Chapter XXXIII…

Chapter XXXIII

REGARD FOR OTHER PERSONS' HAPPINESS IN GENERAL--GRATITUDE--PATRIOTISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM

IN previous chapters we have dealt with moral ideas concerning various modes of conduct which have reference to other men's welfare--to their life or bodily comfort, their liberty, property, knowledge of truth, or self-regarding pride. But the list of duties which we owe to our fellow-creatures is as yet by no means complete. Any act, forbearance, or omission, which in some way or other diminishes or increases their happiness may on that account become a subject of moral blame or praise, being apt to call forth sympathetic retributive emotions.

To do good to others is a rule which has been inculcated by all the great teachers of morality. According to Confucius, benevolence is the root of righteousness and a leading characteristic of perfect virtue.[1] In the Taouist 'Book of Secret Blessings' men are enjoined to be compassionate and loving, and to devote their wealth to the good of their fellow-men.[2] The moralists of ancient India teach that we should with our life, means, understanding, and speech, seek to advance the welfare of other creatures in this world; that we should do so without expecting reciprocity; and that we should enjoy the prosperity of others even though ourselves unprosperous.[3] The writers {154} of classical antiquity repeatedly give expression to the idea that man is not born for himself alone, but should assist his fellow-men to the best of his ability.[4] In the Old Testament we meet with the injunction, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself";[5] and this was declared by Christ to be of equal importance with the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God."[6]

[Footnote 1: Lun Yü, xvii. 6. Douglas, _Confucianism and Taouism_, p. 108.]

[Footnote 2: Douglas, op. cit. p. 272 sq.]

[Footnote 3: Muir, Religious and Moral Sentiments rendered from Sanskrit Writers, p. 107 sq. Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 448.]

[Footnote 4: Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 275 sqq.]

[Footnote 5: Leviticus, xix. 18.]

[Footnote 6: St. Matthew, xxii. 39.]

To a reflecting mind it is obvious that the moral value of beneficence exclusively lies in the benevolent motive, and that there is nothing praiseworthy in promoting the happiness of others from selfish considerations. Confucius taught that self must be conquered before a man can be perfectly virtuous.[7] According to Lao-tsze, self-abnegation is the cardinal rule for both the sovereign and the people.[8] Self-denial is the chief demand of the Gospel, and is emphasised as a supreme duty by Islam.[9] Generally speaking, the merit attached to a good action is proportionate to the self-denial which it costs the agent. This follows from the nature of moral approval in its capacity of a retributive emotion, as is proved by the fact that the degree of gratitude felt towards a benefactor is in a similar way influenced by the deprivation to which he subjects himself. On the other hand, there is considerable variety of opinion, even among ourselves, as to the dictates of duty, in cases where our own interests conflict with those of our fellow-men. To Professor Sidgwick it is a moral axiom that "I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another."[10] According to Hutcheson, we do not condemn those as evil who will not sacrifice their private interest to the advancement of the positive good of others, "unless the private interest be very small, and the publick good very great."[11]

[Footnote 7: Lun Yü, xii. i. 1.]

[Footnote 8: Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 192.]

[Footnote 9: Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islâm, p. 32.]

[Footnote 10: Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 383.]

[Footnote 11: Hutcheson, Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, &c. p. 312.]

The idea that it is bad to cause harm to others and {155} good or obligatory to promote their happiness, is in different ways influenced by the relationship between the parties; and to many cases it does not apply at all. We have previously noticed that according to early ethics an enemy is a proper object of hatred, not of love;[12] and according to more advanced ideas a person who treats us badly has at all events little claim upon our kindness. The very opposite is the case with a benefactor or friend. To requite a benefit, or to be grateful to him who bestows it, is probably everywhere, at least under certain circumstances, regarded as a duty. This is a subject which in the present connection calls for special consideration.

[Footnote 12: Supra, i. p. 73 sq.]

The duty of gratefulness presupposes a disposition for gratitude.[13] According to travellers' accounts, this feeling is lacking in many uncivilised races.[14] Lyon writes of the Eskimo of Igloolik:--"Gratitude is not only rare, but absolutely unknown amongst them, either by action, word, or look, beyond the first outcry of satisfaction. Nursing their sick, burying the dead, clothing and feeding the whole tribe, furnishing the men with weapons, and the women and children with ornaments, are insufficient to awaken a grateful feeling, and the very people who relieved their distresses when starving are laughed at in time of plenty for the quantity and quality of the food which was bestowed in charity."[15] Various other tribes in {156} North America have been accused of ingratitude;[16] and of some South American savages we are told that they evinced no thankfulness for the presents which were given them.[17] The Fijians are described as utterly indifferent to their benefactors. The Rev. Th. Williams writes:--"If one of them, when sick, obtained medicine from me, he thought me bound to give him food; the reception of food he considered as giving him a claim on me for covering; and, that being secured, he deemed himself at liberty to beg anything he wanted, and abuse me if I refused his unreasonable request."[18] Mr. Lumholtz had a similar experience with regard to the natives of Herbert River, Northern Queensland:--"If you give one thing to a black man, he finds ten other things to ask for, and he is not ashamed to ask for all that you have, and more too. He is never satisfied. Gratitude does not exist in his breast."[19] In several languages there is no word expressive of what we term gratitude or no phrase corresponding to our "thank you";[20] and on this fact much stress has been {157} laid, the deficiency of language being regarded as an indication of a corresponding deficiency in feelings.

[Footnote 13: For the definition of gratitude, see supra, i. 93.]

[Footnote 14: Steller, Beschreibung von Kamischatka, p. 292. Bergmann, Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken, ii. 310, 316. Foreman, Philippine Islands, p. 183. Modigliani, Viaggio a Nías, p. 467. Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. 286 (Malays). Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 207 (Malays of Sumatra). Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, p. 320 (natives of Timor-laut). Mrs. Forbes, Insulinde, p. 178 (natives of Ritabel). Hagen, Unter den Papua's, p. 266 (Papuans of Bogadjim). Romilly, Western Pacific and New Guinea, p. 239. La Pérouse, Voyage round the World, ii. 109 (Samoans). Colenso, Maori Races of New Zealand, p. 48; Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 110. Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 63. Gason, 'Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 258. Baker, Albert N'yanza, i. 242 (Latukas), 289 (Negroes), von François, Nama und Damara, p. 191 (Herero).]

[Footnote 15: Lyon, _Private Journal during the Voyage of Discovery under Captain Parry_, p. 348 sq. See also Parry, _Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage_, p. 524 sq.]

[Footnote 16: Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 174. Sarytschew, 'Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,' in Collection of Modern Voyages, vi. 78 (Aleuts). Harmon, _Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America_, p. 291 (Tacullies). Heriot, Travels through the Canadas, p. 319. Lafitau, M[oe]urs des sauvages ameriquains, i. 106. Burton, City of the Saints, p. 125 (Sioux and prairie tribes generally).]

[Footnote 17: von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 228, 241 sq. (Coroados). Stokes, quoted by King and Fitzroy, Voyages of the 'Adventure' and 'Beagle,' i. 77 (Fuegians).]

[Footnote 18: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 111. See also Anderson, Notes of Travel in Fiji and New Caledonia, pp. 124, 131.]

[Footnote 19: Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 100.]

[Footnote 20: Southey, History of Brazil, iii. 399 (Abipones, Guaranies). Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 307 (Northern Indians). Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 192 (Toungtha). Foreman, op. cit. p. 182 sq. (Bisayans). Modigliani, Viaggio a Nías, p. 467. Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, i. 74 (Dyaks). Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 187; Romilly, Western Pacific and New Guinea, p. 239 sq. (However, Mr Romilly's statement that "in all the known New Guinea languages there is not even a word for 'thank you,'" is not quite correct, as appears from Chalmers op. cit. p. 187.) Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 365; Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 116 (Tahitians). Colenso, op. cit. p. 48 (Maoris). New, Life and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 100 (Wanika). von François, op. cit. p. 191 (Herero). In the Vedic language, also, there was no word for "thanks" (Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 305); and many Eastern languages of the present day lack an equivalent for "thank you" (Ward, View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 81, n. a.; Pool, Studies in Muhammedanism, p. 176; Polak, Persien, i. 9). When one of the missionaries in India was engaged in the translation of the Scriptures into Bengali, he found no common word in that language suitable to express the idea of gratitude (Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, p. 397).]

Here again we must distinguish between a traveller's actual experience and the conclusions which he draws from it; and it seems that in many cases our authorities have been too ready to charge savages with a total lack of grateful feelings, because they have been wanting in gratitude on certain occasions. It is too much to expect that a savage should show himself thankful to any stranger who gives him a present. Speaking of the Ahts of British Columbia, Mr Sproat remarks that the Indian's suspicion prevents a ready gratitude, as he is prone to see, in apparent kindness extended to him, some under-current of selfish motive. "He is accustomed, among his own people, to gifts made for purposes of guile, and also to presents made merely to show the greatness and richness of the giver; but, I imagine," our author adds, "when the Aht ceases to suspect such motives--when he does not detect pride, craft, or carelessness--he is grateful, and probably grateful in proportion to the trouble taken to serve him."[21] As for the ingratitude of the Northern Queensland natives, Mr. Lumholtz himself admits that "they assume that the gift is bestowed out of fear";[22] and of the New Zealanders we are told that their total want of gratitude was particularly due to the fact that "no New Zealander ever did any kindness, or gave anything, to another, without mainly having an eye to himself in the transaction."[23] Moreover, gratitude often requires not only the absence of a selfish motive in the benefactor, but some degree of self-sacrifice. "A person," says Mr. Sproat, "may keep an Indian from starving all the winter through, yet, when summer comes, very likely he will not walk a yard for his preserver without payment. The savage does not, in this instance, {158} recognise any obligation; but thinks that a person who had so much more than he could himself consume might well, and without any claim for after services, part with some of it for the advantage of another in want."[24] Mr. Powers makes a similar observation with reference to the aborigines of California:--"White men," he says, "who have had dealings with Indians, in conversation with me have often bitterly accused them of ingratitude. 'Do everything in your power for an Indian,' they say, 'and he will accept it all as a matter of course; but for the slightest service you require of him he will demand pay.' These men do not enter into the Indian's ideas. This 'ingratitude' is really an unconscious compliment to our power. The savage feels, vaguely, the unapproachable elevation on which the American stands above him. He feels that we had much and he had little, and we took away from him even his little. In his view giving does not impoverish us, nor withholding enrich us. Gratitude is a sentiment not in place between master and slave; it is a sentiment for equals. The Indians are grateful to one another."[25] Nor are men very apt to feel grateful for benefits to which they consider themselves to have a right. Thus, according to Mr. Howitt, the want of gratitude among the South Australian Kurnai for kindnesses shown them by the whites is due to the principle of community, which is so strong a feature of the domestic and social life of these aborigines. "For a supply of food, or for nursing when sick, the Kurnai would not feel grateful to his family group. There would be a common obligation upon all to share food, and to afford personal aid and succour. This principle would also come into play as regards the simple personal property they possess, and would extend to the before-unknown articles procured from the whites. The food, the clothes, the medical attendance which the Kurnai receive from the whites, they take in the accustomed manner; and, in addition to {159} this, we must remember that the donors are regarded as having unlimited resources. They cannot be supposed by the Kurnai to be doing anything but giving out of their abundance."[26] Mr. Guppy found the same principle at work among the Solomon Islanders:--"Often when during my excursions I have come upon some man who was preparing a meal for himself and his family, I have been surprised at the open-handed way in which he dispensed the food to my party of hungry natives. No gratitude was shown towards the giver, who apparently expected none."[27] It has also been observed that the want of gratitude with which Arabs have often been charged by Europeans has arisen "from the very common practice of hospitality and generosity, and from the prevailing opinion that these virtues are absolute duties which it would be disgraceful and sinful to neglect."[28]

[Footnote 21: Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 165 sq.]

