Chapter X: Accommodation (1)

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Adaptation and Accommodation

The term _adaptation_ came into vogue with Darwin's theory of the origin of the species by natural selection. This theory was based upon the observation that no two members of a biological species or of a family are ever exactly alike. Everywhere there is variation and individuality. Darwin's theory assumed this variation and explained the species as the result of natural selection. The individuals best fitted to live under the conditions of life which the environment offered, survived and produced the existing species. The others perished and the species which they represented disappeared. The differences in the species were explained as the result of the accumulation and perpetuation of the individual variations which had "survival value." Adaptations were the variations which had been in this way selected and transmitted.

The term _accommodation_ is a kindred concept with a slightly different meaning. The distinction is that adaptation is applied to organic modifications which are transmitted biologically; while accommodation is used with reference to changes in habit, which are transmitted, or may be transmitted, sociologically, that is, in the form of social tradition. The term first used in this sense by Baldwin is defined in the _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_.

In view of modern biological theory and discussion, two modes of adaptation should be distinguished: (a) adaptation through variation [hereditary]; (b) adaptation through modification [acquired]. For the functional adjustment of the individual to its environment [(b) above] J. Mark Baldwin has suggested the term "accommodation," recommending that adaptation be confined to the structural adjustments which are congenital and heredity [(a) above]. The term "accommodation" applies to any acquired alteration of function resulting in better adjustment to environment and to the functional changes which are thus effected.[221]

The term accommodation, while it has a limited field of application in biology, has a wide and varied use in sociology. All the social heritages, traditions, sentiments, culture, technique, are accommodations--that is, acquired adjustments that are socially and not biologically transmitted. They are not a part of the racial inheritance of the individual, but are acquired by the person in social experience. The two conceptions are further distinguished in this, that adaptation is an effect of competition, while accommodation, or more properly social accommodation, is the result of conflict.

The outcome of the adaptations and accommodations, which the struggle for existence enforces, is a state of relative equilibrium among the competing species and individual members of these species. The equilibrium which is established by adaptation is biological, which means that, in so far as it is permanent and fixed in the race or the species, it will be transmitted by biological inheritance.

The equilibrium based on accommodation, however, is not biological; it is economic and social and is transmitted, if at all, by tradition. The nature of the economic equilibrium which results from competition has been fully described in chapter viii. The plant community is this equilibrium in its absolute form.

In animal and human societies the community has, so to speak, become incorporated in the individual members of the group. The individuals are adapted to a specific type of communal life, and these adaptations, in animal as distinguished from human societies, are represented in the division of labor between the sexes, in the instincts which secure the protection and welfare of the young, in the so-called gregarious instinct, and all these represent traits that are transmitted biologically. But human societies, although providing for the expression of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, _consensus_. And consensus represents, not biological adaptations, but social accommodations.

Social organization, with the exception of the order based on competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts. This fact explains why diverse-mindedness rather than like-mindedness is characteristic of human as distinguished from animal society. Professor Cooley's statement of this point is clear:

The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in
organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation
among its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place
in it is connected with everything else, and so is an outcome
of the whole.[222]

The distinction between accommodation and adaptation is illustrated in the difference between domestication and taming. Through domestication and breeding man has modified the original inheritable traits of plants and animals. He has changed the character of the species. Through taming, individuals of species naturally in conflict with man have become accommodated to him. Eugenics may be regarded as a program of biological adaptation of the human race in conscious realization of social ideals. Education, on the other hand, represents a program of accommodation or an organization, modification, and culture of original traits.

Every society represents an organization of elements more or less antagonistic to each other but united for the moment, at least, by an arrangement which defines the reciprocal relations and respective spheres of action of each. This accommodation, this _modus vivendi_, may be relatively permanent as in a society constituted by castes, or quite transitory as in societies made up of open classes. In either case, the accommodation, while it is maintained, secures for the individual or for the group a recognized status.

Accommodation is the natural issue of conflicts. In an accommodation the antagonism of the hostile elements is, for the time being, regulated, and conflict disappears as overt action, although it remains latent as a potential force. With a change in the situation, the adjustment that had hitherto successfully held in control the antagonistic forces fails. There is confusion and unrest which may issue in open conflict. Conflict, whether a war or a strike or a mere exchange of polite innuendoes, invariably issues in a new accommodation or social order, which in general involves a changed status in the relations among the participants. It is only with assimilation that this antagonism, latent in the organization of individuals or groups, is likely to be wholly dissolved.

