Chapter XXXIV: The Origin and Development of the Altruistic Sentiment (2)

[Footnote 83: von Wlislocki, 'Menschenblut im Glauben der Zigeuner,' in _Am Ur-Quell_, iii. 64. Dörfler, 'Das Blut im magyarischen Volkglauben,' _ibid._ iii. 269 _sq._]

[Footnote 84: Forbes, _A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_, p. 452 (natives of Timor). Burns, 'Kayans of the North-West of Borneo,' in _Jour. of the Indian Archipelago_, iii. 146 _sq._ New, _Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa_, p. 364 (Taveta). Decle, _Three Years in Savage Africa_, p. 494 (Wakamba). Trumbull, _op. cit._ pp. 9, 20, 31, 42, 45-47, 53, 61 _sq._ For the practice of sealing an agreement by transference of blood accompanied by an oath, see also Partridge, _Cross River Natives_, p. 191 (pagans of Obubura Hill district in Southern Nigeria).]

[Footnote 85: Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, 187 _sqq._]

[Footnote 86: Dumont d'Urville, _Voyage pittoresque autour du monde_, i. 81.]

[Footnote 87: Hinde, _Last of the Masai_, p. 47. See also Johnston, _Uganda_, ii. 833.]

[Footnote 88: Hinde, _op. cit._ p. 48.]

[Footnote 89: Robertson Smith, _Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia_, p. 56 _sqq._ _Cf._ Herodotus, iii. 8.]

[Footnote 90: See _supra_, i. 587. According to another theory the inoculated blood is regarded as a pledge or deposit, which compels the person from whom it was drawn to be faithful to the person to whom it was transferred. Suppose that two individuals, A and B, become "blood-brothers" by mutual inoculation. Each, then, Mr. Crawley argues (_Mystic Rose_, p. 236 _sq._), has a part of the other in his keeping, each has "given himself away" to the other in a very real sense; and the possibility of mutual treachery or wrong is prevented both by the fact that injury done to B by A is considered equivalent to injury done by A to himself, and also by the belief that if B is wronged he may work vengeance by injuring the part of A which he possesses. To this explanation, however, serious objections may be raised. The belief in sympathetic magic does not imply that injury done to B by A is _eo ipso_ supposed to affect A himself through that part of him which has been deposited in B; it does not imply that two things which have once been conjoined remain, when quite dissevered from each other, in such a relation that "whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other" (Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 49), unless there is an intention to this effect in the agent. The severed part then serves as a medium by which magic influence is transferred to the whole. Again, it is difficult to see how B could injure A through the part of him which he possesses when that part has been absorbed into his own system, as must be the case with those few drops of A's blood with which he was inoculated.]

Besides marriage, local proximity, and a common descent, a common worship may tie people together into {210} social union. But among savages a religious community generally coincides with a community of some other kind. There are tutelary gods of families, clans, and tribes;[91] and a purely local group may also form a religious community by itself. Major Ellis observes that with some two or three exceptions all the gods worshipped by the Tshi-speaking tribes on the Gold Coast are exclusively local and have a limited area of worship. If they are nature-gods they are bound up with the natural objects they animate, if they are ghost-gods they are localised by the place of sepulture, and if they are tutelary deities whose origin has been forgotten their position is necessarily fixed by that of the town, village, or family they protect; in any case they are worshipped only by those who live in the neighbourhood, the only exceptions being the sky-god, the earthquake-god, and the goddess of the silkcotton trees, who are worshipped everywhere.[92]

[Footnote 91: See _infra_, ch. l.]

[Footnote 92: Ellis, _Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 284 _sq._ For various instances of village gods see Turner, _Samoa_, p. 18; Crozet, _Voyage to Tasmania, &c._ p. 45 (Maoris); Christian, _Caroline Islands_, p. 75 (natives of Ponape); Grierson, _Bih[=a]r Peasant Life_, p. 403 _sqq._]