[Footnote 22: Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 159.]

[Footnote 23: Colenso, op. cit. p. 48.]

[Footnote 24: Sproat, op. cit. p. 165 sq.]

[Footnote 25: Powers, Tribes of California, p. 411.]

[Footnote 26: Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 257.]

[Footnote 27: Guppy, Solomon Islands, p. 127.]

[Footnote 28: Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 298. See also Burton, Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, i. 51.]

We should further remember that savages often take care not to display their emotions. Among the Melanesians, according to Dr. Codrington, "it is not the custom to say anything by way of thanks; it is rather improper to show emotion when anything is given, or when friends meet again; silence with the eyes cast down is the sign of the inward trembling or shyness which they feel, or think they ought to feel, under these circumstances. There is no lack of a word which may be fairly translated 'thank'; and certainly no one who has given cause for it will say that Melanesians have no gratitude; others probably are ready enough to say it."[29] Of the North American Chippewas Major Strickland writes:--"If an Indian makes a present, it is always expected that one equally valuable should be given in return. No matter what you give them, or how valuable or rich the present, they seldom betray the least emotion or appearance of gratitude, it being considered beneath the dignity of a red man to betray his feelings. For all this seeming indifference, {160} they are in reality as grateful, and, I believe, even more so than our own peasantry."[30] The Aleuts also, although they are chary of expressions of thanks, "do not forget kindness, and endeavour to express their thankfulness by deeds. If anyone assists an Aleut, and afterwards offends him, he does not forget the former favour, and in his mind it often cancels the offence."[31] From the want of a word for a feeling we must not conclude that the feeling itself is wanting. Mr. Sproat observes:--"The Ahts have, it is true, no word for gratitude, but a defect in language does not absolutely imply defect in heart; and the Indian who, in return for a benefit received, says, with glistening eyes, that his heart is good towards his benefactor, expresses his gratitude quite as well perhaps as the English man who says 'Thank you.'"[32]

[Footnote 29: Codrington, Melanesians, p. 354.]

[Footnote 30: Strickland, Twenty-seven Years in Canada West, ii. 58.]

[Footnote 31: Veniaminof, quoted by Dall, Alaska, p. 395.]

[Footnote 32: Sproat, op. cit. p. 165. See also Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, i. 74 (Dyaks).]

It is not surprising, then, that in various cases a people which to one traveller appears to be quite destitute of gratitude is by another described as being by no means lacking in this feeling;[33] and sometimes contradictory statements are made even by the same writer. Thus Mr. Lumholtz, who gives such a gloomy picture of the character of the Northern Queensland natives, nevertheless tells us of a native who, though himself very hungry, threw the animals which the traveller had shot for him to an old man--his wife's uncle--whom they met, in order to give some proof of the gratitude he owed the person from whom he had received his wife;[34] and regarding the Fijians Mr. Williams himself states that thanks for presents "are always expressed aloud, and generally with a kind wish for the giver."[35] As we have noticed before, retributive kindly emotions, of which gratitude is only the most developed form, are commonly found among gregarious animals, social affection being not only a friendly {161} sentiment towards another individual, but towards an individual who is conceived of as a friend.[36] And it is all the more difficult to believe in the absolute want of gratitude in some savage races, as the majority of them--to judge from my collection of facts--are expressly acquitted of such a defect, and several are described as remarkably grateful for benefits bestowed upon them.

[Footnote 33: E.g., the Fuegians, Sioux, Ahts, Aleuts, Kamchadales, Tasmanians, Zulus (see supra and infra).]

[Footnote 34: Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 221.]

[Footnote 35: Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 132.]

[Footnote 36: Supra, i. 94.]

The Fuegians use the word chapakouta, which means glad, satisfied, affectionate, grateful, to express thanks.[37] Jemmy Button, the young Fuegian who was brought to England on board the Beagle, gave proofs of sincere gratitude;[38] and Admiral Fitzroy also mentions a Patagonian boy who appeared thankful for kindness shown to him.[39] Of the Mapuchés of Chili Mr. E. R. Smith observes:--"Whatever present is made, or favour conferred, is considered as something to be returned; and the Indian never fails, though months and years may intervene, to repay what he conscientiously thinks an exact equivalent for the thing received."[40] The Botocudos do not readily forget kind treatment;[41] and the Tupis "were a grateful race, and remembered that they had received gifts, after the giver had forgotten it."[42] The Guiana Indians "are grateful for any kindness."[43] The Navahos of New Mexico have a word for thanks, and employ it on all occasions which we would consider appropriate.[44] The Sioux "evinced the warmest gratitude to any who had ever displayed kind feelings towards them."[45] In his 'Voyages from Montreal to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans,' Mackenzie mentions the gratitude shown him by a young Indian whom he had cured of a bad wound. When well enough to engage in a hunting party, the young man brought to his physician the tongue of an elk, and when they parted both he and his relatives expressed the heartiest acknowledgment for the care bestowed on him.[46] If an Aleut receives a gift he accepts it, saying Akh! which means "thanks."[47] Some of the Point Barrow Eskimo visited by Mr. Murdoch "seem to feel truly {162} grateful for the benefits and gifts received, and endeavoured by their general behaviour, as well as in more substantial ways, to make some adequate return"; whereas others appeared to think only of what they might receive.[48]

[Footnote 37: Hyades and Deniker, _Mission scientifique du Cap Horn_, vii. 314.]

[Footnote 38: King and Fitzroy, op. cit. ii. 327.]

[Footnote 39: Ibid. ii. 173.]

[Footnote 40: Smith, Araucanians, p. 258.]

[Footnote 41: Wied-Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 16.]

[Footnote 42: Southey, op. cit. i. 247.]

[Footnote 43: Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 213.]

[Footnote 44: Matthews, 'Study of Ethics among the Lower Races,' in Journal of American Folk-Lore, xii. 9.]

[Footnote 45: Eastman, Dacotah, p. ix.]

[Footnote 46: Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, p. 137 sq.]

[Footnote 47: Veniaminof, quoted by Dall, op. cit. p. 395.]

[Footnote 48: Murdoch, 'Ethnol. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 42. See also Seemann, Voyage of 'Herald,' ii. 67 (Western Eskimo).]

Of the Tunguses it is said, "If you make them a present, they hardly thank you; but though so unpolite, they are exceedingly grateful."[49] The Jakuts never forget a benefit received; "for they not only make restitution, but recommend to their offspring the ties of friendship and gratitude to their benefactors."[50] The Veddah of Ceylon is described as very grateful for attention or assistance.[51] "A little kindly sympathy makes him an attached friend, and for his friend . . . . he will readily give his life."[52] Mr. Bennett once had an interview with two village Veddahs, and on that occasion gave them presents. Two months after a couple of elephant's tusks found their way into his front verandah at night, but the Veddahs who had brought them never gave him an opportunity to reward them. "What a lesson in gratitude and delicacy," he exclaims, "even a Veddah may teach!"[53]

[Footnote 49: Georgi, Russia, iii. 111.]

[Footnote 50: Sauer, Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia, performed by Billings, p. 124.]

[Footnote 51: Tennent, Ceylon, ii. 445. Sarasin, Forschungen auf Ceylon, iii. 546.]

[Footnote 52: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 192.]

[Footnote 53: Pridham, Account of Ceylon, i. 460 sq.]

The Alfura of Halmahera,[54] the Bataks of Sumatra,[55] and the Dyaks of Borneo[56] are praised for their grateful disposition of mind. Of the Hill Dyaks Mr. Low observes that gratitude "eminently adorns the character of these simple people, and the smallest benefit conferred upon them calls forth its vigorous and continued exercise."[57] The Motu people of New Guinea are "capable of appreciating kindness,"[58] and have words for expressing thanks.[59] Chamisso speaks highly of the gratitude evinced by the natives of Ulea, Caroline Islands:--"Any thing, a useful instrument, for example, which they have received as a gift from a friend, retains and bears among them as a lasting memorial the name of the friend who bestowed it."[60] When Professor Moseley at Dentrecasteaux Island, of the Admiralty Group, gave a hatchet as pay to his guide, according {163} to promise, the guide seemed grateful, and presented him with his own shell adze in return.[61] Though the Tahitians never return thanks nor seem to have a word in their language expressive of gratitude, they are not devoid of the feeling itself.[62] Backhouse tells us of a Tasmanian native who, having been nursed through an illness, showed many demonstrations of gratitude; and he adds that this virtue was often exhibited among these people--a statement which is corroborated by the accounts of other travellers.[63] Of the Australian aborigines Mr. Ridley writes:--"I believe they are as a people remarkably susceptible of impressions from kind treatment. They recognised me as one who sought their good, and were evidently pleased and thankful to see that I thought them worth looking after."[64] The Adelaide and Encounter Bay blacks are said to display attachment to persons who are kind to them.[65] Speaking of the Central Australian tribes, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe that, though they are not in the habit of showing anything like excessive gratitude on receiving gifts from the white man, they are in reality by no means incapable of that feeling;[66] and other writers report instances of gratitude displayed by natives of West Australia[67] and Queensland.[68]

[Footnote 54: Kükenthal, _Forschungsreise in den Molukken und Borneo_, i. 188.]

[Footnote 55: Junghuhn, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 239.]

[Footnote 56: Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, i. 74, 76.]

[Footnote 57: Low, Sarawak, p. 246.]

[Footnote 58: Stone, A Few Months in New Guinea, p. 95.]

[Footnote 59: Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 187.]

[Footnote 60: von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea_, iii. 214.]

[Footnote 61: Moseley, 'Inhabitants of the Admiralty Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. vi. 416.]

[Footnote 62: Waitz-Gerland, op. cit. vi. 116.]

[Footnote 63: Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, pp. 47, 62, 64.]

[Footnote 64: Ridley, Aborigines of Australia, p. 24. See also ibid. p. 20 sqq.]

[Footnote 65: Wyatt, 'Manners and Superstitions of the Adelaide and Encounter Bay Aboriginal Tribes,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 162.]

[Footnote 66: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 48 sqq.]

[Footnote 67: Salvado, Mémoires historiques sur l'Australie, p. 146.]

[Footnote 68: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 44.]