2. Classification of the Materials

The selections on accommodation in the materials are organized under the following heads: (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination; (c) conflict and accommodation; and (d) competition, status, and social solidarity.

a) _Forms of accommodation._--There are many forms of accommodation. One of the most subtle is that which in human geography is called acclimatization, "accommodation to new climatic conditions." Recent studies like those of Huntington in his "Climate and Civilization" have emphasized the effects of climate upon human behavior. The selection upon acclimatization by Brinton states the problems involved in the adjustment of racial groups to different climatic environments. The answers which he gives to the questions raised are not to be regarded as conclusive but only as representative of one school of investigators and as contested by other authorities in this field.

Naturalization, which in its original sense means the process by which a person is made "natural," that is, familiar and at home in a strange social milieu, is a term used in America to describe the legal process by which a foreigner acquires the rights of citizenship. Naturalization, as a social process, is naturally something more fundamental than the legal ceremony of naturalization. It includes accommodation to the folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the social ritual (_Sittlichkeit_). It assumes also participation, to a certain extent at least, in the memories, the tradition, and the culture of a new social group. The proverb "In Rome do as the Romans do" is a basic principle of naturalization. The cosmopolitan is the person who readily accommodates himself to the codes of conduct of new social milieus.[223]

The difficulty of social accommodation to a new social milieu is not always fully appreciated. The literature on homesickness and nostalgia indicates the emotional dependence of the person upon familiar associations and upon early intimate personal relations. Leaving home for the first time, the intense lonesomeness of the rural lad in the crowds of the city, the perplexity of the immigrant in the confusing maze of strange, and to him inexplicable, customs are common enough instances of the personal and social barriers to naturalization. But the obstacles to most social adjustments for a person in a new social world are even more baffling because of their subtle and intangible nature.

Just as in biology balance represents "a state of relatively good adjustment due to structural adaptation of the organism as a whole" so accommodation, when applied to groups rather than individuals, signifies their satisfactory co-ordination from the standpoint of the inclusive social organization.

Historically, the organization of the more inclusive society--i.e., states, confederations, empires, social and political units composed of groups accommodated but not fully assimilated--presents four typical constellations of the component group. Primitive society was an organization of kinship groups. Ancient society was composed of masters and slaves, with some special form of accommodation for the freeman and the stranger, who was not a citizen, to be sure, but was not a slave either.

Medieval society rested upon a system of class, approaching castes in the distances it enforced. In all these different situations competition took place only between individuals of the same status.

In contrast with this, modern society is made up of economic and social classes with freedom of economic competition and freedom in passage, therefore, from one class to the other.

b) _Subordination and superordination._--Accommodation, in the area of personal relations, tends to take the form of subordination and superordination. Even where accommodation has been imposed, as in the case of slavery, by force, the personal relations of master and slave are invariably supported by appropriate attitudes and sentiments. The selection "Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner" is a convincing exhibit of the way in which attitudes of superordination and subordination may find expression in the sentiments of a conscientious and self-complacent paternalism on the part of the master and of an ingratiating and reverential loyalty on the part of the slave. In a like manner the selection from the "Memories of an Old Servant" indicates the natural way in which sentiments of subordination which have grown up in conformity with an accepted situation eventually become the basis of a life-philosophy of the person.

Slavery and caste are manifestly forms of accommodation. The facts of subordination are quite as real, though not as obvious, in other phases of social life. The peculiar intimacy which exists, for example, between lovers, between husband and wife, or between physician and patient, involves relations of subordination and superordination, though not recognized as such. The personal domination which a coach exercises over the members of a ball team, a minister over his congregation, the political leader over his party followers are instances of the same phenomena.

Simmel in his interesting discussion of the subject points out the fact that the relations of subordination and superordination are reciprocal. In order to impose his will upon his slaves it was necessary for the master to retain their respect. No one had a keener appreciation of the aristocracy nor a greater scorn for the "poor white" than the Negro slaves in the South before the war.

The leader of the gang, although he seems to have decisions absolutely in his hand, has a sense of the attitudes of his followers. So the successful political leader, who sometimes appears to be taking risks in his advocacy of new issues, keeps "his ear close to the grass roots of public opinion."

In the selection upon "The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination" Münsterberg interprets suggestion, imitation, and sympathy in terms of domination and submission. Personal influence, prestige, and authority, in whatever form they find expression, are based, to a greater or less extent, on the subtle influences of suggestion.