When the religious community is thus at the same time a family, clan, village, or tribe, it is of course impossible exactly to distinguish the social influence of the common religion from that exercised by marriage, local proximity, or a common descent. It seems, however, that the importance of the religious bond, or at least of the totem bond, has been somewhat exaggerated by a certain school of anthropologists. We are told that in early society "each member of the kin testifies and renews his union with the rest" by taking part in a sacrificial meal in which the totem god is eaten by his worshippers.[93] But no satisfactory evidence has ever been given in support of this theory. Sir J. G. Frazer knows only one certain case of a totem sacrament, namely, that prevalent among the Arunta and some other tribes in Central Australia,[94] who at the time of Intichiuma are in the habit of killing and eating totem animals; and this practice has nothing whatever {211} to do with the mutual relations between kindred. Its object is only to multiply in a magic manner the animals of certain species for the purpose of increasing the food-supply for other totemic groups.[95] In his book on Totemism Frazer writes:--"The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is expressly stated of the clans of western Australia and of north-western America, and is probably true of all societies where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed against either their father or their mother, according as descent is traced through the mother, or through the father."[96] In the two or three cases which Frazer quotes in support of his statement[97] the totemic group is identical with the clan; hence it is impossible to decide whether the strength of the tie which unites its members is due to the totem relationship or to the common descent. But even the combined clan and totem systems seem at most only in exceptional cases to lead to such consequences as are indicated by Frazer's authorities. With reference to the Australian aborigines Mr. Curr observes:--"Of the children of one father being at war with him, or with each other, on the ground of maternal relationship, or any other ground, my inquiries and experience supply no instances. To Captain Grey's statements, indeed, there are several objections."[98]

[Footnote 93: Hartland, _op. cit._ ii. 236.]

[Footnote 94: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. p. xix. _Cf._ _Idem_, _Totemism and Exogamy_, iv. 230 _sqq._]

[Footnote 95: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. vi. _Iidem_, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. ix. _sq._]

[Footnote 96: Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 57.]

[Footnote 97: Grey, _Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia_, ii. 230. Petroff, _Report on Alaska_, p. 165. Hardisty, 'Loucheux Indians,' in _Smithsonian Report_, 1866, p. 315.]

[Footnote 98: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 67. In Hardisty's statement, referring to the Loucheux Indians, there is a conspicuous lack of definiteness. He says:--"In war it was not tribe against tribe, but division against division, and as the children were never of the same caste (clan) as the father, the children would, of course, be against the father and the father against the children. . . . This, however, was not likely to occur very often, as the worst of parents would have naturally preferred peace to war with his own children." Petroff's passage concerning the Thlinkets, referred to by Sir J. G. Frazer, simply runs:--"The ties of the totem or clanship are considered far stronger than those of blood relationship."]

{212} Among the Arunta and some other Central Australian tribes we have fortunately an opportunity of studying the social influence of totemism apart from that of clanship, the division into totems being quite independent of the clan system. The whole district of a tribe may be mapped out into a large number of areas of various sizes, each of which centres in one or more spots where, in the dim past, certain mythical ancestors are said to have originated or camped during their wanderings, and where their spirits are still supposed to remain, associated with sacred stones, which the ancestors used to carry about with them. From these spirits have sprung, and still continue to spring, actual men and women, the members of the various totems being their reincarnations. At the spots where they remained, the ancestral spirits enter the bodies of women, and in consequence a child must belong to the totem of the spot at which the mother believes that it was conceived. A result of this is that no one totem is confined to the members of a particular clan or sub-clan,[99] and that though most members of a given horde or local group belong to the same totemic group, there is no absolute coincidence between these two kinds of organisation.[100] How, then, does the fact that two persons belong to the same totem influence their social relationships? "In these tribes," say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "there is no such thing as the members of one totem being bound together in such a way that they must combine to fight on behalf of a member of the totem to which they belong. . . . The men to assist a particular man in a quarrel are those of his locality, and not of necessity those of the same totem as himself, indeed the latter consideration does not enter into account and in this as in other matters we see the strong {213} development of what we have called the 'local influence.' . . . The men who assist him are his brothers, blood and tribal, the sons of his mother's brothers, blood and tribal. That is, if he be a Panunga man he will have the assistance of the Panunga and Ungalla men of his locality, while if it comes to a general fight he will have the help of the whole of his local group. . . . It is only indeed during the performance of certain ceremonies that the existence of a mutual relationship, consequent upon the possession of a common totemic name, stands out at all prominently. In fact, it is perfectly easy to spend a considerable time amongst the Arunta tribe without even being aware that each individual has a totemic name."[101]

[Footnote 99: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. iv.]

[Footnote 100: _Ibid._ pp. 9, 32, 34.]

[Footnote 101: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 34, 544.]

When from the savage and barbarous races of men we pass to peoples of a higher culture, as they first appear to us in the light of history, we meet among them social units similar in kind to those prevalent at lower stages of civilisation: the family, clan, village, tribe. We also find among them, side by side with the family consisting of parents and children, a larger family organisation, which, though not unknown among the lower races, assumes particular prominence in the archaic State.