Concerning the people of Madagascar the missionary Ellis writes:--"Whether the noble and generous feeling of gratitude has much place amongst the Malagasy has been questioned. Though often characterised by extreme apathy, they are certainly susceptible of tenderness of feeling, and their customs furnish various modes of testifying their sense of any acts of kindness shewn them, and their language contains many forms of speech expressive of thankfulness. The following are among those in most general use: 'May you live to grow old--may you live long--may you live sacred--may you see, or obtain, justice from the sovereign.'" Moreover, with all their expressions of thankfulness, considerable action is used: sometimes the two hands are extended open as if to make a present; or the party stoops down to the ground, and clasps the legs, or touches the knee and the feet of the person he is thanking.[69] Ingratitude, {164} again, is expressed by many strong metaphors, such as "son of a thunderbolt," or "offspring of a wild boar."[70] The Bushmans, according to Burchell, are not incapable of gratitude.[71] The statement made by certain travellers or colonists that the Zulus are devoid of this feeling, is contradicted by Mr. Tyler, who asserts that "many instances might be related in which a thankful spirit has been manifested, and gifts bestowed for favours received."[72] The Basutos have words to express gratitude.[73] Among the Bakongo, says Mr. Ward, "evidences of gratitude are rare indeed, although occasionally one meets with this sentiment in odd guises. Once, by a happy chance, I saved a baby's life. The child was brought to me by its mother in convulsions, and I was fortunate enough to find in my medicine chest a drug that effected an almost immediate cure. Yet the service I rendered to this woman, instead of meeting with any appreciation, only procured for me the whispered reputation of being a witch." But twenty months afterwards, at midnight when all the people were sleeping, the same woman came to Mr. Ward and gave him some fowl's eggs in payment. "I come," she said, "in the darkness that my people may not know, for they would jeer at me if they knew of this gift."[74] A traveller tells us that the inhabitants of Great Benin "if given any trifles expressed their thanks."[75] Writing on the natives of Accra, Monrad states that gratitude is among the virtues of the Negroes, and induces them even to give their lives in return for benefits conferred on them.[76] The Feloops, bordering on the Gambia, "display the utmost gratitude and affection towards their benefactors."[77] As regards the Eastern Central Africans, Mr. Macdonald affirms without any hesitation that they have gratitude, "even though we define gratitude as being much more than an 'acute sense of favours to come.'"[78] The Masai and Wadshagga have "a curious habit of spitting on things or people as a compliment or sign of gratitude"[79]--originally, I presume, with a view to transferring to them a blessing. The Barea are said to be thankful for benefits.[80] According to Palgrave, "gratitude is no {165} less an Arab than a European virtue, whatever the ignorance or the prejudices of some foreigners may have affirmed to the contrary";[81] and Burckhardt says that an Arab never forgets the generosity shown to him even by an enemy.[82]

[Footnote 69: Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 258. See also Rochon, Voyage to Madagascar, p. 56.]

[Footnote 70: Ellis, op. cit. i. 139 sq.]

[Footnote 71: Burchell, _Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa_, ii. 68, 86, 447.]

[Footnote 72: Tyler, Forty Years among the Zulus, p. 194.]

[Footnote 73: Casalis, Basutos, p. 306.]

[Footnote 74: Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 47 sqq.]

[Footnote 75: Punch, quoted by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 45.]

[Footnote 76: Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 8.]

[Footnote 77: Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, p. 14.]

[Footnote 78: Macdonald, Africana, i. 10.]

[Footnote 79: Johnston, Kilima-njaro Expedition, p. 438.]

[Footnote 80: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 533.]

[Footnote 81: Palgrave, quoted in Spencer's _Descriptive Sociology_, 'Asiatic Races,' p. 31.]

[Footnote 82: Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 105.]

In other statements gratitude is directly represented as an object of praise, or its absence as an object of disapproval. Among the Atkha Aleuts, according to Father Yakof, gratitude to benefactors was considered a virtue.[83] Among the Omahas, if a man receives a favour and does not manifest his thankfulness, the people exclaim:--"He does not appreciate the gift! He has no manners."[84] The Kamchadales "are not only grateful for favours, but they think it absolutely necessary to make some return for a present."[85] The Chinese say that "kindness is more binding than a loan."[86] According to the 'Divine Panorama,' a well-known Taouist work, those who forget kindness and are guilty of ingratitude shall be tormented after death and "shall not escape one jot of their punishments."[87] In one of the Pahlavi texts gratitude is represented as a means of arriving at heaven, whilst ingratitude is stigmatised as a heinous sin;[88] and according to Ammian ungrateful persons were even punished by law in ancient Persia.[89] The same, we are told, was the case in Macedonia.[90] The duty of gratitude was strongly inculcated by Greek and Roman moralists.[91] Aristotle observes that we ought, as a general rule, rather to return a kindness to our benefactor than to confer a gratuitous favour upon a brother in arms, just as we ought rather to repay a loan to a creditor than to spend the same sum upon a present to a friend.[92] According to {166} Xenophon the requital of benefits is enjoined by a divine law.[93] "There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness," says Cicero; "all men detest one forgetful of a benefit."[94] Seneca calls ingratitude a most odious vice, which it is difficult to punish by law, but which we refer for judgment to the gods.[95] The ancient Scandinavians considered it dishonourable for a man to kill even an enemy in blood-revenge if he had received a benefit from him.[96]

[Footnote 83: Yakof, quoted by Petroff, _Report on the Population, &c. of Alaska_, p. 158.]

[Footnote 84: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 270.]

[Footnote 85: Dobell, Travels in Kamtschatka, i. 75.]

[Footnote 86: Davis, China, ii. 123.]

[Footnote 87: Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 374 sq. See also Thâi-Shang, 4.]

[Footnote 88: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxxvi. 28; xxxvii. 6; xliii. 9.]

[Footnote 89: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6. 81.]

[Footnote 90: Seneca, De beneficiis, iii. 6. 2.]

[Footnote 91: See Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 305 sqq.]

[Footnote 92: Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, x. 2. 3.]

[Footnote 93: Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv. 4. 24.]

[Footnote 94: Cicero, De officiis, i. 15 (47); ii. 18 (63).]

[Footnote 95: Seneca, De beneficiis, iii. 6. 1 sq.]

[Footnote 96: Maurer, Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes, ii. 174.]

We may assume that among beings capable of feeling moral emotions the general disposition to be kind to a benefactor will inevitably lead to the notion that ungrateful behaviour is wrong. Such behaviour is offensive to the benefactor; as Spinoza observes, "he who has conferred a benefit on anyone from motives of love or honour will feel pain, if he sees that the benefit is received without gratitude."[97] This by itself tends to evoke in the bystander sympathetic resentment towards the offender; but his resentment is much increased by the retributive kindliness which he is apt to feel, sympathetically, towards the benefactor. He wants to see the latter's kindness rewarded; and he is shocked by the absence of a similar desire in the very person who may be naturally expected to feel it more strongly than anybody else**.

[Footnote 97: Spinoza, Ethica, iii. 42. A Japanese proverb says that "thankless labour brings fatigue" (Reed, Japan, ii. 109).]

The moral ideas concerning conduct which affects other persons' welfare vary according as the parties are members of the same or different families, or of the same or different communities. For reasons which have been stated in previous chapters parents have in this respect special duties towards their children, and children towards their parents; and a tribesman or a fellow-countryman has claims which are not shared by a foreigner. But there are duties not only to particular individuals, but also to {167} whole social aggregates. Foremost among these is the duty of patriotism.

The duty of patriotism is rooted in the patriotic sentiment, in a person's love of the social body of which he is himself a member, and which is attached to the territory he calls his country. It involves a desire to promote its welfare, a wish that it may prosper for the time being and for all future. This desire is the outcome of a variety of sentiments: of men's affection for the people among whom they live, of attachment to the places where they have grown up or spent part of their lives, of devotion to their race and language, and to the traditions, customs, laws, and institutions of the society in which they were born and to which they belong.

Genuine patriotism presupposes a power of abstraction which the lower savages can hardly be supposed to possess. But it seems to be far from unknown among uncultured peoples of a higher type. North American Indians are praised for their truly patriotic spirit, for their strong attachment to their tribe and their country.[98] Carver says of the Naudowessies:--"The honour of their tribe, and the welfare of their nation, is the first and most predominant emotion of their hearts; and from hence proceed in a great measure all their virtues and their vices. Actuated by this, they brave every danger, endure the most exquisite torments, and expire triumphing in their fortitude, not as a personal qualification, but as a national characteristic."[99] Patriotism and public spirit were often strongly manifested by the Tahitians.[100] The Maori "loves his country and the rights of his ancestors, and he will fight for his children's land."[101] Of the Guanches of Teneriffe we are told that patriotism was {168} their chief virtue.[102] The same quality distinguishes the Yorubas of West Africa; "no race of men," says Mr. MacGregor, "could be more devoted to their country."[103] Burckhardt writes:--"As to the attachment which a Bedouin entertains for his own tribe, the deep-felt interest he takes in its power and fame, and the sacrifices of every kind he is ready to make for its prosperity--these are feelings rarely operating with equal force in any other nation; and it is with an exulting pride of conscious patriotism, not inferior to any which ennobled the history of Grecian or Helvetian republics, that an Aeneze, should he be suddenly attacked, seizes his lance, and waving it over his head exclaims, 'I am an Aeneze.'"[104]

[Footnote 98: Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 378 sq. Heriot, Travels through the Canadas, p. 317. Loskiel, _History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians_, i. 17 (Iroquois).]

[Footnote 99: Carver, _Travels through the Interior Parts of North America_, p. 412.]

[Footnote 100: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 128.]

[Footnote 101: Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, i. 338. See also Travers, 'Life and Times of Te Rauparaha,' in Trans. and Proceed. New Zealand Institute, v. 22.]

[Footnote 102: Bory de St. Vincent, _Essais sur les Isles Fortunées_, p. 70.]

[Footnote 103: MacGregor, 'Lagos, Abeokuta, and the Alake,' in Jour. African Soc. 1904, p. 466.]

[Footnote 104: Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 205.]

Many of the elements out of which patriotism proper has grown are clearly distinguishable among savages, even the very lowest. We have previously noticed the savage's attachment to members of his own community or tribe. Combined with this is his love of his native place, and of the mode of life to which he is habituated. There is a touching illustration of this feeling in the behaviour of the wild boy who had been found in the woods near Aveyron--where he had spent most part of his young life in perfect isolation from all human beings--when he, after being removed to Paris, was once taken back to the country, to the vale of Montmorence. Joy was painted in his eyes, in all the motions and postures of his body, at the view of the hills and the woods of the charming valley; he appeared more than ever restless and savage, and "in spite of the most assiduous attention that was paid to his wishes, and the most affectionate regard that was expressed for him, he seemed to be occupied only with an anxious desire of taking his flight."[105] How much greater must not the love of home be in him who has there his relatives and friends! Mr. Howitt tells us of {169} an Australian native who, on leaving his camp with him for a trip of about a week, burst into tears, saying to himself once and again, "My country, my people, I shall not see them."[106] The Veddahs of Ceylon "would exchange their wild forest life for none other, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they could be induced to quit even for a short time their favourite solitude."[107] The Stiêns of Cambodia are so strongly attached to their forests and mountains that to leave them seems almost like death.[108] Solomon Islanders not seldom die from home-sickness on their way to the Fiji or Queensland plantations.[109] The Hovas of Madagascar, when setting out on a journey, often take with them a small portion of their native earth, on which they gaze during their absence, invoking their god that they may be permitted to return to restore it to the place from which it was taken.[110] Mr. Crawfurd observes that in the Malay Archipelago the attachment to the native spot is strongest with the agricultural tribes;[111] but, though a settled life is naturally most favourable to its development, this feeling is not inconsistent with nomadism. The Nishinam, who are the most nomadic of all the Californian tribes, have very great attachment for the valley or flat which they count their home.[112]

[Footnote 105: Itard, Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man, p. 70 sqq.]