The natural affections are social bonds which not infrequently assume the form of bondage. Many a mother has been reduced to a condition of abject subjection through her affection for a son or a daughter. The same thing is notoriously true of the relations between the sexes. It is in social complexes of this sort, rather than in the formal procedures of governments, that we must look for the fundamental mechanism of social control.

The conflicts and accommodations of persons with persons and of groups with groups have their prototypes in the conflicts and accommodations of the wishes of the person. The conflicts and accommodations in the mental life of the person have received the name in psychoanalysis of _sublimation_. The sublimation of a wish means its expression in a form which represents an accommodation with another conflicting wish which had repressed the original response of the first wish. The progressive organization of personality depends upon the successful functioning of this process of sublimation. The wishes of the person at birth are inchoate; with mental development these wishes come into conflict with each other and with the enveloping social milieu. Adolescence is peculiarly the period of "storm and stress." Youth lives in a maze of mental conflicts, of insurgent and aspiring wishes. Conversion is the sudden mutation of life-attitudes through a reorganization or transformation of the wishes.

c) _Conflict and accommodation._--The intrinsic relation between conflict and accommodation is stated in the materials by Simmel in his analysis of war and peace and the problems of compromise. "The situations existing in time of peace are precisely the conditions out of which war emerges." War, on the other hand, brings about the adjustments in the relations of competing and conflict groups which make peace possible. The problem, therefore, must find a solution in some method by which the conflicts which are latent in, or develop out of, the conditions of peace may be adjusted without a resort to war. In so far as war is an effect of the mere inhibitions which the conditions of peace impose, substitutes for war must provide, as William James has suggested, for the expression of the expanding energies of individuals and nations in ways that will contribute to the welfare of the community and eventually of mankind as a whole. The intention is to make life more interesting and at the same time more secure.

The difficulty is that the devices which render life more secure frequently make it less interesting and harder to bear. Competition, the struggle for existence and for, what is often more important than mere existence, namely, status, may become so bitter that peace is unendurable.

More than that, under the condition of peace, peoples whose life-habits and traditions have been formed upon a basis of war frequently multiply under conditions of peace to such an extent as to make an ultimate war inevitable. The natives of South Africa, since the tribal wars have ceased, have so increased in numbers as to be an increasing menace to the white population. Any amelioration of the condition of mankind that tends to disturb the racial equilibrium is likely to disturb the peace of nations. When representatives of the Rockefeller Medical Foundation proposed to introduce a rational system of medicine in China, certain of the wise men of that country, it is reported, shook their heads dubiously over the consequences that were likely to follow any large decrease in the death-rate, seeing that China was already overpopulated.

In the same way education, which is now in a way to become a heritage of all mankind, rather than the privilege of so-called superior peoples, undoubtedly has had the effect of greatly increasing the mobility and restlessness of the world's population. In so far as this is true, it has made the problem of maintaining peace more difficult and dangerous.

On the other hand, education and the extension of intelligence undoubtedly increase the possibility of compromise and conciliation which, as Simmel points out, represent ways in which peace may be restored and maintained other than by complete victory and subjugation of the conquered people. It is considerations of this kind that have led men like von Moltke to say that "universal peace is a dream and not even a happy one," and has led other men like Carnegie to build peace palaces in which the nations of the world might settle their differences by compromise and according to law.

d) _Competition, status, and social solidarity._--Under the title "Competition, Status, and Social Solidarity" selections are introduced in the materials which emphasize the relation of competition to accommodation. Up to this point in the materials only the relations of conflict to accommodation have been considered. Status has been described as an effect of conflict. But it is clear that economic competition frequently becomes conscious and so passes over into some of the milder forms of conflict. Aside from this it is evident that competition in so far as it determines the vocation of the individual, determines indirectly also his status, since it determines the class of which he is destined to be a member. In the same way competition is indirectly responsible for the organization of society in so far as it determines the character of the accommodations and understandings which are likely to exist between conflict groups. Social types as well as status are indirectly determined by competition, since most of them are vocational. The social types of the modern city, as indicated by the selection on "Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types," are an outcome of the division of labor. Durkheim points out that the division of labor in multiplying the vocations has increased and not diminished the unity of society. The interdependence of differentiated individuals and groups has made possible a social solidarity that otherwise would not exist.

II. MATERIALS

A. FORMS OF ACCOMMODATION

1. Acclimatization[224]

The most important ethnic question in connection with climate is that of the possibility of a race adapting itself to climatic conditions widely different from those to which it has been accustomed. This is the question of acclimatization.

Its bearings on ethnic psychology can be made at once evident by posing a few practical inquiries: Can the English people flourish in India? Will the French colonize successfully the Sudan? Have the Europeans lost or gained in power by their migration to the United States? Can the white or any other race ultimately become the sole residents of the globe?