In China the family generally remains undivided till the children of the younger sons are beginning to grow up. Then the younger branches of the family separate, and form their own households. But the new householders continue to take part in the ancestral worship of the old home; and mourning is worn in theory for four generations of ascendants and descendants in the direct line, and for contemporaries descended in the same fifth generation from the "honoured head" of the family.[102] At the same time we find in China at least traces of a clan organisation. Large bodies of persons bear the same surname, and a penalty is inflicted on anyone who marries a person with the same surname as his own, whilst a man is strictly forbidden to nominate as his heir {214} an individual of a different surname.[103] Moreover, there are whole villages composed of relatives all bearing the same ancestral name. "In many cases," says Mr. Doolittle, "for a long period of time no division of inherited property is made in rural districts, the descendants of a common ancestor living or working together, enjoying and sharing the profits of their labours under the general direction and supervision of the head of the clan and the heads of the family branches. . . . There may be only one head of the clan. Under him there are several heads of families."[104]

[Footnote 102: Simcox, _Primitive Civilizations_, ii. 303, 493, 69.]

[Footnote 103: Medhurst, 'Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China,' in _Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch_, iv. 21, 22, 29.]

[Footnote 104: Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, ii. 225 _sqq._]

The "four generations" of the Chinese, comprising those who are regarded as near relatives, have their counterpart in the family organisation of most so-called Aryan peoples. The Roman Propinqui--that is, parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, first cousins (_consobrini_) and second cousins (_sobrini_)--exactly corresponded to the Anchisteis of the Greeks, the Sapindas of the Hindus,[105] and the "Syngeneis" of the Persians.[106] The persons belonging to these four generations stood in a particularly close relationship to each other. They had mutual rights and duties of various kinds. In early times, if one of them was killed, the survivors had to avenge his death. They were expected to assist each other whenever it was needed, especially before the court. They celebrated in common feasts of rejoicing and feasts for the dead. They had a common cult and common mourning. In short, they formed an enlarged family unit of which the individual families were merely sub-branches, even though {215} they did not necessarily live in the same house.[107] In India we still meet with a perishable survival of this organisation. "In the Joint Family of the Hindus," says Sir Henry Maine, ". . . . the agnatic group of the Romans absolutely survives--or rather, but for the English law and English courts, it would survive. Here there is a real, thoroughly ascertained common ancestor, a genuine consanguinity, a common fund of property, a common dwelling."[108] The Gwentian, Dimetian, and Venedotian codes likewise represent the homestead and land of the free Welshman as a family holding. "So long as the head of the family lived," says Mr. Seebohm, "all his descendants lived with him, apparently in the same homestead, unless new ones had already been built for them on the family land. In any case, they still formed part of the joint household of which he was the head. When a free tribesman, the head of a household, died, his holding was not broken up. It was held by his heirs for three generations as one joint holding."[109] So also among the subdivisions of ancient Irish society there was one which comprised the "near relatives," the Propinqui of the Romans.[110] Many of the South Slavonians to this day live in house communities each consisting of a body of from ten to sixty members or even more, who are blood-relations to the second or third degree on the male side, and who associate in a common dwelling or group of dwellings, having their land in common, following a common occupation, and being governed by a common chief.[111] Among the Russians, {216} too, there are households of this kind, containing the representatives of three generations; and previous to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 such households were much more common than they are now.[112] The ancient Teutons are the only "Aryan" race among whom the joint family organisation cannot be proved to have prevailed.[113]

[Footnote 105: _Baudhâyana_, i. 5. 11. 9:--"The great-grandfather, the grandfather, the father, oneself, the uterine brothers, the son by a wife of equal caste, the grandson, and the great-grandson--these they call Sapindas, but not the great-grandson's son." _Laws of Manu_, ix. 186:--"To three ancestors water must be offered, to three the funeral cake is given, the fourth descendant is the giver of these oblations, the fifth has no connection with them." _Cf._ Jolly, 'Recht und Sitte,' in Bühler, _Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie_, ii. 85.]

[Footnote 106: Brissonius, _De regio Persarum principatu_, i. 207, p. 279. Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. 47 _sqq._]

[Footnote 107: Klenze, 'Die Cognaten und Affinen nach Römischem Rechte in Vergleichung mit andern verwandten Rechten,' in _Zeitschr. f. geschichtliche Rechtswiss._ vi. 5 _sqq._ Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. 231 _sqq._ Rivier, _Précis du droit de famille romain_, p. 34 _sqq._]

[Footnote 108: Maine, _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_, p. 240.]

[Footnote 109: Seebohm, _English Village Community_, p. 193. _Idem_, _Tribal System in Wales_, p. 89 _sqq._]

[Footnote 110: Maine, _Early History of Institutions_, p. 90 _sq._ Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. Anhang i.]