[Footnote 106: Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 305.]

[Footnote 107: Hartshorne, 'Weddas,' in Indian Antiquary, viii. 317.]

[Footnote 108: Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China_, i. 243.]

[Footnote 109: Guppy, op. cit. p. 167.]

[Footnote 110: Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 141.]

[Footnote 111: Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, i. 84.]

[Footnote 112: Powers, op. cit. p. 318 sq. For other instances of love of home among uncivilised races see von Spix and von Martius, op. cit. ii. 242, note (Coroados); von Kotzebue, op. cit. iii. 45 (Indians of California); Gibbs, Tribes of Western Washington and North-Western Oregon, p. 187; Elliott, Report of the Seal Islands of Alaska, p. 240; Hooper, Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski, p. 209; von Siebold, Aino auf der Insel Yesso, p. 11; Mallat, Les Philippines, ii. 95 (Negritos); von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 194 (Bataks); Earl, Papuans, p. 126 (natives of Rotti, near Timor); Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 46; Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 174; Cumming, In the Himalayas, p. 404 (Paharis); Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_, p. 302 (Bedawees); Tristram, Great Sahara, p. 193 sq. (Beni M'zab); Burton, Zanzibar, ii. 96 (Wanika); _Emin Pasha in Central Africa_, p. 315 (Monbuttu); Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 198 (Ovambo); Rowley, Africa Unveiled, p. 63 sq. (Kroos of the Grain Coast below Liberia); Price, 'Quissama Tribe,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. i. 187.]

{170} Moreover, as we have noticed above, savages have the greatest regard for their native customs and institutions.[113] Many of them have displayed that love of national independence which gives to patriotism its highest fervour.[114] And among some uncivilised peoples, at least, the force of racial and linguistic unity shows itself even outside the social or political unit. Burckhardt observes that the Bedouins are not only solicitous for the honour of their own respective tribes, but consider the interests of all other tribes as more or less attached to their own, and frequently evince a general esprit de corps, lamenting "the losses of any of their tribes occasioned by attacks from settlers or foreign troops, even though at war with those tribes."[115] A Tongan "loves the island on which he was born, in particular, and all the Tonga islands generally, as being one country, and speaking one language."[116] Travellers have noticed how gratifying it is, when visiting an uncultured people, to know a little of their language; there is at once a sympathetic link between the native and the stranger.[117] Even the almost inaccessible Berber of the Great Atlas, in spite of his excessive hatred of the European, will at once give you a kindly glance as soon as you, to his astonishment, utter to him a few words in his own tongue.

[Footnote 113: See supra, i. 118 sq.]

[Footnote 114: Cf. Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 95, 105; Lomonaco, 'Sulle razze indigene del Brasile,' in Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, xix. 57 (Tupis); Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 348; Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes of the United States_, iii. 189 (Iroquois); Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 323 (Greenlanders); Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_, p. 81 (Kandhs); Sarasin, op. cit. iii. 530 (Veddahs); Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 188, 304 (Negroes of Central Africa); Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, p. 422 sq. (Bushmans).]

[Footnote 115: Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 205.]

[Footnote 116: Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 156.]

[Footnote 117: See Stokes, Discoveries in Australia, ii. 25.]

Like other species of the altruistic sentiment, patriotism is apt to overestimate the qualities of the object for which it is felt; and it does so all the more readily as love of one's country is almost inseparably intermingled with love of one's self. The ordinary, typical patriot has a strong will to believe that his nation is the best. If, as many {171} people nowadays seem to maintain, such a will to believe is an essential characteristic of true patriotism, savages are as good patriots as anybody. In their intercourse with white men they have often with astonishment noticed the arrogant air of superiority adopted by the latter; in their own opinion they are themselves vastly superior to the whites. According to Eskimo beliefs, the first man, though made by the Great Being, was a failure, and was consequently cast aside and called kob-lu-na, which means "white man"; but a second attempt of the Great Being resulted in the formation of a perfect man, and he was called in-nu, the name which the Eskimo give to themselves.[118] Australian natives, on being asked to work, have often replied, "White fellow works, not black fellow; black fellow gentleman."[119] When anything foolish is done, the Chippewas use an expression which means "as stupid as a white man."[120] If a South Sea Islander sees a very awkward person, he says, "How stupid you are; perhaps you are an Englishman."[121] Mr. Williams tells us of a Fijian who, having been to the United States, was ordered by his chiefs to say whether the country of the white man was better than Fiji, and in what respects. He had not, however, gone far in telling the truth, when one cried out, "He is a prating fellow"; another, "He is impudent"; and some said, "Kill him."[122] The Koriaks are more argumentative; in order to prove that the accounts they hear of the advantages of other countries are so many lies, they say to the stranger, "If you could enjoy these advantages at home, what made you take so much trouble to come to us?"[123] But the Koriaks, in their turn are looked down upon by their neighbours, the Chukchi, who call the surrounding peoples old women, only fit to guard their flocks, and to be their attendants.[124] The Ainu despise the Japanese {172} just as much as the Japanese despise them, and are convinced of "the superiority of their own blood and descent over that of all other peoples in the world."[125] Even the miserable Veddah of Ceylon has a very high opinion of himself, and regards his civilised neighbours with contempt.[126] As is often the case with civilised men, savages attribute to their own people all kinds of virtue in perfection. The South American Mbayás, according to Azara, "se croient la nation la plus noble du monde, la plus généreuse, la plus exacte à tenir sa parole avec loyauté, et la plus vaillante."[127] The Eskimo of Norton Sound speak of themselves as yu'-p[)i]k, meaning fine or complete people, whereas an Indian is termed iñ-k[)i]-l[)i]k, from a word which means "a louse egg."[128] When a Greenlander saw a foreigner of gentle and modest manners, his usual remark was, "He is almost as well-bred as we," or, "He begins to be a man," that is, a Greenlander.[129] The savage regards his people as the people, as the root of all others, and as occupying the middle of the earth. The Hottentots love to call themselves "the men of men."[130] The Indians of the Ungava district, Hudson Bay, give themselves the name nenenot, that is, true or ideal red men.[131] In the language of the Illinois Indians the word illinois means "men"--"as if they looked upon all other Indians as beasts."[132] The aborigines of Hayti believed that their island was the first of all things, that the sun and moon issued from one of its caverns, and men from another.[133] Each Australian tribe, says Mr. Curr, regards its country as the centre of the earth, which in most cases is believed not to extend more than a couple of hundred miles or so in any direction.[134]

[Footnote 118: Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 566 sq.]

[Footnote 119: Hale, _U.S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology_, p. 109.]

[Footnote 120: Keating, Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River, ii. 168. See also Boller, Among the Indians, p. 54 sq.]

[Footnote 121: Williams, Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands, p. 514.]

[Footnote 122: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 105.]

[Footnote 123: Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamschatka, p. 224.]

[Footnote 124: Sauer, op. cit. p. 255.]

[Footnote 125: Batchelor, 'Notes on the Ainu,' in _Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan_, x. 211 sq. Howard, _Life with Trans-Siberian Savages_, p. 182.]

[Footnote 126: Nevill, in Taprobanian, i. 192. Sarasin, op. cit. iii. 530, 534. 553.]

[Footnote 127: Azara, Voyages dans l'Amérique méridionale, ii. 107.]

[Footnote 128: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 306 sq.]

[Footnote 129: Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 126.]

[Footnote 130: Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 92.]

[Footnote 131: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 267.]

[Footnote 132: Marquette, Recit des voyages, p. 47 sq.]

[Footnote 133: Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 376.]

[Footnote 134: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 50. For other instances of national conceit or pride among savages see Darwin, Journal of Researches, p. 207 (Fuegians); von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 332 (Bakaïri); von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, v. 423, and Brett, op. cit. p. 128 (Guiana Indians); James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. 320 (Omahas); Murdoch, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 42 (Point Barrow Eskimo); Krasheninnikoff, op. cit. p. 180 (Kamchadales); Brough Smyth, op. cit. ii. 284 (Australian natives); Macpherson, op. cit. p. 67 (Kandhs); Munzinger, Ueber die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 94; Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 198 (Ovambo).]

{173} We meet with similar feelings and ideas among the nations of archaic culture. The Chinese are taught to think themselves superior to all other peoples. In their writings, ancient and modern, the word "foreigner" is regularly joined with some disrespectful epithet, implying or expressing the ignorance, brutality, obstinacy, or meanness of alien nations, and their obligations to or dependence upon China.[135] To Confucius himself China was "the middle kingdom," "the multitude of great states," "all under heaven," beyond which were only rude and barbarous tribes.[136] According to Japanese ideas, Nippon was the first country created, and the centre of the world.[137] The ancient Egyptians considered themselves as the peculiar people, specially loved by the gods. They alone were termed "men" (romet); other nations were negroes, Asiatics, or Libyans, but not men; and according to the myth these nations were descended from the enemies of the gods.[138] The national pride of the Assyrians, so often referred to by the Hebrew prophets,[139] is conspicuous everywhere in their cuneiform inscriptions: they are the wise, the brave, the powerful, who, like the deluge, carry away all resistance; their kings are the "matchless, irresistible"; and their gods are much exalted above the gods of all other nations.[140] To the Hebrews their own land was "an exceeding good land," "flowing with milk and honey," "the glory of all lands";[141] and its inhabitants were a holy {174} people which the Lord had chosen "to be a special people unto Himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth."[142] Concerning the ancient Persians, Herodotus writes:--"They look upon themselves as very greatly superior in all respects to the rest of mankind, regarding others as approaching to excellence in proportion as they dwell nearer to them; whence it comes to pass that those who are the farthest off must be the most degraded of mankind."[143] To this day the monarch of Persia retains the title of "the Centre of the Universe"; and it is not easy to persuade a native of Isfahan that any European capital can be superior to his native city.[144] The Greeks called Delphi--or rather the round stone in the Delphic temple--"the navel" or "middle point of the earth";[145] and they considered the natural relation between themselves and barbarians to be that between master and slave.[146]

[Footnote 135: Philip, Life and Opinions of the Rev. W. Milne, p. 257. Cf. Staunton, in Narrative of the Chinese Embassy to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars, p. viii.]

[Footnote 136: Legge, Chinese Classics, i. 107. See also Giles, op. cit. ii. 116, n. 2.]

[Footnote 137: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 207.]

[Footnote 138: Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 32.]

[Footnote 139: Isaiah, x. 7 sqq.; xxxvii. 24 sqq. Ezekiel, xxxi. 10 sq. Zephaniah, ii. 15.]

[Footnote 140: Mürdter-Delitzsch, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 104.]

[Footnote 141: Numbers, xiii. 27; xiv. 7. Ezekiel, xx. 6, 15.]

[Footnote 142: Deuteronomy, vii. 6.]

[Footnote 143: Herodotus, i. 134.]

