Chapter I (4)

+74. Conventionalization.+ If traditional folkways are subjected to rational or ethical examination they are no longer naïve and unconscious. It may then be found that they are gross, absurd, or inexpedient. They may still be preserved by conventionalization. Conventionalization creates a set of conditions under which a thing may be tolerated which would otherwise be disapproved and tabooed. The special conditions may be created in fact, or they may be only a fiction which all agree to respect and to treat as true. When children, in play, "make believe" that something exists, or exists in a certain way, they employ conventionalization. Special conditions are created in fact when some fact is regarded as making the usual taboo inoperative. Such is the case with all archaic usages which are perpetuated on account of their antiquity, although they are not accordant with modern standards. The language of Shakespeare and the Bible contains words which are now tabooed. In this case, as in very many others, the conventionalization consists in ignoring the violation of current standards of propriety. Natural functions and toilet operations are put under conventionalization, even in low civilization. The conventionalization consists in ignoring breaches of the ordinary taboo. On account of accidents which may occur, wellbred people are always ready to apply conventionalization to mishaps of speech, dress, manner, etc. In fairy stories, fables, romances, and dramas all are expected to comply with certain conventional understandings without which the entertainment is impossible; for instance, when beasts are supposed to speak. In the mythologies this kind of conventionalization was essential. One of us, in studying mythologies, has to acquire a knowledge of the conventional assumptions with which the people who believed in them approached them. Modern Hindoos conventionalize the stories of their mythology.[81] What the gods are said to have done is put under other standards than those now applied to men. Everything in the mythology is on a plane by itself. It follows that none of the rational or ethical judgments are formed about the acts of the gods which would be formed about similar acts of men, and the corruption of morals which would be expected as a consequence of the stories and dramas is prevented by the conventionalization. There is no deduction from what gods do to what men may do. The Greeks of the fifth century B.C. rationalized on their mythology and thereby destroyed it. The mediæval church claimed to be under a conventionalization which would prevent judgment on the church and ecclesiastics according to current standards. Very many people heeded this conventionalization, so that they were not scandalized by vice and crime in the church. This intervention of conventionalization to remove cases from the usual domain of the mores into a special field, where they can be protected and tolerated by codes and standards modified in their favor, is of very great importance. It accounts for many inconsistencies in the mores. In this way there may be nakedness without indecency, and tales of adultery without lewdness. We observe a conventionalization in regard to the Bible, especially in regard to some of the Old Testament stories. The theater presents numerous cases of conventionalization. The asides, entrances and exits, and stage artifices, require that the spectators shall concede their assent to conventionalities. The dresses of the stage would not be tolerated elsewhere. It is by conventionalization that the literature and pictorial representations of science avoid collision with the mores of propriety, decency, etc. In all artistic work there is more or less conventionalization. Uncivilized people, and to some extent uneducated people amongst ourselves, cannot tell what a picture represents or means because they are not used to the conventionalities of pictorial art. The ancient Saturnalia and the carnival have been special times of license at which the ordinary social restrictions have been relaxed for a time by conventionalization. Our own Fourth of July is a day of noise, risk, and annoyance, on which things are allowed which would not be allowed at any other time. We consent to it because "it is Fourth of July." The history of wedding ceremonies presents very many instances of conventionalization. Jests and buffoonery have been tolerated for the occasion. They became such an annoyance that people revolted against them, and invented means to escape them. Dress used in bathing, sport, the drama, or work is protected by conventionalization. The occasion calls for a variation from current usage, and the conventionalization, while granting toleration, defines it also, and makes a new law for the exceptional case. It is like taboo, and is, in fact, the form of taboo in high civilization. Like taboo, it has two aspects,--it is either destructive or protective. The conventionalization bars out what might be offensive (i.e. when a thing may be done only under the conditions set by conventionalization), or it secures toleration for what would otherwise be forbidden. Respect, reverence, sacredness, and holiness, which are taboos in low civilization, become conventionalities in high civilization.

+75. Conventions indispensable.+ Conventionality is often denounced as untrue and hypocritical. It is said that we ought to be natural. Respectability is often sneered at because it is a sum of conventionalities. The conventionalizations which persist are the resultant of experiments and experience as to the devices by which to soften and smoothen the details of life. They are indispensable. We might as well renounce clothes as to try to abolish them.