It will be seen that on the answers to such questions depends the destiny of races and the consequences to the species of the facilities of transportation offered by modern inventions. The subject has therefore received the careful study of medical geographers and statisticians.

I can give but a brief statement of their conclusions. They are to the effect, first, that when the migration takes place along approximately the same isothermal lines, the changes in the system are slight; but as the mean annual temperature rises, the body becomes increasingly unable to resist its deleterious action until a difference of 18° F. is reached, at which continued existence of the more northern races becomes impossible. They suffer from a chemical change in the condition of the blood cells, leading to anemia in the individual and to extinction of the lineage in the third generation.

This is the general law of the relation to race and climate. Like most laws it has its exceptions, depending on special conditions. A stock which has long been accustomed to change of climate adapts itself to any with greater facility. This explains the singular readiness of the Jews to settle and flourish in all zones. For a similar reason a people who at home are accustomed to a climate of wide and sudden changes, like that of the eastern United States, supports others with less loss of power than the average.

A locality may be extremely hot but unusually free from other malefic influences, being dry with regular and moderate winds, and well drained, such as certain areas between the Red Sea and the Nile, which are also quite salubrious.

Finally, certain individuals and certain families, owing to some fortunate power of resistance which we cannot explain, acclimate successfully where their companions perish. Most of the instances of alleged successful acclimatization of Europeans in the tropics are due to such exceptions, the far greater number of the victims being left out of the count.

If these alleged successful cases, or that of the Jews or Arabs, be closely examined, it will almost surely be discovered that another physiological element has been active in bringing about acclimatization, and that is the mingling of blood with the native race. In the American tropics the Spaniards have survived for four centuries; but how many of the _Ladinos_ can truthfully claim an unmixed descent? In Guatemala, for example, says a close observer, _not any_. The Jews of the Malabar coast have actually become black, and so has also in Africa many an Arab claiming direct descent from the Prophet himself.

But along with this process of adaptation by amalgamation comes unquestionably a lowering of the mental vitality of the higher race. That is the price it has to pay for the privilege of survival under the new conditions. But, in conformity to the principles already laid down as accepted by all anthropologists, such a lowering must correspond to a degeneration in the highest grades of structure, the brain cells.

We are forced, therefore, to reach the decision that the human species attains its highest development only under moderate conditions of heat, such as prevail in the temperate zones (an annual mean of 8°-12° C.); and the more startling conclusion that the races now native to the polar and tropical areas are distinctly _pathological_, are types of degeneracy, having forfeited their highest physiological elements in order to purchase immunity from the unfavorable climatic conditions to which they are subject. We must agree with a French writer, that "man is not cosmopolitan," and if he insists on becoming a "citizen of the world" he is taxed heavily in his best estate for his presumption.

The inferences in racial psychology which follow this opinion are too evident to require detailed mention. Natural selection has fitted the Eskimo and the Sudanese for their respective abodes, but it has been by the process of regressive evolution; progressive evolution in man has confined itself to less extreme climatic areas.

The facts of acclimatization stand in close connection with another doctrine in anthropology which is interesting for my theme, that of "ethno-geographic provinces." Alexander von Humboldt seems to have been the first to give expression to this system of human grouping, and it has been diligently cultivated by his disciple, Professor Bastian. It rests upon the application to the human species of two general principles recognized as true in zoölogy and botany. The one is that every organism is directly dependent on its environment (the _milieu_), action and reaction going on constantly between them; the other is, that no two faunal or floral regions are of equal rank in their capacity for the development of a given type of organism.

The features which distinguish one ethno-geographic province from another are chiefly, according to Bastian, meteorological, and they permit, he claims, a much closer division of human groups than the general continental areas which give us an African, a European, and an American subspecies.

It is possible that more extended researches may enable ethnographers to map out, in this sense, the distribution of our species; but the secular alterations in meteorologic conditions, combined with the migratory habits of most early communities, must greatly interfere with a rigid application of these principles in ethnography.

The historic theory of "centres of civilisation" is allied to that of ethno-geographic provinces. The stock examples of such are familiar. The Babylonian plain, the valley of the Nile, in America the plateaus of Mexico and of Tiahuanuco are constantly quoted as such. The geographic advantages these situations offered--a fertile soil, protection from enemies, domesticable plants, and a moderate climate--are offered as reasons why an advanced culture rapidly developed in them, and from them extended over adjacent regions.