[Footnote 111: Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_, pp. 75, 79 _sqq._ Maine, _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_, p. 241 _sqq._ Utie[vs]enovi['c], _Die Hauskommunionen der Südslaven_, p. 20 _sqq._ Miler, 'Die Hauskommunion der Südslaven,' in _Jahrbuch d. internat. Vereinigung f. vergl. Rechtswiss._ iii. 199 _sqq._]

[Footnote 112: Mackenzie Wallace, _Russia_, i. 134. von Hellwald, _Die menschliche Familie_, p. 506 _sq._ Kovalewsky, _Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia_, p. 53 _sq._]

[Footnote 113: See Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. Anhang i.]

Among all these peoples a number of kindred families or joint families were united into a larger social group forming a village community or a cluster of households. The Vedic people called such a body of kindred _janman[=a]_ or simply _gr[=a]ma_, which means "village";[114] and the same organisation still survives in India, though in a modified form. The type of Indian village communities which has been described by Sir Henry Maine is at once an assemblage of co-proprietors and an organised patriarchal society, providing for the management of the common fund and generally also for internal government, police, the administration of justice, and the apportionment of taxes and public duties. Unlike the joint family, the related families of the village community no longer hold their land as an indistinguishable common fund: they have portioned it out, at most they redistribute it periodically, and are thus on the high road to modern landed proprietorship. And whilst the joint family is a narrow circle of persons actually related to each other, the village community has very generally been adulterated by the admission of strangers, especially purchasers of shares, who have from time to time been engrafted on the original stock of blood-relatives. Yet in all such cases there is the assumption of an original common parentage; hence the Hindu village community of the type indicated, whenever it is not actually an association of kinsmen, is always a body of co-proprietors formed on the model of such an association.[115]

[Footnote 114: Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, p. 159 _sq._]

[Footnote 115: Maine, _Ancient Law_, p. 260 _sqq._ _Idem_, _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_, p. 240. Elphinstone, _History of India_, p. 68 _sqq._ Mr. Baden-Powell (_Indian Village Community_, p. 3 _sqq._) has shown that Sir Henry Maine's general description of Indian village communities holds true only of a certain class of villages in India.]

{217} Corresponding to the Vedic _gr[=a]ma_ there were the Iranian _viç_, the Greek _genos_, and the Roman _gens_; and as among the Vedic people several _gr[=a]mas_ formed a _viç_ and several _viçs_ a _jana_,[116] so the Iranian _viç_, the Greek _genos_, and the Roman _gens_ were, respectively, subdivisions of a _zantu_, _phratria_, and _curia_; and these again were subdivisions of a still more comprehensive unit, a _daqyu_, _phyle_, and _tribus_.[117] The Roman territory was in earliest times divided into a number of clan-districts, each inhabited by a particular _gens_, which was thus a group associated at once by locality and by a common descent. Whilst each household had its own portion of land, the clan-household or village had a clan-land belonging to it, and this clan-land was managed up to a comparatively late period after the analogy of household-land, that is, on the system of joint-possession, each clan tilling its own land and thereafter distributing the produce among the several households belonging to it. Even the traditions of Roman law furnish the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special property.[118] Still in historical times, if a person left no sons or agnates living at his death, the inheritance escheated to the _gentiles_, or entire body of Roman citizens bearing the same name with the deceased, whereas no part of it was given to any relative united, however closely, with the dead man through female descent.[119] But as the Hindu village community, so also the Roman _gens_, though originally a group of blood-relatives inhabiting a common district, was already in early times recruited from men of alien extraction who were assumed to be descended from a common ancestor. And it is difficult to believe {218} that either in Rome or Greece even the fiction of a common origin could be preserved for long when the organisation of the people into gentes, phratries, and tribes was adopted by the State as a system of political division and their numbers were fixed.[120] When the _genos_ and _gens_ first appear to us in history they were mere dwindling survivals, except in one respect: they remained, as they had been from the outset,[121] religious communities long after they had lost all other practical importance. This was especially the case at Athens, where certain reputed gentes for centuries continued to play a prominent part in the religious cult;[122] and the Romans seem to have preserved their _gentilicia sacra_ still in Cicero's time.[123]

[Footnote 116: Zimmer, _op. cit._ p. 159 _sq._]

[Footnote 117: Leist, _Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 104 _sq._]

[Footnote 118: Mommsen, _History of Rome_, i. 45, 46, 238.]

[Footnote 119: Maine, _Ancient Law_, p. 220 _sq._ Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cité antique_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 120: Leist, _Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 150 _sqq._ It is expressly said that at Athens the members of the same [Greek: ge/nos] were not necessarily regarded as blood-relations (see Bunsen, _De jure hereditario Atheniensium_, p. 104, n. 28).]

[Footnote 121: Schoemann, _Griechische Alterthümer_, ii. 548 _sqq._ Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 126, 130. Fustel de Coulanges, _op. cit._ p. 124 _sqq._]

[Footnote 122: Leist, _Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 159 _sq._]

[Footnote 123: Cicero, _Pro domo_, 13 (34).]