[Footnote 144: Rawlinson, in his translation of Herodotus, i. 260 sq. n. 5.]

[Footnote 145: Pindar, Pythia, vi. 3 sq. Idem, Nemea, vii. 33 sq. Aeschylus, Eumenides, 40, 166. Sophocles, [OE]dipus Tyrannus, 480, 898. Livy, xxxviii. 48. Cf. Herodotus' theory of "extremities" (iii. 115 sq.), and Rawlinson's commentary, in his translation of Herodotus, i. 260 sq. n. 6.]

[Footnote 146: Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulide, 1400 sq. Aristotle, Politica, i. 2, 6, pp. 1252 b, 1255 a.]

In the archaic State the national feeling is in some cases greatly strengthened by the religious feeling; whilst in other instances religion inspires devotion to the family, clan, or caste rather than to the nation, or constitutes a tie not only between compatriots but between members of different political communities. The ancestor-worship of the Chinese has hardly been conducive to genuine patriotism. Whatever devotion to the common weal may have prevailed among the Vedic Aryans, it has certainly passed away beneath the influence of Brahmanism, or been narrowed down to the caste, the village, or the family.[147] The Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda was not a national god, but "the god of the Aryans," that is, of all the peoples who inhabited ancient Iran; and these were constantly at war {175} with one another.[148] Muhammedans, whilst animated with a common hatred towards the Christians, show little public spirit in relation to their respective countries,[149] composed as they are of a variety of loosely connected, often very heterogeneous elements, ruled over by a monarch whose power is in many districts more nominal than real. In ancient Greece and Rome patriotism no doubt contained a religious element--each state and town had its tutelary gods and heroes, who were considered its proper masters;[150] but in the first place it was free citizens' love of their native institutions, a civic virtue which grew up on the soil of liberty. When the two Spartans who were sent to Xerxes to be put to death were advised by one of his governors to surrender themselves to the king, their answer was, "Had you known what freedom is, you would have bidden us fight for it, not with the spear only, but with the battle-axe."[151] And of the Athenians who lived at the time of the Persian wars, Demosthenes said that they were ready to die for their country rather than to see it enslaved, and that they considered the outrages and insults which befell him who lived in a subjugated city to be more terrible than death.[152] In classical antiquity "the influence of patriotism thrilled through every fibre of moral and intellectual life."[153] In some Greek cities emigration was prohibited by law, at Argos even on penalty of death.[154] Plato, in the Republic, sacrificed the family to the interests of the State. Cicero placed our duty to our country next after our duty to the immortal gods and before our duty to our parents.[155] "Of all connections," he says, "none is more weighty, none is more dear, than that between every individual and his country. Our parents are dear to us; {176} our children, our kinsmen, our friends, are dear to us; but our country comprehends alone all the endearments of us all. What good man would hesitate to die for her if he could do her service?"[156]

[Footnote 147: Wheeler, History of India, ii. 586 sq. See also Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 529.]

[Footnote 148: Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. 540. Spiegel, Erânische Alterthumskunde, iii. 687 sqq.]

[Footnote 149: Polak, Persien, i. 12. Urquhart, Spirit of the East, ii. 427, 439 (Turks). Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 204 sq. (Turks and Arab settlers).]

[Footnote 150: Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 529. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 221.]

[Footnote 151: Herodotus, vii. 134 sq.]

[Footnote 152: Demosthenes, De Corona, 205, p. 296.]

[Footnote 153: Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 200.]

[Footnote 154: Plutarch, Lycurgus, xxvii. 5. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xv. 29.]

[Footnote 155: Cicero, De officiis, i. 45 (160). Cf. ibid. iii. 23 (90).]

[Footnote 156: Ibid. i. 17 (57). Cf. Cicero, De legibus, ii. 2, (5).]

The duty of patriotism springs, in the first instance, from the patriotic feeling; when the love of country is common in a nation public resentment is felt towards him who does not act as that sentiment requires him to act. Moreover, lack of patriotism in a person may also be resented by his fellow-countrymen as an injury done to themselves; and as we have seen before, anger, and especially anger felt by a whole community, has a tendency to lead to moral disapproval. For analogous reasons deeds of patriotism are apt to evoke moral praise. However, in benefiting his own people the patriot may cause harm to other people; and where the altruistic sentiment is broad enough to extend beyond the limits of the State and strong enough to make its voice heard even in competition with the love of country and the love of self, his conduct may consequently be an object of reproach. At the lower stages of civilisation the interests of foreigners are not regarded at all, except when sheltered by the rule of hospitality; but gradually, owing to circumstances which will be discussed in the following chapter, altruism tends to expand, and men are at last considered to have duties to mankind at large. The Chinese moralists inculcated benevolence to all men without making any reference to national distinctions.[157] Mih-tsze, who lived in the interval between Confucius and Mencius, even taught that we ought to love all men equally; but this doctrine called forth protests as abnegating the peculiar devotion due to relatives.[158] In Thâi-Shang it is said that a good man will feel kindly towards every creature, and should not hurt even the insect tribes, grass, and trees.[159] Buddhism {177} enjoins the duty of universal love:--"As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son, so let a man cultivate goodwill without measure toward all beings, . . . unhindered love and friendliness toward the whole world, above, below, around."[160] According to the Hindu work Panchatantra it is the thought of little-minded persons to consider whether a man is one of ourselves or an alien, the whole earth being of kin to him who is generously disposed.[161] In Greece and Rome philosophers arose who opposed national narrowness and prejudice. Democritus of Abdera said that every country is accessible to a wise man, and that a good soul's fatherland is the whole earth.[162] The same view was expressed by Theodorus, one of the later Cyrenaics, who denounced devotion to country as ridiculous.[163] The Cynics, in particular, attached slight value to the citizenship of any special state, declaring themselves to be citizens of the world.[164] But, as Zeller observes, in the mouth of the Cynic this doctrine was meant to express not so much the essential oneness of all mankind, as the philosopher's independence of country and home.[165] It was the Stoic philosophy that first gave to the idea of a world-citizenship a definite positive meaning, and raised it to historical importance. The citizen of Alexander's huge empire had in a way become a citizen of the world; and national dislikes were so much more readily overcome as the various nationalities comprised in it were united not only under a common government but also in a common culture.[166] Indeed, the founder of Stoicism was himself only half a Greek. But there is also an obvious connection between the cosmopolitan idea and the Stoic {178} system in general.[167] According to the Stoics, human society has for its basis the identity of reason in individuals; hence we have no ground for limiting this society to a single nation. We are all, says Seneca, members of one great body, the universe; "we are all akin by Nature, who has formed us of the same elements, and placed us here together for the same end."[168] "If our reason is common," says Marcus Aurelius, "there is a common law, as reason commands us what to do and what not to do; and if there is a common law we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community--the world is in a manner a state."[169] To this great state, which includes all rational beings, the individual states are related as the houses of a city are to the city collectively;[170] and the wise man will esteem it far above any particular community in which the accident of birth has placed him.[171]

[Footnote 157: Lun Yü, xii. 22. Mencius, vii. 1. 45. Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, pp. 108, 205.]

[Footnote 158: Edkins, Religion in China, p. 119. Legge, Chinese Classics, ii. 476, n. 45. de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 684.]

[Footnote 159: Thâi-Shang, 3.]

[Footnote 160: Quoted by Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures on the History of Buddhism_, p. 111.]

[Footnote 161: Muir, Religious and Moral Sentiments rendered from Sanskrit Writers, p. 109.]

[Footnote 162: Stobæus, Florilegium, xl. 7, vol. ii. 80. Cf. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos, p. 117, n. 41.]

[Footnote 163: Diogenes Laertius, Vitæ philosophorum, ii. 98 sq.]

[Footnote 164: Ibid. vi. 12, 63, 72, 98. Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 24. 66. Stobæus, xlv. 28, vol. ii. 252.]

[Footnote 165: Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, p. 326 sq. Idem, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 327.]

[Footnote 166: Cf. Plutarch, De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute, i. 6, p. 329.]

[Footnote 167: See Zeller, Stoics, &c. p. 327 sq.]

[Footnote 168: Seneca, Epistulæ, xcv. 52.]

[Footnote 169: Marcus Aurelius, Commentarii, iv. 4. Cf. ibid. vi. 44, and ix. 9; Cicero, De legibus, i. 7 (23); Epictetus, Dissertationes, i. 13. 3.]

[Footnote 170: Marcus Aurelius, iii. 11.]

[Footnote 171: Seneca, De otio, iv. 1. Idem, Epistulæ, lxviii. 2. Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 22. 83 sqq.]

But the Roman ideal of patriotism, with its utter disregard for foreign nations,[172] was not opposed by philosophy alone: it met with an even more formidable antagonist in the new religion. The Christian and the Stoic rejected it on different grounds: whilst the Stoic felt himself as a citizen of the world, the Christian felt himself as a citizen of heaven, to whom this planet was only a place of exile. Christianity was not hostile to the State.[173] At the very time when Nero committed his worst atrocities, St. Paul declared that there is no power but of God, and that whosoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God and shall be condemned;[174] and Tertullian says that all Christians send up their prayers for the life of the emperors, for their ministers, for magistrates, for the good of the {179} State and the peace of the Empire.[175] But the emperor should be obeyed only so long as his commands do not conflict with the law of God--a Christian ought rather to suffer like Daniel in the lions' den than sin against his religion;[176] and nothing is more entirely foreign to him than affairs of State.[177] Indeed, in the whole Roman Empire there were no men who so entirely lacked patriotism as the early Christians. They had no affection for Judea, they soon forgot Galilee, they cared nothing for the glory of Greece and Rome.[178] When the judges asked them which was their country they said in answer, "I am a Christian."[179] And long after Christianity had become the religion of the Empire, St. Augustine declared that it matters not, in respect of this short and transitory life, under whose dominion a mortal man lives, if only he be not compelled to acts of impiety or injustice.[180] Later on, when the Church grew into a political power independent of the State, she became a positive enemy of national interests. In the seventeenth century a Jesuit general called patriotism "a plague and the most certain death of Christian love."[181]

[Footnote 172: Cf. Lactantius, Divinæ Institutiones, vi. ('De vero cultu'), 6 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, vi. 655).]

[Footnote 173: St. Matthew, xxii. 21. 1 Peter, ii. 13 sq.]

[Footnote 174: Romans, xiii. 1 sq. See also Titus, iii. 1.]

[Footnote 175: Tertullian, Apologeticus, 39 (Migne, op. cit. i. 468). See also Ludwig, Tertullian's Ethik, p. 98 sq.]

[Footnote 176: Tertullian, De idololatria, 15 (Migne, op. cit. i. 684).]

[Footnote 177: Tertullian, Apologeticus, 38 (Migne, op. cit. i. 465):--"Nec ulla magis res aliena, quam publica."]

[Footnote 178: See Renan, _Hibbert Lectures on the Influence of Rome on Christianity_, p. 28.]

[Footnote 179: Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes, i. 128.]

[Footnote 180: St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, v. 17.]

[Footnote 181: von Eicken, Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 809.]