Without denying the advantages of such surroundings, the most recent researches in both hemispheres tend to reduce materially their influence. The cultures in question did not begin at one point and radiate from it, but arose simultaneously over wide areas, in different linguistic stocks, with slight connections; and only later, and secondarily, was it successfully concentrated by some one tribe--by the agency, it is now believed, of cognatic rather than geographic aids.

Assyriologists no longer believe that Sumerian culture originated in the delta of the Euphrates, and Egyptologists look for the sources of the civilization of the Nile Valley among the Libyans; while in the New World not one but seven stocks partook of the Aztec learning, and half a dozen contributed to that of the Incas. The prehistoric culture of Europe was not one of Carthaginians or Phoenicians, but was self-developed.

2. Slavery Defined[225]

In most branches of knowledge the phenomena the man of science has to deal with have their technical names, and, when using a scientific term, he need not have regard to the meaning this term conveys in ordinary language; he knows he will not be misunderstood by his fellow-scientists. For instance, the Germans call a whale _Wallfisch_, and the English speak of shellfish; but a zoölogist, using the word fish, need not fear that any competent person will think he means whales or shellfish.

In ethnology the state of things is quite different. There are a few scientific names bearing a definite meaning, such as the terms "animism" and "survival," happily introduced by Professor Tylor. But most phenomena belonging to our science have not yet been investigated, so it is no wonder that different writers (sometimes even the same writer on different pages) give different names to the same phenomenon, whereas, on the other hand, sometimes the same term (e.g., matriarchate) is applied to widely different phenomena. As for the subject we are about to treat of, we shall presently see that several writers have given a definition of slavery; but no one has taken the trouble to inquire whether his definition can be of any practical use in social science. Therefore, we shall try to give a good definition and justify it.

But we may not content ourselves with this; we must also pay attention to the meaning of the term "slavery" as commonly employed. There are two reasons for this. First, we must always rely upon the statements of ethnographers. If an ethnographer states that some savage tribe carries on slavery, without defining in what this "slavery" consists, we have to ask: What may our informant have meant? And as he is likely to have used the word in the sense generally attached to it, we have to inquire: What is the ordinary meaning of the term "slavery"?

The second reason is this. Several theoretical writers speak of slavery without defining what they mean by it; and we cannot avail ourselves of their remarks without knowing what meaning they attach to this term. And as they too may be supposed to have used it in the sense in which it is generally used, we have again to inquire: What is the meaning of the term "slavery" in ordinary language?

The general use of the word, as is so often the case, is rather inaccurate. Ingram says:

Careless or rhetorical writers use the words "slave" and
"slavery" in a very lax way. Thus, when protesting against the
so-called "Subjection of Women," they absurdly apply those
terms to the condition of the wife in the modern society of the
west--designations which are inappropriate even in the case of
the inmate of Indian zenanas; and they speak of the modern
worker as a "wage-slave," even though he is backed by a
powerful trade-union. Passion has a language of its own, and
poets and orators must doubtless be permitted to denote by the
word "slavery" the position of subjects of a state who labor
under civil disabilities or are excluded from the exercise of
political power; but in sociological study things ought to have
their right names, and those names should, as far as possible,
be uniformly employed.

But this use of the word we may safely regard as a metaphor; nobody will assert that these laborers and women are really slaves. Whoever uses the term slavery in its ordinary sense attaches a fairly distinct idea to it. What is this idea? We can express it most generally thus: a slave is one who is not free. There are never slaves without there being freemen too; and nobody can be at the same time a slave and a freeman. We must, however, be careful to remember that, man being a "social animal," no man is literally free; all members of a community are restricted in their behavior toward each other by social rules and customs. But freemen at any rate are relatively free; so a slave must be one who does not share in the common amount of liberty, compatible with the social connection.

The condition of the slave as opposed to that of the freeman presents itself to us under the three following aspects:

First, every slave has his master to whom he is subjected. And this subjection is of a peculiar kind. Unlike the authority one freeman sometimes has over another, the master's power over his slave is unlimited, at least in principle; any restriction put upon the master's free exercise of his power is a mitigation of slavery, not belonging to its nature, just as in Roman law the proprietor may do with his property whatever he is not by special laws forbidden to do. The relation between master and slave is therefore properly expressed by the slave being called the master's "possession" or "property"--expressions we frequently meet with.

Secondly, slaves are in a lower condition as compared with freemen. The slave has no political rights; he does not choose his government, he does not attend the public councils. Socially he is despised.