In ancient Wales districts were occupied by tribes under their petty kings or chiefs, and the tribe (_cenedl_) was a bundle of kindreds "bound together and interlocked by common interests and frequent intermarriages, as well as by the necessity of mutual protection against foreign foes."[124] A group of households, again, corresponding to the Roman _gens_ formed a _trev_, which was a cluster of scattered households, "not necessarily a village in the modern sense."[125] The same seems to have been the case with the Teutonic _vici_, spoken of by Tacitus;[126] but that among the Teutons, also, the people of the same neighbourhood were blood-relatives may be directly inferred from a statement made by Cæsar.[127] They were not much addicted to agriculture,[128] and "the dreary world" they inhabited, with its desert aspect, its harsh climate, its lack of cultivation, was not {219} favourable to the formation of permanent large social bodies of great cohesiveness. However, we meet among them social units which Cæsar calls _regiones_ or _pagi_[129] of which the _vici_ may be assumed to have been subdivisions. Among the highly agricultural Slavonians, on the other hand, we find even in the present time a social organisation very similar to that of the Hindus. The South Slavonians, as we have seen, live in house communities corresponding to the joint families in India. Now, when the members of a house community, or _zadruga_--as it is often called--become too numerous, a separation takes place, and the emigrants form new households by themselves. A _zadruga_ is thus gradually expanded into a _bratstvo_, or brotherhood--a group of related house communities which not only feel themselves as branches of the same stock, but still have certain practical interests in common and a common chief. Several _bratstva_, finally, form a _pleme_, or tribe.[130] Among the Russians, again, the family, or joint family, has developed into a _mir_, or village community, composed of an assemblage of separate houses each ruled by its own head, but with a common village chief elected by the heads of the various households. The Russian _mir_ is an institution very similar to the Hindu village community described above. The land belongs to the community, and in earlier days it was probably cultivated in common. At present it is divided between the component families, the lots shifting among them periodically, or perhaps vesting in them as their property, but always subject to a power in the collective body of villagers to veto its sale. Originally the _mir_ was also a group of kindred; but, as in the Hindu village community, the tie of blood has been greatly weakened by all sorts of fictions and the admission of so many strangers that the tradition of a common origin is dim or lost.[131]

[Footnote 124: Seebohm, _English Village Community_, p. 190. _Idem_, _Tribal System in Wales_, p. 61.]

[Footnote 125: _Idem_, _English Village Community_, p. 343.]

[Footnote 126: Tacitus, _Germania_, 16. _Cf._ Hildebrand, _op. cit._ p. 105 _sqq._]

[Footnote 127: Cæsar, _De bello Gallico_, vi. 22:--"Magistratus ac princeps in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum, qui una coierint, quantum, et quo loco visum est, agri attribuunt."]

[Footnote 128: _Ibid._ vi. 22.]

[Footnote 129: Cæsar, _De bello Gallico_, vi. 23.]

[Footnote 130: Krauss, _op. cit._ pp. 2, 32 _sqq._ von Hellwald, _op. cit._ p. 502 _sq._ Grosse, _op. cit._ p. 204 _sq._]

[Footnote 131: de Laveleye, _De la propriété_, p. 12 _sqq._ Maine, _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_, p. 261 _sq._]

In the social organisation of all these peoples there is {220} thus originally a general congruity between the principle of local proximity and the principle of descent. On the one hand, all freemen, all true members of the society, who belong to the same local group, are at the same time kinsmen; on the other hand, all persons who are united by the tie of a common descent belong to the same or neighbouring local groups. The cause of this congruity is the universal prevalence of the paternal system of descent. Whether the case was different in prehistoric times is an open question. That the ancient Chinese reckoned kinship through the mother, not through the father, has been conjectured on philological grounds,[132] as to the plausibility of which I can express no opinion. Several writers have also endeavoured to prove that the uterine line of descent prevailed among the primitive Aryans, but the evidence is far from being conclusive. I agree with Professor Leist that all so-called survivals of a system of maternal descent in the prehistoric antiquity of the "Aryan" races are doubtful, if not false.[133] As regards the Teutons, much importance has been attributed to the specially close connection which, according to Tacitus, existed between a sister's children and their mother's brothers;[134] but, as Professor Schrader remarks, in spite of the prominent position of the maternal uncle among Teutonic peoples, the _patruus_ distinctly came before the _avunculus_, the agnates before the cognates, in testamentary succession.[135] The existence of a custom which in some respect recognises uterine relationship does not prove the earlier prevalence of the full maternal system of descent, to the exclusion of the paternal.