With the fall of the Roman Empire patriotism died out in Europe, and remained extinct for centuries. It was a feeling hardly compatible either with the migratory life of the Teutonic tribes or with the feudal system, which grew up wherever they fixed their residence. The knights, it is true, were not destitute of the natural affection for home. When Aliaumes is mortally wounded by Géri li Sors he exclaims, "Holy Virgin, I shall never more see Saint-Quentin nor Néèle";[182] and the troubadour Bernard de Ventadour touchingly sings, "Quan la doussa aura venta--Deves nostre païs,--M'es veiaire que senta--Odor de {180} Paradis."[183] But to a man of the Middle Ages "his country" meant little more than the neighbourhood in which he lived.[184] Kingdoms existed, but no nations. The first duty of a vassal was to be loyal to his lord;[185] but no national spirit bound together the various barons of one country. A man might be the vassal of the king of France and of the king of England at the same time; and often, from caprice, passion, or sordid interest, the barons sold their services to the enemies of the kingdom. The character of his knighthood was also perpetually pressing the knight to a course of conduct distinct from all national objects.[186] The cause of a distressed lady was in many instances preferable to that of the country to which he belonged --as when the Captal de Bouche, though an English subject, did not hesitate to unite his troops with those of the Compte de Foix to relieve the ladies in a French town, where they were besieged and threatened with violence by the insurgent peasantry.[187] When a knight's duties towards his country are mentioned in the rules of Chivalry they are spoken of as duties towards his lord:--"The wicked knight," it is said, "that aids not his earthly lord and natural country against another prince, is a knight without office."[188] Far from being, as M. Gautier asserts,[189] the object of an express command in the code of Chivalry, true patriotism had there no place at all. It was not known as an ideal, still less did it exist as a reality, among either knights or commoners. As a duke of Orleans could bind himself by a fraternity of arms and alliance to a duke of Lancaster,[190] so English merchants were in the habit of supplying nations at war against England with provisions bought at English fairs, and weapons wrought by English hands.[191] If, as M. Gaston Paris maintains, a {181} deep feeling of national union had inspired the Chanson de Roland,[192] it is a strange, yet undeniable, fact that no distinct trace of this feeling displayed itself in the mediæval history of France before the English wars.

[Footnote 182: Li Romans de Raoul de Cambrai, 210, p. 185.]

[Footnote 183: Quoted by Gautier, La Chevalerie, p. 64.]

[Footnote 184: See Cibrario, Della economia politica del medio eve, i. 263; de Crozals, Histoire de la civilization, ii. 287.]

[Footnote 185: Ordre of Chyualry, foll. 13 b. 32 b.]

[Footnote 186: See Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 140 sq.]

[Footnote 187: Scott, Essay on Chivalry, p. 31.]

[Footnote 188: Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 14 b.]

[Footnote 189: Gautier, op. cit. p. 33.]

[Footnote 190: Sainte-Palaye, _Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie_, ii. 72.]

[Footnote 191: Pike, History of Crime in England, i. 264 sq.]

[Footnote 192: Paris, La poésie du moyen age, p. 107. M. Gautier says (op. cit. p. 61) that Roland is "la France faite homme."]

Besides feudalism and the want of political cohesion, there were other factors that contributed to hinder the development of national personality and patriotic devotion. This sentiment presupposes not only that the various parts of which a country is composed shall have a vivid feeling of their unity, but also that they, united, shall feel themselves as a nation clearly distinct from other nations. In the Middle Ages national differences were largely obscured by the preponderance of the Universal Church, by the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, by the prevalence of a common language as the sole vehicle of mental culture, and by the undeveloped state of the vernacular tongues. To make use of the native dialect was a sign of ignorance, and to place worldly interests above the claims of the Church was impious. When Macchiavelli declared that he preferred his country to the safety of his soul, people considered him guilty of blasphemy; and when the Venetians defied the Papal thunders by averring that they were Venetians in the first place, and only Christians in the second, the world heard them with amazement.[193]

[Footnote 193: 'National Personality,' in Edinburgh Review, cxciv. 133.]

In England the national feeling developed earlier than on the Continent, no doubt owing to her insular position and freer institutions; as Montesquieu observes, patriotism thrives best in democracies.[194] At the time of the English Reformation the sense of corporate national life had evidently gained considerable strength, and the love of England has never been expressed in more exquisite form than it was by Shakespeare. At the same time the sense of patriotism was often grossly perverted by religious {182} bigotry and party spirit.[195] Even champions of liberty, like Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, accepted French gold in the hope of embarrassing the King; and Sidney went so far as to try to instigate De Witt to invade England. Loyalism, in particular, proved a much stronger incentive than love of country. A loyalist like Strafford would have employed half-savage Irish troops against his own countrymen, and the Scotch Jacobites invited a French invasion.

[Footnote 194: Montesquieu, De l'esprit des Lois, iv. 5 ([OE]uvres, p. 206 sq.).]

[Footnote 195: See Edinburgh Review, cxciv. 133, 136 sq.; Pearson, National Life and Character, p. 190.]

In France the development of the national feeling was closely connected with the strengthening of the royal power and its gradual victory over feudalism. The word patrie was for the first time used by Charles VII.'s chronicler, Jean Chartier, and he also condemned as renégats those Frenchmen who, at the end of the hundred years war, fought on the side of the English.[196] But patriotism was for a long time inseparably confounded with loyalty to the sovereign. According to Bossuet "tout l'État est en la personne du prince";[197] and Abbé Coyer observes that Colbert believed royaume and patrie to signify one and the same thing.[198] In the eighteenth century the spirit of rebellion succeeded that of devotion to the king; but the key-note of the great movement which led to the Revolution was the liberty and equality of the individual, not the glory or welfare of the nation. Men were looked upon as members of the human race, rather than as citizens of any particular country. To be a citizen of every nation, and not to belong to one's native country alone, was the dream of French writers in the eighteenth century.[199] "The true sage is a cosmopolitan," says a writer of comedy.[200] Diderot asks which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains for ever, or to save one's fatherland, which is {183} perishable.[201] According to Voltaire patriotism is composed of self-love and prejudice,[202] and only too often makes us the enemies of our fellow-men:--"Il est clair qu'un pays ne peut gagner sans qu'un autre perde, et qu'il ne peut vaincre sans faire des malheureux. Telle est donc la condition humaine, que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c'est souhaiter du mal à ses voisins."[203] In Germany, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller felt themselves as citizens of the world, not of the German Empire, still less as Saxons or Suabians; and Klopstock, with his enthusiasm for German nationality and language, almost appeared eccentric.[204] Lessing writes point-blank:--"The praise of being an ardent patriot is to my mind the very last thing that I should covet; . . . I have no idea at all of love of the Fatherland, and it seems to me at best but an heroical weakness, which I can very readily dispense with."[205]

[Footnote 196: Guibal, Histoire du sentiment national en France pendant la guerre de Cent ans, p. 526 sq.]

[Footnote 197: Legrand, L'idée de patrie, p. 20.]

[Footnote 198: Block, Dictionnaire général de la politique, ii. 518.]

[Footnote 199: Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, p. 79.]

[Footnote 200: Palissot de Montenoy, Les philosophes, iii. 4, p. 75.]

[Footnote 201: Diderot, _Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron_, ii. 75 ([OE]uvres, vi. 244).]

[Footnote 202: Voltaire, Pensées sur l'administration publique, 14 ([OE]uvres complètes, v. 351).]

[Footnote 203: Idem, Dictionnaire philosophique, art. Patrie ([OE]uvres complètes, viii. 118).]

[Footnote 204: See Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 259 sq.]

[Footnote 205: Lessing, quoted by Ziegler, Social Ethics, p. 121.]

The first French revolution marks the beginning of a new era in the history of patriotism. It inspired the masses with passion for the unity of the fatherland, the Republic "one and indivisible." At the same time it declared all nations to be brothers, and when it made war on foreign nations the object was only to deliver them from their oppressors.[206] But gradually the interest in the affairs of other countries grew more and more selfish, the attempt to emancipate was absorbed in the desire to subjugate; and this awoke throughout Europe a feeling which was destined to become the most powerful force in the history of the nineteenth century, the feeling of nationality. When Napoleon introduced French administration in the countries whose sovereigns he had deposed or degraded, the people resisted the change. The resistance was popular, as the rulers were absent or helpless, and it was national, being directed against foreign institutions.{184} It was stirred by the feeling of national rather than political unity, it was a protest against the dominion of race over race. The national element in this movement had in a manner been anticipated by the French Revolution itself. The French people was regarded by it as an ethnological, not as an historic, unit; descent was put in the place of tradition; the idea of the sovereignty of the people uncontrolled by the past gave birth to the idea of nationality independent of the political influence of history. But, as has been truly remarked, men were made conscious of the national element of the revolution by its conquests, not in its rise.[207]

[Footnote 206: Block, op. cit. ii. 376.]

[Footnote 207: See 'Nationality,' in Home and Foreign Review, i. 6 sqq.]

Ever since, the racial feeling has been the most vigorous force in European patriotism, and has gradually become a true danger to humanity. Beginning as a protest against the dominion of one race over another, this feeling led to a condemnation of every state which included different races, and finally developed into the complete doctrine that state and nationality should so far as possible be coextensive.[208] According to this theory the dominant nationality cannot admit the inferior nationalities dwelling within the boundaries of the state to an equality with itself, because, if it did, the state would cease to be national, and this would be contrary to the principle of its existence; or the weaker nationalities are compelled to change their language, institutions, and individuality, so as to be absorbed in the dominant race. And not only does the leading nationality assert its superiority in relation to all others within the body politic, but it also wants to assert itself at the expense of foreign nations and races. To the nationalist all this is true patriotism; love of country often stands for a feeling which has been well described as love of more country.[209] But at the same time opposite ideals are at work. The fervour of nineteenth century nationalism has not been able to quench the {185} cosmopolitan spirit. In spite of loud appeals made to racial instincts and the sense of national solidarity, the idea has been gaining ground that the aims of a nation must not conflict with the interests of humanity at large; that our love of country should be controlled by other countries' right to prosper and to develop their own individuality; and that the oppression of weaker nationalities inside the state and aggressiveness towards foreign nations, being mainly the outcome of vainglory and greed, are inconsistent with the aspirations of a good patriot, as well as of a good man.

[Footnote 208: Ibid. p. 13 sq.]

[Footnote 209: Robertson, Patriotism and Empire, p. 138.]

* * * * *

Our long discussion of moral ideas regarding such modes of conduct as directly concern other men's welfare has at last come to an end. We have seen that they may be ultimately traced to a variety of sources: to the influence of habit or education, to egoistic considerations of some kind or other which have given rise to moral feelings, to notions of social expediency, to disinterested likings or dislikes, and, above all, to sympathetic resentment or sympathetic approval springing from an altruistic disposition of mind. But how to account for this disposition? Our explanation of that group of moral ideas which we have been hitherto investigating is not complete until we have found an answer to this important question. I shall therefore in the next chapter examine the origin and development of the altruistic sentiment.

XXXIV. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALTRUISTIC SENTIMENT

THERE is one form of the altruistic sentiment which man shares with all mammals and many other animals, namely, maternal affection. As regards its origin various theories have been set forth.