In the third place, we always connect with slavery the idea of compulsory labor. The slave is compelled to work; the free laborer may leave off working if he likes, be it at the cost of starving. All compulsory labor, however, is not slave labor; the latter requires that peculiar kind of compulsion that is expressed by the word "possession" or "property" as has been said before.

Recapitulating, we may define a slave in the ordinary sense of the word as a man who is the property of another, politically and socially at a lower level than the mass of the people, and performing compulsory labor.

The great function of slavery can be no other than a _division of labor_. Division of labor is taken here in the widest sense, as including not only a qualitative division, by which one man does one kind of work and another a different kind, but also a quantitative one, by which one man's wants are provided for, not by his own work only, but by another's. A society without any division of labor would be one in which each man worked for his own wants, and nobody for another's; in any case but this there is a division of labor in this wider sense of the word. Now this division can be brought about by two means. "There are two ways" says Puchta "in which we can avail ourselves of the strength of other men which we are in need of. One is the way of free commerce, that does not interfere with the liberty of the person who serves us, the making of contracts by which we exchange the strength and skill of another, or their products, for other performances on our part: hire of services, purchase of manufactures, etc. The other way is the subjugation of such persons, which enables us to dispose of their strength in our behalf but at the same time injures the personality of the subjected. This subjection can be imagined as being restricted to certain purposes, for instance to the cultivation of the land, as with soil-tilling serfs, the result of which is that this subjection, for the very reason that it has a definite and limited aim, does not quite annul the liberty of the subjected. But the subjection can also be an unlimited one, as is the case when the subjected person, in the whole of his outward life, is treated as but a means to the purposes of the man of power, and so his personality is entirely absorbed. This is the institution of slavery."

3. Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner[226]

Soon after nine o'clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my trustee, and a whole cavalcade, waiting to conduct me to my own estate; for he had brought with him a curricle and pair for myself, a gig for my servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey my baggage. The road was excellent, and we had not above five miles to travel; and as soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. The works were instantly all abandoned; everything that had life came flocking to the house from all quarters; and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, "by a bland assimilation," the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever witnessed: they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once enquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from ear to ear, "Look, Massa, look here! him nice lilly neger for Massa!" Another complained, "So long since none come see we, Massa; good Massa, come at last." As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story: now they had lived once to see Massa, they were ready for dying tomorrow, "them no care."

The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-colored handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected; perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my _slaves_;--to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life; and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of the laborers of Great Britain; and, after all, slavery, in _their_ case, is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be forcibly carried away from Africa and subjected to the horrors of the voyage and of the seasoning after their arrival; but still I had already experienced, in the morning, that Juliet was wrong in saying "What's in a name?" For soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la Mar, a remarkably clean-looking negro lad presented himself with some water and a towel--I concluded him to belong to the inn--and, on my returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at length ventured to introduce himself by saying, "Massa not know me; _me your slave!_"--and really the sound made me feel a pang at the heart. The lad appeared all gaiety and good humor, and his whole countenance expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice, but the word "slave" seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him, "Do not say that again; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave."

As I was returning this morning from Montego Bay, about a mile from my own estate, a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most picturesque that I ever beheld: it was a mulatto girl, born upon Cornwall, but whom the overseer of a neighboring estate had obtained my permission to exchange for another slave, as well as two little children, whom she had borne to him; but, as yet, he had been unable to procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing single negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is considered as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at Cornwall on my arrival, lest she should have been considered as an intruder; but she now threw herself in my way to tell me how glad she was to see me, for that she had always thought till now (which is the general complaint) that "_she had no massa_;" and also to obtain a regular invitation to my negro festival tomorrow. By this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, _their_ greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that "they belong to no massa," is one of the most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego Bay the next morning, they fancied that I was going away for good and all, and came up to the house in such a hubbub that my agent was obliged to speak to them, and pacify them with the assurance that I should come back on Friday without fail.

But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I _insisted_ upon her coming, and bade her tell her _husband_ that I admired his taste very much for having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the most _statue-like_ that I ever met with; her complexion had no yellow in it and yet was not brown enough to be dark--it was more of an ash-dove color than anything else; her teeth were admirable, both for color and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour: her air and countenance would have suited Yarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in "La Vergine del Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized excellently with her complexion; while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old cotton tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty years.