[Footnote 132: Puini, quoted by Grosse, _op. cit._ p. 193.]

[Footnote 133: Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Gentium_, p. 58. _Idem_, _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. 490.]

[Footnote 134: Tacitus, _Germania_, 20.]

[Footnote 135: Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, p. 395.]

Progress in civilisation is up to a certain point connected with social expansion. Among savages the largest permanent social unit is generally the tribe, and even the tribal bond is often very loose, if not entirely wanting. It is true that associations of tribes occur even among so {221} low a race as the Australian aborigines, but unaccompanied by any kind of political organisation.[136] At a somewhat higher stage we meet with the famous league of the Iroquois--a federation on republican principles of five distinct tribes, which could point to three centuries of uninterrupted domestic unity and peace[137]--and the kingdoms of various African potentates. Civilisation only thrives in states. From small beginnings round the lake of Mexico the Aztecs gradually succeeded, through conquest, in forming an empire which covered probably almost sixteen thousand square leagues. However, between the various tribes lay broad belts of uninhabited territory, which enabled them to keep up a shy and exclusive attitude towards each other; and at the time of the Spanish conquest the empire of Mexico was, in fact, little more than "a chain of intimidated Indian tribes, who, kept apart from each other under the influence of mutual timidity, were held down by dread of attacks from an unassailable robber-stronghold in their midst."[138] In South America, in a long course of ages, six nations inhabited the region which extends from the water-parting between the basins of the Huallaga and Ucayali to that between the basins of the Ucayali and Lake Titicaca. When increasing population brought them in contact with each other, a struggle for supremacy ended in the mastery of the fittest--the Incas; and the empire of the latter was subsequently extended by the subjugation of a variety of other nations or tribes.[139] The extent of territory claimed for ancient China by the earliest records is more than double the size of modern France, and, though it was often divided into different states, the great dynasties ruled over the whole of it.[140] The two crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt were united at a {222} very early date; and no less imposing was the great kingdom of Babylon and Assur. We may assume that all these empires were formed by an association, either voluntary or forcible, of different tribes, as was the case with those states with whose origin and early growth we are somewhat better acquainted. As late as the time of the Judges the tribes of Israel either stood each entirely alone or formed smaller groups, and there was no such thing as an Israelitish nation in a political sense until the unity of the people came into being under Samuel and the first kings.[141] The Vedic people consisted of a great number of independent tribes, between which only temporary alliances were made for the sake of defence or attack. But gradually the alliances grew more permanent; war-kings united several tribes, surrounded themselves with a military nobility, and founded great kingdoms.[142] In Greece and Italy the states grew out of forts which had been built on elevated places to serve as common strongholds or places of refuge in case of war. Several tribes united so as to be better able to resist dangerous enemies, and one of the fortified towns in time gained supremacy over all others in the neighbourhood, as Athens did in Attica and Alba Longa in Latium. Similar districts, ruled by a town, were called _poleis_ or _civitates_.[143] In historical times attempts were made to carry this process further by joining several of the small states under the rule of one. In this Sparta and Athens failed, whereas the efforts of Rome met with unequalled success.

[Footnote 136: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 62 _sq._]

[Footnote 137: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 141.]

[Footnote 138: Scheppig, 'Ancient Mexicans,' &c. p. 6, in Spencer's _Descriptive Sociology_. Prescott, _History of the Conquest of Mexico_, p. 4. Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, ii. 199, 202.]

[Footnote 139: Markham, 'Geographical Positions of the Tribes which formed the Empire of the Yncas,' in _Jour. Roy. Geo. Soc._ xli. 287 _sqq._]

[Footnote 140: Simcox, _op. cit._ ii. 10, 13.]

[Footnote 141: Kuenen, _Religion of Israel_, i. 133.]

[Footnote 142: Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, pp. 158, 192 _sq._]

[Footnote 143: Leist, _Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 109 _sqq._]

The development of the State tended to weaken or destroy the smaller units of which it was composed. The central power, hostile to separatism, naturally endeavoured to appropriate the authority invested in the latter, and in a well-governed state these on their part had little reason to resist. The main object of the clan, phratry, and tribe was to protect their respective members; hence they became superfluous in the presence of a powerful national {223} government which unselfishly and impartially looked after the interests of its various subjects. Adam Smith contrasts the strong clan-feeling which still in the eighteenth century prevailed among the Scotch Highlanders with the little regard felt for remote relatives by the English, and observes that in countries where the authority of the law is not sufficiently strong to give security to every member of the State the different branches of the same family choose to live in the neighbourhood of one another, their association being frequently necessary for their common defence; whereas in a country like England, where the authority of the law was well established, "the descendants of the same family, having no such motive for keeping together, naturally separate and disperse, as interest or inclination may direct."[144] It seems also probable that the persistency of the village community or the gentile system among the Hindus and Slavs has been largely due to the weakness of the State or to the badness of the government.