According to Aristotle, parents love their children as being portions of themselves.[1] A similar explanation of maternal affection has been given by some modern writers.[2] Thus Professor Espinas regards this sentiment as modified self-love and love of property. The female, he says, at the moment when she gives birth to little ones resembling herself, has no difficulty in recognising them as the flesh of her flesh; the feeling she experiences towards them is made up of sympathy and pity, but we cannot exclude from it an idea of property which is the most solid support of sympathy. She feels and understands up to a certain point that these young ones which are herself at the same time belong to her; the love of herself, extended to those who have gone out from her, changes egoism into sympathy and the proprietary instinct into an affectionate impulse.[3] This hypothesis, however, seems to me to be very inadequate. It does not explain why, for instance, a bird takes more care of her eggs than of other matter segregated from {187} her body, which may equally well be regarded as a part of herself. Nor does it account for a foster-mother's affection for her adopted offspring.[4] Of this many instances have been noticed in the lower animals; and among some savage peoples adopted children are said to be treated by their foster-parents with the same affection as if they were their own flesh and blood.[5]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, viii. 12. 2 sq.]

[Footnote 2: Hartley, Observations on Man, i. 496 sq. Fichte, Das System der Sittenlehre, p. 433.]

[Footnote 3: Espinas, Des sociétés animales (2nd ed.), p. 444 sq., quoted by Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, p. 280.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ii. 624.]

[Footnote 5: Murdoch, 'Ethnol. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 419 (Point Barrow Eskimo). Thomson, Savage Island, p. 135.]

A very different explanation of maternal love has been given by Professor Bain. He derives parental affection from the "intense pleasure in the embrace of the young." He observes that "such a pleasure once created would associate itself with the prevailing features and aspects of the young, and give to all of these their very great interest. For the sake of the pleasure, the parent discovers the necessity of nourishing the subject of it, and comes to regard the ministering function as a part or condition of the delight."[6] But if the satisfaction in animal contact were at the bottom of the maternal feeling, conjugal affection ought by far to surpass it in intensity; and yet, among the lower races at least, the case is exactly the reverse, conjugal affection being vastly inferior in degree to a mother's love of her child. It may indeed be fairly doubted whether there is any "intense pleasure" at all in embracing a new-born baby--unless it be one's own. It seems much more likely that parents like to touch their children because they love them, than that they love them because they like to touch them. Attraction, showing itself either by elementary movements of approach, or by contact, or by the embrace, is the outward expression of tenderness.[7] Professor Bain himself observes that as anger reaches a satisfying term by knocking some one down, love is completed and satisfied with an embrace.[8] But this by no means implies that the embrace is the cause of love; it {188} only means that love has a tendency to express itself outwardly in an act of embrace.

[Footnote 6: Bain, Emotions and the Will, p. 140.]

[Footnote 7: Ribot, op. cit. p. 234.]

[Footnote 8: Bain, op. cit. p. 126.]

In the opinion of Mr. Spencer, again, parental love is essentially love of the weak or helpless. This instinct, he remarks, is not adequately defined as that which attaches a creature to its young. Though most frequently and most strongly displayed in this relation, the so-called parental feeling is really excitable apart from parenthood; and the common trait of the objects which arouse it is always relative weakness or helplessness.[9] This hypothesis undoubtedly contains part of the truth. That the maternal instinct is in some degree love of the helpless is obvious from the fact that, among those of the lower animals which are not gregarious, mother and young separate as soon as the latter are able to shift for themselves; nay, in many cases they are actually driven away by her. Moreover, in species which are so constituted that the young from the very outset can help themselves there is no maternal love. These facts indicate where we have to look for the source of this sentiment. When the young are born in a state of utter helplessness somebody must take care of them, or the species cannot survive, or, rather, such a species could never have come into existence. The maternal instinct may thus be assumed to owe its origin to the survival of the fittest, to the natural selection of useful spontaneous variations.

[Footnote 9: Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ii. 623 sq. See also Hartley, op. cit. i. 497.]

This is also recognised by Mr. Spencer;[10] but his theory fails to explain the indisputable fact that there is a difference between maternal love and the mere love of the helpless. Even in a gregarious species mothers make a distinction between their own offspring and other young. During my stay among the mountaineers of Morocco I was often struck by the extreme eagerness with which in the evening, when the flock of ewes and the flock of lambs were reunited, each mother sought for her own lamb, and each lamb for its own mother. A similar {189} discrimination has been noticed even in cases of conscious adoption. Brehm tells us of a female baboon which had so capacious a heart that she not only adopted young monkeys of other species, but stole young dogs and cats which she continually carried about; yet her kindness did not go so far as to share food with her adopted offspring, although she divided everything quite fairly with her own young ones.[11] To account for the maternal sentiment we must therefore assume the existence of some other stimulus besides the signs of helplessness, which produces, or at least strengthens, the instinctive motor response in the mother. This stimulus, so far as I can see, is rooted in the external relationship in which the offspring from the beginning stand to the mother. She is in close proximity to her helpless young from their tenderest age; and she loves them because they are to her a cause of pleasure.

[Footnote 10: Spencer, op. cit. ii. 623.]

[Footnote 11: Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 70.]

In various animal species the young are cared for not only by the mother, but by the father as well. This is the general rule among birds: whilst the hatching of the eggs and the chief part of the rearing-duties belong to the mother, the father acts as a protector, and provides food for the family. Among most of the mammals, on the other hand, the connections between the sexes are restricted to the time of the rut, hence the father may not even see his young. But there are also some mammalian species in which male and female remain together even after the birth of the offspring and the father defends his family against enemies.[12] Among the Quadrumana this seems to be the rule.[13] All the best authorities agree that the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee live in families. When the female is pregnant the male builds a rude nest in a tree, where she is delivered; and he spends the night crouching at the foot of the tree, protecting the female and their young one, which are in the nest above, from the nocturnal attacks of leopards. Passing from the {190} highest monkeys to the savage and barbarous races of men, we meet with the same phenomenon. In the human race the family consisting of father, mother, and offspring is probably a universal institution, whether founded on a monogamous, polygynous, or polyandrous marriage. And, as among the lower animals having the same habit, whilst the immediate care of the children chiefly belongs to the mother, the father is the guardian of the family.[14]

[Footnote 12: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 11 sq.]

[Footnote 13: Ibid. p. 12 sqq.]

[Footnote 14: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 14 sqq.]

The stimuli to which the paternal instinct responds are apparently derived from the same circumstances as those which call into activity the maternal instinct, that is, the helplessness and the nearness of the offspring. Wherever this instinct exists, the father is near his young from the beginning, living together with the mother. And here again the sentimental response is in all probability the result of a process of natural selection, which has preserved a mental disposition necessary for the existence of the species. Among birds paternal care is indispensable. Equal and continual warmth is the first requirement for the development of the embryo and the preservation of the young ones; and for this the mother almost always wants the assistance of the father, who provides her with necessaries, and sometimes relieves her of the brooding. Among mammals, again, whilst the young at their tenderest age can never do without the mother, the father's aid is generally not required. That the Primates form an exception to this rule is probably due to the small number of young, the female bringing forth but one at a time, and besides, among the highest apes and in man, to the long period of infancy.[15] If this is true we may assume that the paternal instinct occurred in primitive man, as it occurs, more or less strongly developed, among the anthropoid apes and among existing savages.

[Footnote 15: See ibid. p. 20 sqq. Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 342 sq.]

By origin closely allied to the paternal feeling is the attachment between individuals of different sex, which {191} induces male and female to remain with one another beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. It is obvious that, where the generative power is restricted to a certain season--a peculiarity which primitive man seems to have shared with other mammals[16]--it cannot be the sexual instinct that causes the prolonged union of the sexes, nor can I conceive any other egoistic motive that could account for this habit. Considering that the union lasts till after the birth of the offspring and that it is accompanied with parental care, I conclude that it is for the benefit of the young that male and female continue to live together. The tie which joins them seems therefore, like parental affection, to be an instinct developed through natural selection. The tendency to feel some attachment to a being which has been the cause of pleasure--in this case sexual pleasure--is undoubtedly at the bottom of this instinct. Such a feeling may originally have induced the sexes to remain united and the male to protect the female even after the sexual desire was gratified; and if procuring great advantage to the species in the struggle for existence, conjugal attachment would naturally have developed into a specific characteristic.

[Footnote 16: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. ii.]

We have reason to believe that the germ of this sentiment occurred already in our earliest human ancestors, that marriage, in the natural history sense of the term, is a habit transmitted to man from some ape-like progenitor.[17] In the course of evolution conjugal affection has increased both in intensity and complexity; but advancement in civilisation has not at every step been favourable to its development. When restricted to men only, a higher culture on the contrary tends to alienate husband and wife, as is the case in Eastern countries and as was the case in ancient Greece. Another fact leading to conjugal apathy is the custom which compels the women before marriage to live strictly apart from the men. In China it often happens that the parties have not even seen each {192} other till the wedding day;[18] and in Greece Plato urged in vain that young men and women should be more frequently permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and indifference in the married life.[19] Conjugal love is both a cause and an effect of monogamy; but, as we shall see subsequently, the course of civilisation does not involve a steady progress towards stricter monogamy. The notions about women also influence the emotions felt towards them; and we have noticed that the great religions of the world have generally held them in little regard.[20] In its fully developed form the passion which unites the sexes is perhaps the most compound of all human feelings. Mr. Spencer thus sums up the masterly analysis he has given of it:--"Round the physical feeling forming the nucleus of the whole, are gathered the feelings produced by personal beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love, of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, of sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally tending to reflect their excitements on one another, unite to form the mental state we call love."[21]

[Footnote 17: Ibid. op. cit. chs. i., iii.]

[Footnote 18: Katscher, Bilder aus dem chinesischen Leben, pp. 71, 84.]

[Footnote 19: Plato, Leges, vi. 771 sq.]

[Footnote 20: Supra, i. 662 sqq.]

[Footnote 21: Spencer, Principles of Psychology, i. 488.]

The duration of conjugal and parental feelings varies extremely. Most birds, with the exception of those belonging to the Gallinaceous family, when pairing do so once for all till either one or the other dies;[22] whereas among the mammals man and possibly some apes[23] are the only species whose conjugal unions last any considerable time after the birth of the offspring. Among many of the lower races of men lifelong marriages seem to be the rule, and among a few separation is said to be entirely unknown; but there is abundant evidence that marriage has, upon the whole, become more durable with advancing civilisation.[24] One cause of this is that conjugal affection has become more lasting. And the greater duration of this sentiment may be explained partly from the refinement {193} of the uniting passion, involving appreciation of mental qualities which last long after youth and beauty have passed away, and partly also from the greater durability of parental feelings, which form a tie not only between parents and children, but between husband and wife.

[Footnote 22: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 11.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. pp. 13, 14, 535.]

[Footnote 24: Ibid. ch. xxiii.]

