tribe, in part
or completely, the nation of the injured man may accept an indemnity in
money or land from the offender's tribe. Recent dealings between British
and Africans, Germans and Africans, France and Morocco, the United
States and the Filipinos, the Powers and China, illustrate this. The
State protects its own members against other States, and avenges them
upon other States. Each opposes a united body to the other. The same
principle carried out through private citizens as public agents, and
applied to towns, is seen in the practice which prevailed in the Middle
Ages. "When merchants of one country had been defrauded by those of
another, or found it impossible to collect a debt from them, the former
country issued letters of marque and reprisal, authorizing the plunder
of any citizens of the offending town until satisfaction should be
obtained." Transfer the situation to the early clan or tribe, and this
solidarity is increased because each member is related to the rest by
blood, as well as by national unity. The Arabs do not say "The blood of
M. or N. has been spilt," naming the man; they say, "Our blood has been
spilt."[11] The whole group, therefore, feels injured and regards every
man in the offender's kin as more or less responsible. The next of kin,
the "avenger of blood," stands first in duty and privilege, but the rest
are all involved in greater or less degree.
=Within the Group= each member will be treated more or less fully as an
individual. If he takes his kinsman's wife or his kinsman's game he will
be dealt with by the authorities or by the public opinion of his group.
He will not indeed be put to death if he kills his kinsman, but he will
be hated, and may be driven out. "Since the living kin is not killed for
the sake of the dead kin, everybody will hate to see him."[12]
When now a smaller group, like a family, is at the same time a part of a
larger group like a phratry or a tribe, we have the phase of solidarity
which is so puzzling to the modern. We hold to solidarity in war or
between nations; but with a few exceptions[13] we have replaced it by
individual responsibility of adults for debts and crimes so far as the
civil law has jurisdiction. In earlier times the higher group or
authority treated the smaller as a unit. Achan's family all perished
with him. The Chinese sense of justice recognized a series of degrees in
responsibility dependent on nearness of kin or of residence, or of
occupation. The Welsh system held kinsmen as far as second cousins
responsible for insult or injury short of homicide, and as far as fifth
cousins (seventh degree of descent) for the payment in case of homicide.
"The mutual responsibility of kinsmen for _saraal_ and _galanas_ (the
Wergild of the Germans), graduated according to nearness of kin to the
murdered man and to the criminal, reveals more clearly than anything
else the extent to which the individual was bound by innumerable meshes
to his fixed place in the tribal community."[14]
Sec. 5. THE KINSHIP OR HOUSEHOLD GROUP WAS A RELIGIOUS UNIT
The kinship or household group determined largely both the ideas and the
cultus of primitive religion; conversely religion gave completeness,
value, and sacredness to the group life. Kinship with unseen powers or
persons was the fundamental religious idea. The kinship group as a
religious body _simply extended the kin to include invisible as well as
visible members_. The essential feature of religion is not unseen beings
who are feared, or cajoled, or controlled by magic. It is rather
_kindred_ unseen beings, who may be feared, but who are also reverenced
and loved. The kinship may be physical or spiritual, but however
conceived it makes gods and worshippers members of one group.[15]
=1. Totem Groups.=--In totem groups, the prevailing conception is that
one blood circulates in all the members of the group and that the
ancestor of the whole group is some object of nature, such as sun or
moon, plant or animal. Perhaps the most interesting and intelligible
account of the relation between the animal ancestor and the members of
the group is that which has recently been discovered in certain
Australian tribes who believe that every child, at its birth, is the
reincarnation of some previous member of the group, and that these
ancestors were an actual transformation of animals and plants, or of
water, fire, wind, sun, moon, or stars. Such totem groups cherish that
animal which they believe to be their ancestor and ordinarily will not
kill it or use it for food. The various ceremonies of religious
initiation are intended to impress upon the younger members of the group
the sacredness of this kindred bond which units them to each other and
to their totem. The beginnings of decorative art frequently express the
importance of the symbol, and the totem is felt to be as distinctly a
member of the group as is any of the human members.
=2. Ancestral Religion.=--At a somewhat higher stage of civilization,
and usually in connection with the patriarchal households or groups in
which kinship is reckoned through the male line, the invisible members
of the group are the _departed ancestors_. This ancestor worship is a
power to-day in China and Japan, and in the tribes of the Caucasus. The
ancient Semites, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Hindoos, all had their kindred
gods of the household. The Roman genius, lares, penates, and manes,
perhaps the Hebrew teraphim,--prized by Laban and Rachel, kept by David,
valued in the time of Hosea,--were loved and honored side by side with
other deities. Sometimes the nature deities, such as Zeus or Jupiter,
were incorporated with the kinship or family gods. The Greek Hestia and
Roman Vesta symbolized the sacredness of the hearth. The kinship tie
thus determined for every member of the group his religion.