[Footnote 144: Smith, _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, p. 326 _sq._]

As the larger units, so the family also was influenced by the rise of the State, but originally in quite the opposite direction. Whilst the former dwindled away, the family grew in importance. Nowhere do we find the family-tie stronger, nowhere does the father or eldest male ascendant possess greater power than in the archaic State. In a previous chapter I have already tried to explain this singular fact. I pointed out that in early society there seems to be a certain antagonism between the family and the clan, that the family was strengthened because the clan was weakened, that the father became a patriarch only as the inheritor of the authority which formerly belonged to the clan. But we have also noticed that at a higher stage the family again lost in importance.[145]

[Footnote 145: _Supra_, i. 627 _sq._]

It seems that the tribes which united into one nation or state were normally, in the first instance, branches of the same stock, living in the same neighbourhood and speaking {224} the same language, though with dialectic differences. Like the smaller units, such a state was no doubt frequently adulterated by the amalgamation of aliens, but here again fictions were substituted for realities, and the foreign extraction was forgotten. The case was different, however, when the commonwealth was formed or aggrandised by the subjugation of a strange race. Instead of being adopted into the circle of the conquerors, the subdued people were treated as their inferiors in blood, civic rights were denied to them, and in many cases they were kept in servitude; thus even here the principle of a common origin as the base of citizenship was preserved, the conquerors being the only citizens in the full sense of the term. But however strong and durable similar barriers may be, they are not imperishable. The different races inhabiting the same country under the same government tend to draw nearer each other, the inferior race is incorporated with the nation, and local proximity instead of descent at last becomes the basis of community in political functions. This change, however, was neither so radical nor so startling as it has been represented to be;[146] fictions on a large scale still formed a bridge between ancient and modern ideas. Sir Henry Maine says that we cannot now hope to understand the good faith of the fiction by which in early times the incoming population were assumed to be descended from the same stock as the people on whom they were engrafted.[147] But is this good faith more astonishing than the readiness with which a common language, in spite of the most obvious facts to the contrary, is even now constantly taken as the sign of a common origin? Though identity of language, even in the case of whole peoples, proves nothing more than contact or neighbourhood, a person's mother-tongue popularly decides his race, and language and nationality are regarded almost as synonymous. Genealogical fictions, then, are not merely a thing of the past, nor have they ceased to influence political ideas. The modern theory of {225} nationalism vindicates the right of the strongest nationality to absorb the other nationalities living within the same state by a method of compulsory engraftment, and this can be effected only by their accepting its language. But this theory is not so much concerned with language as such, as with language as an emblem of nationality. At the bottom of it is the narrow feeling of racial intolerance, quite ready however to be appeased by a fiction. The doctrine of nationalism is the spectre of the same political principle--the principle of a common descent, either real or fictitious--on which states were founded and governed when civilisation was in its cradle.

[Footnote 146: Maine, _Ancient Law_, p. 129.]

[Footnote 147: _Ibid._ p. 131.]

Like the smaller units, the archaic State was not only a political but at the same time a religious community. Over and above all separate cults there was one religion common to all its citizens. In ancient Mexico and Peru it was the religion of the dominant people, the worship of the god of war or of the sun; and the sovereigns themselves were regarded as incarnations or children of this god.[148] In other cases the state religion arose by a fusion of different cults. The gods of the communities which united into a state not only continued to receive the worship of their old believers, but were elevated to the rank of national deities, and formed together a heavenly commonwealth to which the earthly commonwealth jointly paid its homage. In this way, it seems, the Roman,[149] Egyptian,[150] Assyrian, and Babylonian[151] pantheons were recruited; whilst the Greeks went a step further and, already in prehistoric times, constructed a Pan-Hellenic Olympus.[152] Sometimes also, as Professor Robertson Smith points out, different gods were themselves fused into one, as when the mass of the Israelites in their local worship of Yahveh identified him with the Baalim of the Canaanite high places, and carried {226} over into his worship the ritual of the Canaanite shrines, not deeming that in so doing they were less truly Yahveh-worshippers than before.[153]

[Footnote 148: Ratzel, _op. cit._ ii. 199 _sq._ Markham, _History of Peru_, p. 23.]

[Footnote 149: _Cf._ von Jhering, _Geist des römischen Rechts_, i. 269.]

[Footnote 150: Wiedemann, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, p. 148.]

[Footnote 151: Mürdter-Delitzsch, _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_, p. 24. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 39.]

[Footnote 152: _Cf._ Rohde, _Psyche_, p. 36.]