+76. The ethos or group character.+ All that has been said in this chapter about the folkways and the mores leads up to the idea of the group character which the Greeks called the ethos, that is, the totality of characteristic traits by which a group is individualized and differentiated from others. The great nations of southeastern Asia were long removed from familiar contact with the rest of mankind and isolated from each other, while they were each subjected to the discipline and invariable rule of traditional folkways which covered all social interests except the interferences of a central political authority, which perpetrated tyranny in its own interest. The consequence has been that Japan, China, and India have each been molded into a firm, stable, and well-defined unit group, having a character strongly marked both actively and passively. The governing classes of Japan have, within fifty years, voluntarily abandoned their traditional mores, and have adopted those of the Occident, while it does not appear that they have lost their inherited ethos. The case stands alone in history and is a cause of amazement. In the war with Russia, in 1904, this people showed what a group is capable of when it has a strong ethos. They understand each other; they act as one man; they are capable of discipline to the death. Our western tacticians have had rules for the percentage of loss which troops would endure, standing under fire, before breaking and running. The rule failed for the Japanese. They stood to the last man. Their prowess at Port Arthur against the strongest fortifications, and on the battlefields of Manchuria, surpassed all record. They showed what can be done in the way of concealing military and naval movements when every soul in the population is in a voluntary conspiracy not to reveal anything. These traits belong to a people which has been trained by generations of invariable mores. It is apparently what the mediæval church wanted to introduce in Europe, but the Japanese have got it without selfish tyranny of the ruling persons and classes. Of course, it admits of no personal liberty, and the consequences of introducing occidental notions of liberty into it have yet to be seen. "The blacksmith squats at his anvil wielding a hammer such as no western smith could use without long practice. The carpenter pulls instead of pushing his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong. Keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are accustomed to think the wrong direction." "The swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw."[82] In family manners the Japanese are gentle. Cruelty even to animals appears to be unknown. "One sees farmers coming to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."[83] Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.[84] "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."[85] "Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless grades, varying according to sex as well as class, but even in regard to facial expression, the manner of smiling, the conduct of the breath, the way of sitting, standing, walking, rising."[86] "With the same merciless exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life, all utterance was regulated both positively and negatively, but positively much more than negatively.... Education cultivated a system of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is justified, less by their general character than by their implacable minuteness,--their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of the world. Everybody's house must be open to visitors; to close its gates by day would be regarded as an insult to the community, sickness affording no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right of making themselves inaccessible.... By a single serious mistake a man may find himself suddenly placed in solitary opposition to the common will,--isolated, and most effectively ostracized." "The events of the [modern] reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such instinct [of adaptation] in the face of peril,--the readjustment of internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political system powerless before the new conditions, and it transformed that system. It had found its military organization incapable of defending it, and it reconstructed that organization. It had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen necessities, and it had replaced that system, simultaneously crippling the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious opposition to the new developments required."[87] To this it must be added that people who have had commercial and financial dealings with Japanese report that they are untruthful and tricky in transactions of that kind. If they cannot "reform" these traits there will be important consequences of them in the developments of the near future.

+77. Chinese ethos.+ It is evident that we have in the Japanese a case of an ethos, from the habits of artisans to the manners of nobles and the military system, which is complete, consistent, authoritative, and very different from our own. A similar picture of the Chinese might be drawn, from which it would appear that they also have a complete and firm ethos, which resembles in general the Japanese, but has its individual traits and characteristic differences.[88] The ethos of the Japanese, from the most ancient times, has been fundamentally militant. That of the Chinese is industrial and materialistic.

+78. Hindoo ethos.+ The Hindoos, again, have a strongly marked ethos. They have a name for it--_kharma_, which Nivedita says might be translated "national righteousness." It "applies to that whole system of complex action and interaction on planes moral, intellectual, economic, industrial, political, and domestic, which we know as India, or the national habit.... By their attitude to it, Pathan, Mogul, and Englishman are judged, each in his turn, by the Indian peasantry."[89] The ethos of one group always furnishes the standpoint from which it criticises the ways of any other group.

+79. European ethos.+ We are familiar with the notion of "national character" as applied to the nations of Europe, but these nations do not have each an ethos. There is a European ethos, for the nations have so influenced each other for the last two thousand years that there is a mixed ethos which includes local variations. The European _kharma_ is currently called Christian. In the ancient world Egypt and Sparta were the two cases of groups with the firmest and best-defined ethos. In modern European history the most marked case is that of Venice. In no one of these cases did the elements of moral strength and societal health preponderate, but the history of each showed the great stability produced by a strong ethos. Russia has a more complete and defined ethos than any other state in Europe, although the efforts which have been made since Peter the Great to break down the traditions and limitations of the national ethos, and to adopt the ethos of western Europe, have produced weakness and confusion. It is clear what is the great power of a strong ethos. The ethos of any group deserves close study and criticism. It is an overruling power for good or ill. Modern scholars have made the mistake of attributing to _race_ much which belongs to the ethos, with a resulting controversy as to the relative importance of nature and nurture. Others have sought a "soul of the people" and have tried to construct a "collective psychology," repeating for groups processes which are now abandoned for individuals. Historians, groping for the ethos, have tried to write the history of "the people" of such and such a state. The ethos individualizes groups and keeps them apart. Its opposite is cosmopolitanism. It degenerates into patriotic vanity and chauvinism. Industrialism weakens it, by extending relations of commerce with outside groups. It coincides better with militancy. It has held the Japanese people like a single mailed fist for war. What religion they have has lost all character except that of a cohesive agent to hold the whole close organization tight together.

[1] JAI, XX, 140.

[2] Lazarus in _Ztsft. für Völkerpsy_., I, 452.

[3] Preuss in _Globus_, LXXXVII, 419.