I really believe that the negresses can produce children at pleasure, and where they are barren, it is just as hens will frequently not lay eggs on shipboard, because they do not like their situation. Cubina's wife is in a family way, and I told him that if the child should live, I would christen it for him, if he wished it. "Tank you, kind massa, me like it very much: much oblige if massa do that for _me_, too." So I promised to baptize the father and the baby on the same day, and said that I would be godfather to any children that might be born on the estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread about, and, although I have not yet been here a week, two women are in the straw already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my head driver, The Duke of Sully, but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding that Minerva's husband was called Captain. I think nobody will be able to accuse me of neglecting the religious education of my negroes, for I have not only promised to baptize all the infants, but, meeting a little black boy this morning, who said that his name was Moses, I gave him a piece of silver, and told him that it was for the sake of Aaron; which, I flatter myself, was planting in his young mind the rudiments of Christianity.

On my former visit to Jamaica, I found on my estate a poor woman nearly one hundred years old, and stone blind. She was too infirm to walk, but two young negroes brought her on their backs to the steps of my house, in order, as she said, that she might at least touch massa, although she could not see him. When she had kissed my hand, "that was enough," she said: "now me hab once kiss a massa's hand, me willing to die tomorrow, me no care." She had a woman appropriated to her service and was shown the greatest care and attention; however, she did not live many months after my departure. There was also a mulatto, about thirty years of age, named Bob, who had been almost deprived of the use of his limbs by the horrible cocoa-bay, and had never done the least work since he was fifteen. He was so gentle and humble and so fearful, from the consciousness of his total inability of soliciting my notice, that I could not help pitying the poor fellow; and whenever he came in my way I always sought to encourage him by little presents and other trifling marks of favor. His thus unexpectedly meeting with distinguishing kindness, where he expected to be treated as a worthless incumbrance, made a strong impression on his mind.

4. The Origin of Caste in India[227]

If it were possible to compress into a single paragraph a theory so complex as that which would explain the origin and nature of Indian caste, I should attempt to sum it up in some such words as the following: A caste is a marriage union, the constituents of which were drawn from various different tribes (or from various other castes similarly formed) in virtue of some industry, craft, or function, either secular or religious, which they possessed in common. The internal discipline, by which the conditions of membership in regard to connubial and convivial rights are defined and enforced, has been borrowed from the tribal period which preceded the period of castes by many centuries, and which was brought to a close by the amalgamation of tribes into a nation under a common scepter. The differentia of _caste_ as a marriage union consists in some community of function; while the differentia of _tribe_ as a marriage union consisted in a common ancestry, or a common worship, or a common totem, or in fact in any kind of common property except that of a common function.

Long before castes were formed on Indian soil, most of the industrial classes, to which they now correspond, had existed for centuries, and as a rule most of the industries which they practiced were hereditary on the male side of the parentage. These hereditary classes were and are simply the concrete embodiments of those successive stages of culture which have marked the industrial development of mankind in every part of the world. Everywhere (except at least in those countries where he is still a savage), man has advanced from the stage of hunting and fishing to that of nomadism and cattle-grazing, and from nomadism to agriculture proper. Everywhere has the age of metallurgy and of the arts and industries which are coeval with it been preceded by a ruder age, when only those arts were known or practiced which sufficed for the hunting, fishing, and nomad states. Everywhere has the class of ritualistic priests and lettered theosophists been preceded by a class of less-cultivated worshipers, who paid simple offerings of flesh and wine to the personified powers of the visible universe without the aid of a hereditary professional priesthood. Everywhere has the class of nobles and territorial chieftains been preceded by a humbler class of small peasant proprietors, who placed themselves under their protection and paid tribute or rent in return. Everywhere has this class of nobles and chieftains sought to ally itself with that of the priests or sacerdotal order; and everywhere has the priestly order sought to bring under its control those chiefs and rulers under whose protection it lives.