=Religion Completes the Group.=--Conversely, this bond of union with
unseen, yet ever present and powerful kindred spirits completed the
group and gave to it its highest authority, its fullest value, its
deepest sacredness. If the unseen kin are nature beings, they symbolize
for man his dependence upon nature and his kinship in some vague fashion
with the cosmic forces. If the gods are the departed ancestors, they are
then conceived as still potent, like Father Anchises, to protect and
guide the fortunes of their offspring. The wisdom, courage, and
affection, as well as the power of the great heroes of the group, live
on. The fact that the gods are unseen enhances tremendously their
supposed power. The visible members of the group may be strong, but
their strength can be measured. The living elders may be wise, yet they
are not far beyond the rest of the group. But the invisible beings
cannot be measured. The long-departed ancestor may have inconceivable
age and wisdom. The imagination has free scope to magnify his power and
invest him with all the ideal values it can conceive. The religious bond
is, therefore, fitted to be the bearer, as the religious object is the
embodiment in concrete form, of the higher standards of the group, and
to furnish the sanction for their enforcement or adoption.
Sec. 6. GROUPS OR CLASSES ON THE BASIS OF AGE AND SEX
While the kindred and family groups are by far the most important for
early morality, other groupings are significant. The division by ages is
widespread. The simplest scheme gives three classes: (1) children, (2)
young men and maidens, (3) married persons. Puberty forms the bound
between the first and second; marriage that between the second and
third. Distinct modes of dress and ornament, frequently also different
residences and standards of conduct, belong to these several classes. Of
groups on the basis of sex, the _men's clubs_ are especially worthy of
note. They flourish now chiefly in the islands of the Pacific, but there
are indications, such as the common meals of the Spartans, of a wide
spread among European peoples in early times. The fundamental idea[16]
seems to be that of a common house for the unmarried young men, where
they eat, sleep, and pass their time, whereas the women, children, and
married men sleep and eat in the family dwelling. But in most cases all
the men resort to the clubhouse by day. Strangers may be entertained
there. It thus forms a sort of general center for the men's activities,
and for the men's conversation. As such, it is an important agency for
forming and expressing public opinion, and for impressing upon the young
men just entering the house the standards of the older members. Further,
in some cases these houses become the center of rites to the dead, and
thus add the impressiveness of religious significance to their other
activities.
Finally, _secret societies_ may be mentioned as a subdivision of sex
groups, for among primitive peoples such societies are confined in
almost all cases to the men. They seem in many cases to have grown out
of the age classes already described. The transition from childhood to
manhood, mysterious in itself, was invested with further mysteries by
the old men who conducted the ceremonies of initiation. Masks were worn,
or the skulls of deceased ancestors were employed, to give additional
mystery and sanctity. The increased power gained by secrecy would often
be itself sufficient to form a motive for such organization, especially
where they had some end in view not approved by the dominant
authorities. Sometimes they exercise strict authority over their
members, and assume judicial and punitive functions, as in the Vehm of
the Middle Ages. Sometimes they become merely leagues of enemies to
society.
Sec. 7. MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KINDRED AND OTHER GROUPS
The moral in this early stage is not to be looked for as something
distinct from the political, religious, kindred, and sympathetic aspects
of the clan, family, and other groups. The question rather is, _How far
are these very political, religious, and other aspects implicitly
moral_? If by moral we mean a conscious testing of conduct by an inner
and self-imposed standard, if we mean a freely chosen as contrasted with
a habitual or customary standard, then evidently we have the moral only
in germ. For the standards are group standards, rather than those of
individual conscience; they operate largely through habit rather than
through choice. Nevertheless they are not set for the individual by
outsiders. They are set by a group of which he is a member. They are
enforced by a group _of which he is a member_. Conduct is praised or
blamed, punished or rewarded by the group of which he is a member.
Property is administered, industry is carried on, wars and feuds
prosecuted for the common good. What the group does, each member joins
in doing. It is a reciprocal matter: A helps enforce a rule or impose a
service on B; he cannot help feeling it fair when the same rule is
applied to himself. He has to "play the game," and usually he expects to
play it as a matter of course. Each member, therefore, is practicing
certain acts, standing in certain relations, maintaining certain
attitudes, just because he is one of the group which does these things
and maintains these standards. And he does not act in common with the
group without sharing in the group emotions. It is a grotesque
perversion to conceive the restraints of gods and chiefs as purely
external terrors. The primitive group could enter into the spirit
implied in the words of the Athenian chorus, which required of an alien
upon adoption
"To loathe whate'er our state does hateful hold,
To reverence what it loves."[17]
The gregarious instinct may be the most elemental of the impulses which
bind the group together, but it is reinforced by sympathies and
sentiments growing out of common life, common work, common danger,
common religion. The morality is already implicit, it needs only to
become conscious. The standards are embodied in the old men or the gods;
the rational good is in the inherited wisdom; the respect for sex, for
property rights, and for the common good, is embodied in the system--but
it is there. Nor are the union and control a wholly objective affair.