[4] _Princ. of Sociology_, sec. 529.

[5] Rogers, _Babyl. and Assyria_, I, 304; Jastrow, in
Hastings, _Dict. Bible_, Supp. vol., 554.

[6] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 154.

[7] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 115.

[8] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, III, 618.

[9] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 259.

[10] Hosea i. 4; 2 Kings ix. 8.

[11] 1 Kings xxii. 22; Judges ix. 23; Ezek. xiv. 9; 2 Thess. ii.
11.

[12] 2 Kings xx. 3.

[13] Reich, _Mimus_, 718.

[14] _Teuton. Mythol._, 1777.

[15] Leland and Prince, _Kuloskap_, 150.

[16] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 128.

[17] Martius, _Ethnog. Brasil._, 51.

[18] Krieger, _New Guinea_, 192.

[19] Tylor, _Anthropology_, 225.

[20] Martius, _Ethnog. Brasil._, 51.

[21] _Bur. Eth._, XIV, 1078.

[22] Wiklund, _Om Lapparna i Sverige_, 5.

[23] Fries, _Grönland_, 139.

[24] Hiekisch, _Tungusen_, 48.

[25] Hitchcock in _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1890, 432.

[26] Ratzel, _Hist. Mankind_, II, 539.

[27] _Bur. Eth._, XVII (Part I), 154.

[28] Von Kremer, _Kulturgesch. d. Orients_, II, 236.

[29] Bishop, _Korea_, 438.

[30] _Amer. Anthrop._, VIII, 365.

[31] Cf. also _Bur. Eth._, XVII (Part I), 190.

[32] _Une Femme chez les Sahariennes_, 105.

[33] Stoll, _Suggestion und Hypnotismus_, 702.

[34] Friedmann, _Wahnideen im Völkerleben_, 222.

[35] Binet, _La Suggestibilité_, treats of its use in education.

[36] Lefevre, _La Suggestion_, 102.

[37] Funck-Brentano, _Le Suicide_, 117.

[38] Burckhardt, _Renaissance_, 512.

[39] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 212.

[40] Schotmüller, _Untergang des Templer-Ordens_, I, 136.

[41] Regnard, _Les Maladies Epidemiques de l'Esprit_.

[42] _Globus_, LXXXV, 262.

[43] Lefèvre, _Suggestion_, 98.

[44] Bastian, _San Salvador_, 104.

[45] Ratzel, _Anthropogeog._, II, 699.

[46] Lichtenstein, _South Africa_, II, 61.

[47] Sibree, _Great African Island_, 301.

[48] _Bur. Eth._, XVIII (Part I), 325.

[49] _Ztsft. f. Eth._, XXVIII, 170.

[50] Wilken, _Volkenkunde_, 546.

[51] Sieroshevski, _Yakuty_, 558.

[52] See Chapter XIV.

[53] Ratzel, _Hist. Mankind_, II, 276.

[54] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 299.

[55] Herodotus, IV, 186.

[56] Porphyry, _De Abstin._, II, 11; _Herodotus_, II, 41.

[57] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 88.

[58] Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 324.

[59] _Ibid._, 101.

[60] Wilkins, _Hinduism_, 299.

[61] _Ibid._, 125.

[62] JASB, IV, 353.

[63] Fritsch, _Eingeborenen Südafr._, 57.

[64] _Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde_, XLI, 203.

[65] See Chapter XX

[66] _Hereditary Genius_, 34.

[67] Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung_, 53.

[68] Ammon made the diagram symmetrical.

[69] _Hereditary Genius_, 25, 47.

[70] Lapouge affirms that "in different historical periods, and
over the whole earth, racial differences between classes of the
same people are far greater than between analogous classes of
different peoples," and that "between different classes of the
same population there may be greater racial differences than
between different populations" (_Pol. Anth. Rev._, III, 220,
228). He does not give his definition of class.

[71] Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung_, 49.

[72] PSM, LX, 218.

[73] Lecky, _Morals_, I, 262.

[74] Symonds, _Catholic Reaction_, I, 455.

[75] Gumplowicz, _Soziologie_, 126.

[76] "In the reigns of Theodosius and Honorius, imperial edicts
and rescripts were paralyzed by the impalpable, quietly
irresistible force of a universal social need or
sentiment."--Dill, _Rome from Nero to M. Aurel._, 255.

[77] v. Hartmann, _Phänom. des Sittl. Bewusztseins_, 73.

[78] Lazarus in _Ztsft. für Völkerpsy._, I, 439.

[79] _Human Faculty_, 216.

[80] Wilkins, _Mod. Hinduism_, 195.

[81] Wilkins, _Mod. Hinduism_, 317.

[82] Hearn, _Japan_, 11.

[83] _Ibid._, 16.

[84] _Ibid._, 391.

[85] _Ibid._, 199.

[86] _Ibid._, 191.

[87] Hearn, _Japan_, 107, 187, 411.

[88] Williams, _Middle Kingdom_; Smith, _Chinese
Characteristics_.

[89] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 150.