All these classes had been in existence for centuries before any such thing as caste was known on Indian soil; and the only thing that was needed to convert them into castes, such as they now are, was that the Brahman, who possessed the highest of all functions--the priestly--should set the example. This he did by establishing for the first time the rule that no child, either male or female, could inherit the name and status of Brahman, unless he or she was of Brahman parentage on _both_ sides. By the establishment of this rule the principle of marriage unionship was superadded to that of functional unionship; and it was only by the combination of these two principles that a caste in the strict sense of the term could or can be formed. The Brahman, therefore, as the Hindu books inform us, was "the first-born of castes." When the example had thus been set by an arrogant and overbearing priesthood, whose pretensions it was impossible to put down, the other hereditary classes followed in regular order downward, partly in imitation and partly in self-defence. Immediately behind the Brahman came the Kshatriya, the military chieftain or landlord. He therefore was the "second-born of castes." Then followed the bankers or upper trading classes (the Agarwal, Khattri, etc.); the scientific musician and singer (Kathak); the writing or literary class (Kayasth); the bard or genealogist (Bhat); and the class of inferior nobles (Taga and Bhuinhar) who paid no rent to the landed aristocracy. These, then, were the third-born of castes. Next in order came those artisan classes, who were coeval with the age and art of metallurgy; the metallurgic classes themselves; the middle trading classes; the middle agricultural classes, who placed themselves under the protection of the Kshatriya and paid him rent in return (Kurmi, Kachhi, Mali, Tamboli); and the middle serving classes, such as Napit and Baidya, who attended to the bodily wants of their equals and superiors. These, then, were the fourth-born of castes; and their rank in the social scale has been determined by the fact that their manners and notions are farther removed than those of the preceding castes from the Brahmanical ideal. Next came the inferior artisan classes, those who preceded the age and art of metallurgy (Teli, Kumhar, Kalwar, etc.); the partly nomad and partly agricultural classes (Jat, Gujar, Ahir, etc.); the inferior serving classes, such as Kahar; and the inferior trading classes, such as Bhunja. These, then, were the fifth-born of castes, and their mode of life is still farther removed from the Brahmanical ideal than that of the preceding. The last-born, and therefore the lowest, of all the classes are those semisavage communities, partly tribes and partly castes, whose function consists in hunting or fishing, or in acting as butcher for the general community, or in rearing swine and fowls, or in discharging the meanest domestic services, such as sweeping and washing, or in practicing the lowest of human arts, such as basket-making, hide-tanning, etc. Thus throughout the whole series of Indian castes a double test of social precedence has been in active force, the industrial and the Brahmanical; and these two have kept pace together almost as evenly as a pair of horses harnessed to a single carriage. In proportion as the function practiced by any given caste stands high or low in the scale of industrial development, in the same proportion does the caste itself, impelled by the general tone of society by which it is surrounded, approximate more nearly or more remotely to the Brahmanical idea of life. It is these two criteria combined which have determined the relative ranks of the various castes in the Hindu social scale.

5. Caste and the Sentiments of Caste Reflected in Popular Speech[228]

No one indeed can fail to be struck by the intensely popular character of Indian proverbial philosophy and by its freedom from the note of pedantry which is so conspicuous in Indian literature. These quaint sayings have dropped fresh from the lips of the Indian rustic; they convey a vivid impression of the anxieties, the troubles, the annoyances, and the humors of his daily life; and any sympathetic observer who has felt the fascination of an oriental village would have little difficulty in constructing from these materials a fairly accurate picture of rural society in India. The _mise en scène_ is not altogether a cheerful one. It shows us the average peasant dependent upon the vicissitudes of the season and the vagaries of the monsoon, and watching from day to day to see what the year may bring forth. Should rain fall at the critical moment his wife will get golden earrings, but one short fortnight of drought may spell calamity when "God takes all at once." Then the forestalling Baniya flourishes by selling rotten grain, and the Jat cultivator is ruined. First die the improvident Musalman weavers, then the oil-pressers for whose wares there is no demand; the carts lie idle, for the bullocks are dead, and the bride goes to her husband without the accustomed rites. But be the season good or bad, the pious Hindu's life is ever overshadowed by the exactions of the Brahman--"a thing with a string round its neck" (a profane hit at the sacred thread), a priest by appearance, a butcher at heart, the chief of a trio of tormentors gibbeted in the rhyming proverb:

Blood-suckers three on earth there be,
The bug, the Brahman, and the flea.

Before the Brahman starves the king's larder will be empty; cakes must be given to him while the children of the house may lick the grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the misfortunes of his clients. A village with a Brahman in it is like a tank full of crabs; to have him as a neighbor is worse than leprosy; if a snake has to be killed the Brahman should be set to do it, for no one will miss him. If circumstances compel you to perjure yourself, why swear on the head of your son, when there is a Brahman handy? Should he die (as is the popular belief) the world will be none the poorer. Like the devil in English proverbial philosophy, the Brahman can cite scripture for his purpose; he demands worship himself but does not scruple to kick his low-caste brethren; he washes his sacred thread but does not cleanse his inner man; and so great is his avarice that a man of another caste is supposed to pray "O God, let me not be reborn as a Brahman priest, who is always begging and is never satisfied." He defrauds even the gods; Vishnu gets the barren prayers while the Brahman devours the offerings. So Pan complains in one of Lucian's dialogues that he is done out of the good things which men offer at his shrine.