"The corporate union was not a pretty religious fancy with which to
please the mind, but was so truly felt that it formed an excellent basis
from which the altruistic sentiment might start. Gross selfishness was
curbed, and the turbulent passions were restrained by an impulse which
the man felt welling up within him, instinctive and unbidden. Clannish
camaraderie was thus of immense value to the native races."[18]
LITERATURE
The works of Hobhouse, Sumner, Westermarck contain copious references to
the original sources. Among the most valuable are:
FOR SAVAGE PEOPLE: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_, 1859-72;
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 1903; Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes
of Central Australia_, 1899, and _The Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, 1904; Howitt and Fison, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 1880;
Howitt, _The Native Tribes of S. E. Australia_, 1904; N. Thomas,
_Kinship, Organization and Group Marriages in Australia_, 1906; Morgan,
_Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines_, 1881, _The League of
the Iroquois_, 1851, _Systems of Consanguinity, Smithsonian
Contributions_, 1871, _Ancient Society_, 1877. Many papers in the
_Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, especially by Powell in 1st,
1879-80; Dorsey in 3rd, 1881-82, Mendeleff in 19th, 1893-94.
FOR INDIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN: Lyall, _Asiatic Studies, Religious and
Social_, 1882; Gray, _China_, 1878; Smith, _Chinese Characteristics_,
1894; _Village Life in China_, 1899; Nitobe, _Bushido_, 1905; L. Hearn,
_Japan_, 1904.
FOR SEMITIC AND INDO-GERMANIC PEOPLES: W. R. Smith, _Kinship and
Marriage in Early Arabia_, 1885; _The Religion of the Semites_, 1894; W.
Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, 1879; Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, 1873;
Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, 1895, and _Tribal Custom in
Anglo-Saxon Law_, 1902; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Suedslaven_, 1885.
GENERAL: Grosse, _Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der
Wirthschaft_, 1896; Starke, _The Primitive Family_, 1889; Maine,
_Ancient Law_, 1885; McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, 1886;
Rivers, _On the Origin of the Classificatory System of Relationships_,
in Anthropological Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Ratzel,
_History of Mankind_, 1896-98; Kovalevsky, _Tableau des origines et de
l'Evolution de la Famille et de la Propriete_, 1890; Giddings,
_Principles of Sociology_, 1896, pp. 157-168, 256-298; Thomas, _Relation
of Sex to Primitive Social Control_ in Sex and Society, 1907; Webster,
_Primitive Secret Societies_, 1908; Simmel, _The Sociology of Secrecy
and of Secret Societies_, American Journal Sociology, Vol. XI., 1906,
pp. 441-498. See also the references at close of Chapters VI., VII.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, _Aristotle und Athen_, II. 93, 47.
[4] _History of Greece_, III., 55.
[5] _The Ancient City_, p. 51.
[6] Russian mirs, South Slavonian "joint" families, Corsican clans with
their vendettas, and tribes in the Caucasus still have the group
interest strong, and the feuds of the mountaineers in some of the border
states illustrate family solidarity.
[7] "In all the tribes with whom we are acquainted all the terms
coincide without any exception in the recognition of relationships, all
of which are dependent on the existence of a classificatory system, the
fundamental idea of which is that the women of certain groups marry the
men of others. Each tribe has one term applied indiscriminately to the
man or woman whom he actually marries and to all whom he might lawfully
marry, that is, who belong to the right group: One term to his actual
mother and to all the women whom his father might lawfully have
married."--SPENCER and GILLEN, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
57.
[8] The fact that primitive man is at once an individual and a member of
a group--that he has as it were two personalities or selves, an
individual self and a clan-self, or "tribal-self," as Clifford called
it,--is not merely a psychologist's way of stating things. The Kafir
people, according to their most recent student, Mr. Dudley Kidd, have
two distinct words to express these two selves. They call one the
_idhlozi_ and other the _itongo_. "The _idhlozi_ is the individual and
personal spirit born with each child--something fresh and unique which
is never shared with any one else--while the _itongo_ is the ancestral
and corporate spirit which is not personal but tribal, or a thing of the
clan, the possession of which is obtained not by birth but by certain
initiatory rites. The _idhlozi_ is personal and inalienable, for it is
wrapped up with the man's personality, and at death it lives near the
grave, or goes into the snake or totem of the clan; but the _itongo_ is
of the clan, and haunts the living-hut; at death it returns to the
tribal _amatongo_ (ancestral spirits). A man's share in this clan-spirit
(_itongo_) is lost when he becomes a Christian, or when he is in any way
unfaithful to the interests of the clan, but a man never loses his
_idhlozi_ any more than he ever loses his individuality."--_Savage
Childhood_, pp. 14 f.
[9] Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 212.
[10] MacLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 381.
[11] Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 23.
[12] Cited from the Gwentian Code. Seebohm, _The Tribal System in
Wales_, p. 104.
[13] E.g., certain joint responsibilities of husband and wife.
[14] Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, pp. 103 f.
[15] "From the earliest times, religion, as distinct from magic or
sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed
be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable except to
the enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the
community. It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a
loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshippers by
strong bonds of kinship, that religion in the only true sense of the
word begins."--ROBERTSON SMITH, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 54.
[16] Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Maennerbuende_.
[17] _Oedipus at Colonus_, vv. 186 f.
[18] Dudley Kidd, _Savage Childhood_, pp. 74 f.