[Footnote 153: Robertson Smith, _op. cit._ p. 38.]

Nobody will deny that the common religion added strength to the State, but it seems that its national importance has often been overrated. On the one hand, the political fusion between different communities took place before the religious fusion and was obviously the cause of it; on the other hand, the mere tie of a common religion has never proved sufficient to bind together neighbouring tribes or peoples so as to form one nation. The Greek states had both the same religion and the same language, but nevertheless remained distinct states. Professor Seeley's assertion that "in the East to this day nationality and religion are almost convertible terms,"[154] is very far from the truth. Wallin, who had exceptional opportunities to study the feelings of different Muhammedan nationalities, observes that "every Oriental people has a certain national aversion to every other, and even the inhabitants of one province to those of another. The Turk does not readily tolerate the Arab, nor the Persian, and these feel similarly towards the Turk; the Arab does not get on well with the Persian, nor the Persian with the Arab; the Syrian does not like the Egyptian, whom he calls inhuman, and the latter does not willingly associate with the Syrian, whom he calls simple-minded and stupid; and the son of the desert condemns both."[155] It sometimes seems as if the national spirit of a people rather influenced its religion than was influenced by it. Patriotism has even succeeded in nationalising the greatest enemy of nationalities, Christianity, and has well nigh revived the old notion of a national god, whose chief business is to look after his own people and, especially, to fight its battles.

[Footnote 154: Seeley, _Natural Religion_, p. 229.]

[Footnote 155: Wallin, _Anteckningar från Orienten_, iv. 181 _sq._]

It is obvious that the various aspects of social development {227} which we have now considered have exercised much influence upon the altruistic sentiment. The combination of local proximity and political unity, the notion of a common descent, and the fellowship of a common religion, tend to engender friendly feelings between the members of each respective group. Hence, when the political unit grew larger, when the idea of kinship developed into that of racial affinity, and when the same religion became common to all the citizens of the State, or, as happened in several cases, extended beyond the limits of any particular country or nation, the altruistic sentiment underwent a corresponding expansion--unless, of course, it was checked by some rival influence. The increasing coherence of the political aggregate, again, added to the strength of this sentiment; and so did the antagonism towards foreign communities and the natural antipathy or hatred to their members. As people like that to which they are used or which is their own, they dislike that which is strange or unfamiliar. Among ourselves we notice this particularly in children[156] and uneducated persons, whose anger may be aroused by the sight of a black skin or an oriental dress or the sounds of a strange language. Antipathies of this kind have directly influenced the moral valuation of conduct towards foreigners; but at the same time they have also strengthened the feelings of mutual goodwill between tribesmen or compatriots. For likes and dislikes are increased by the contrast; to hate a thing makes us better love its opposite. So also the competition and enmity which prevail between different communities tend within each community to intensify its members' devotion to the common goal and their friendly feelings towards one another.

[Footnote 156: Compayré, _op. cit._ p. 100:--"Tout ce qui est inattendu, imprévu, est insupportable à l'enfant, et provoque soit la peur, soit plus tard la colère. J'ai vu un de mes fils, à quatre ans et demi, entrer dans de véritables rages, toutes les fois que je lui parlais dans le patois de mon pays."]

But the altruistic sentiment has not necessarily reference only to individuals belonging to the same social unit. {228} Gregarious animals may be kindly disposed to any member of their species which is not an object of their anger or their fear. Savages have shown themselves capable of tender feelings towards suffering and harmless strangers.[157] The sensibility of little children sometimes goes beyond the circle of the family; Madame Manacéine tells us of a girl two years old who, in the Zoological Gardens at St. Petersburg, began to cry bitterly when she saw an elephant walking over the keeper's body, although the other spectators were quietly watching the trick.[158] In mankind altruism has been narrowed by social isolation, by differences in race, language, habits, and customs, by enmity and suspicion. But increased intercourse has gradually led to conditions favourable to its expansion. As Buckle remarks, ignorance is the most powerful of all the causes of national hatred; "when you increase the contact, you remove the ignorance, and thus you diminish the hatred."[159] People of different nationalities feel that in spite of all dissimilarities between them there is much that they have in common; and frequent intercourse makes the differences less marked, or obliterates many of them altogether. There can be no doubt that this process will go on in the future. And equally certain it is that similar causes will produce similar effects--that altruism will continue to expand, and that the notion of a human brotherhood will receive more support from the actual feelings of mankind than it does at present.

[Footnote 157: See _supra_, i. 570-572, 581.]

[Footnote 158: Manacéine, _Le surmenage mental dans la civilisation moderne_, p. 248. See also Compayré, _op. cit._ p. 323.]

[Footnote 159: Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, i. 222.]