The parental feelings originally only last as long as the young are unable to shift for themselves--the paternal feeling possibly less. As Mr. Fiske observes, "where the infancy is very short, the parental feeling, though intense while it lasts, presently disappears, and the offspring cease to be distinguished from strangers of the same species. And in general the duration of the feelings which insure the protection of the offspring is determined by the duration of the infancy."[25] Among certain savages parental love is still said to be restricted to the age of helplessness. We are told that the affection of a Fuegian mother for her child gradually decreases in proportion as the child grows older, and ceases entirely when it reaches the age of seven or eight; thenceforth the parents in no way meddle with the affairs of their son, who may leave them if he likes.[26] When the parental feelings became more complex, through the association of other feelings, as those of property and pride, they naturally tended to extend themselves beyond the limits of infancy and childhood. But the chief cause of this extension seems to lie in the same circumstances as made man a gregarious animal. Where the grown-up children continued to stay with their parents, parental affection naturally tended to be prolonged, not only by the infusion into it of new elements, but by the direct influence of close living together. It was, moreover, extended to more distant descendants. The same stimuli as call forth kindly emotions towards a person's own children evoke similar emotions towards his grand- and great-grandchildren.

[Footnote 25: Fiske, op. cit. ii. 343.]

[Footnote 26: Bove, Patagonia, Terra del Fuoco, p. 133. See also Wied-Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 40 (Botocudos), Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 219; Scaramucci and Giglioli, 'Notizie sui Danakil,' in Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, xiv. 35.]

{194} It is an old truth that children's love of their parents is generally much weaker than the parents' love of their children. The latter is absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the species, the former is not;[27] though, when a richer food-supply favoured the formation of larger communities, filial attachment must have been of advantage to the race.[28] No individual is born with filial love. However, Aristotle goes too far when saying that, whilst parents love their children from their birth upward, "children do not begin to love their parents until they are of a considerable age, and have got full possession of their wits and faculties."[29] Under normal circumstances the infant from an early age displays some attachment to its parents. Professor Sully tells us of a girl, about seventeen months old, who received her father after a few days absence with special marks of affection, "rushing up to him, smoothing and stroking his face and giving him all the toys in the room."[30] Filial love is retributive; the agreeable feeling produced by benefits received makes the individual look with pleasure and kindliness upon the giver. And here again the affection is strengthened by close living together, as appears from the cooling effect of long separation of children from their parents. But the filial feeling is not affection pure and simple, it is affection mingled with regard for the physical and mental superiority of the parent.[31] As the parental feeling is partly love of the weak and young, so the filial feeling is partly regard for the strong and (comparatively) old.

[Footnote 27: This observation was made already by Hutcheson (Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, p. 219) and Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 199). The latter wrote, a hundred years before the publication of 'The Origin of Species,' that parental tenderness is a much stronger affection than filial piety, because "the continuance and propagation of the species depend altogether upon the former, and not upon the latter."]

[Footnote 28: Darwin maintains (Descent of Man, p. 105) that the filial affections have been to a large extent gained through natural selection.]

[Footnote 29: Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, viii. 12. 2.]

[Footnote 30: Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 243.]

[Footnote 31: See supra, i. 618 sq.]

Besides parental, conjugal, and filial attachment we find among all existing races of men altruism of the fraternal {195} type, binding together children of the same parents, relatives more remotely allied, and, generally, members of the same social unit. But I am inclined to suppose that man was not originally a gregarious animal, in the proper sense of the word, that he originally lived in families rather than in tribes, and that the tribe arose as the result of increasing food-supply, allowing the formation of larger communities, combined with the advantages which under such circumstances accrued from a gregarious life. The man-like apes are not gregarious; and considering that some of them are reported to be encountered in greater numbers in the season when most fruits come to maturity,[32] we may infer that the solitary life generally led by them is due chiefly to the difficulty they experience in getting food at other times of the year. That our earliest human or half-human ancestors lived on the same kind of food, and required about the same quantities of it as the man-like apes, seems to me a fairly legitimate supposition; and from this I conclude that they were probably not more gregarious than these apes. Subsequently man became carnivorous; but even when getting his living by fishing or hunting, he may still have continued as a rule this solitary kind of life, or gregariousness may have become his habit only in part. "An animal of a predatory kind," Mr. Spencer observes, "which has prey that can be caught and killed without help, profits by living alone: especially if its prey is much scattered, and is secured by stealthy approach or by lying in ambush. Gregariousness would here be a positive disadvantage. Hence the tendency of large carnivores, and also of small carnivores that have feeble and widely-distributed prey, to lead solitary lives."[33] It is certainly a noteworthy fact that even now there are rude savages who live rather in separate families than in tribes; and that their solitary life is due to want of {196} sufficient food is obvious from several facts which I have stated in full in another place.[34] These facts, as it seems to me, give much support to the supposition that the kind of food man subsisted upon, together with the large quantities of it which he wanted, formed in olden times a hindrance to a true gregarious manner of living, except perhaps in some unusually rich places.

[Footnote 32: Savage, 'Observations on the External Characters and Habits of the Troglodytes Niger, in Boston Journal of Natural History, iv. 384. Cf. von Koppenfels, 'Meine Jagden auf Gorillas,' in Die Gartenlaube, 1877, p. 419.]

[Footnote 33: Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ii. 558.]

[Footnote 34: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 43 sqq.]

But man finally overcame this obstacle. "He has," to quote Darwin, "invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes for fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous."[35] In short, man gradually found out new ways of earning his living and more and more emancipated himself from direct dependence on surrounding nature. The chief obstacle to a gregarious life was by this means surmounted, and the advantages of such a life were considerable. Living together in larger groups, men could resist the dangers of life and defend themselves much better than when solitary--all the more so as the physical strength of man, and especially savage man, is comparatively slight. The extension of the small family group may have taken place in two different ways: either by adhesion, or by natural growth and cohesion. In other words, new elements whether other family groups or single individuals may have united with it from without, or the children, instead of separating from their parents, may have remained with them and increased the group by forming new families themselves. There can be little doubt that the latter was the normal mode of extension. When gregariousness became an advantage to man, he would feel inclined to remain with those with whom he was living even after the family had fulfilled its object--the preservation of {197} the helpless offspring. And he would be induced to do so not only from egoistic considerations, but by an instinct which, owing to its usefulness, would gradually develop, practically within the limits of kinship--the gregarious instinct.

[Footnote 35: Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 48 sq.]

By the gregarious instinct I understand an animal's proneness to live together with other members of its own species, apart from parental, conjugal, and filial attachment. It involves, or leads to, pleasure in the consciousness of their presence. The members of a herd are at ease in each other's company, suffer when they are separated, and rejoice when they are reunited. By actual living together the instinct is individualised,[36] and it is strengthened by habit. The pleasure with which one individual looks upon another is further increased by the solidarity of interests. Not only have they enjoyments in common, but they have the same enemies to resist, the same dangers to encounter, the same difficulties to overcome. Hence acts which are beneficial to the agent are at the same time beneficial to his companions, and the distinction between ego and alter loses much of its importance.

[Footnote 36: In mankind we very early recognise the child's tendency to sympathise with persons who are familiar to it (Compayré, L'évolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant, p. 288).]

But the members of the group do not merely take pleasure in each other's company. Associated animals very frequently display a feeling of affection for each other--defend each other, help each other in distress and danger, perform various other services for each other.[37] Considering that the very object of the gregarious instinct is the preservation of the species, I think we are obliged to regard the mutual affection of associated animals as a development of this instinct. With the pleasure they take in each other's company is intimately connected kindliness towards its cause, the companion himself. In this explanation of social affection I believe no further step can be made. Professor Bain asks why a more lively feeling should grow up towards a fellow-being than towards an {198} inanimate source of pleasure; and to account for this he suggests, curiously enough, "the primary and independent pleasure of the animal embrace"[38]--although embrace even as an outward expression of affection plays a very insignificant part in the social relations of gregarious animals. It might as well be asked why there should be a more lively feeling towards a sentient creature which inflicts pain than towards an inanimate cause of pain. Both cases call for a similar explanation. The animal distinguishes between a living being and a lifeless thing, and affection proper, like anger proper, is according to its very nature felt towards the former only. The object of anger is normally an enemy, the object of social affection is normally a friend. Social affection is not only greatly increased by reciprocity of feeling, but could never have come into existence without such reciprocity. The being to which an animal attaches itself is conceived of as kindly disposed towards it; hence among wild animals social affection is found only in connection with the gregarious instinct, which is reciprocal in nature.

[Footnote 37: Darwin, op. cit. p. 100 sqq. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, ch. i. sq.]

[Footnote 38: Bain, op. cit. p. 132.]

Among men the members of the same social unit are tied to each other with various bonds of a distinctly human character--the same customs, laws, institutions, magic or religious ceremonies and beliefs, or notions of a common descent. As men generally are fond of that to which they are used or which is their own, they are also naturally apt to have likings for other individuals whose habits or ideas are similar to theirs. The intensity and extensiveness of social affection thus in the first place depend upon the coherence and size of the social aggregate, and its development must consequently be studied in connection with the evolution of such aggregates.

This evolution is largely influenced by economic conditions. Savages who know neither cattle-rearing nor agriculture, but subsist on what nature gives them--game, fish, fruit, roots, and so forth--mostly live in single families consisting of parents and children, or in larger {199} family groups including in addition a few other individuals closely allied.[39] But even among these savages the isolation of the families is not complete. Persons of the same stock inhabiting neighbouring districts hold friendly relations with one another, and unite for the purpose of common defence. When the younger branches of a family are obliged to disperse in search of food, at least some of them remain in the neighbourhood of the parent family, preserve their language, and never quite lose the idea of belonging to one and the same social group. And in some cases we find that people in the hunting or fishing stage actually live in larger communities, and have a well-developed social organisation. This is the case with many or most of the Australian aborigines. Though in Australia, also, isolated families are often met with,[40] the rule seems to be that the blacks live in hordes. Thus the Arunta of Central Australia are distributed in a large number of small local groups, each of which occupies a given area of country and has its own headman.[41] Every family, consisting of a man and one or more wives and children, has a separate lean-to of shrubs;[42] but clusters of these shelters are always found in spots where food is more or less easily obtainable,[43] and the members of each group are bound together by a strong "local feeling."[44] The local influence makes itself felt even outside the horde. "Without belonging to the same group," say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "men who inhabit localities close to one another are more closely associated than men living at a distance from one another, and, as a matter of fact, this local bond is strongly marked. . . . Groups which are contiguous locally are constantly meeting to perform ceremonies."[45] At the time when the series of initiation ceremonies called the Engwura are performed, men and women gather together from all parts of the tribe, councils of the elder {200} men are held day by day, the old traditions of the tribe are repeated and discussed, and "it is by means of meetings such as this, that a knowledge of the unwritten history of the tribe and of its leading members is passed on from generation to generation."[46] Nay, even members of different tribes often have friendly intercourse with each other; in Central Australia, when two tribes come into contact with one another on the border-land of their respective territories, the same amicable feelings as prevail within the tribe are maintained between the members of the two.[47] Now it seems extremely probable that Australian blacks are so much more sociable than most other hunting people because the food-supply of their country is naturally more plentiful, or, partly thanks to their boomerangs, more easily attainable. A Central Australian native is, as a general rule, well nourished; "kangaroo, rock-wallabies, emus, and other forms of game are not scarce, and often fall a prey to his spear and boomerang, while smaller animals, such as rats and lizards, are constantly caught without any difficulty by the women."[48] Circumstances of an economic character also account for the gregariousness of the various peoples on the north-west coast of North America who are neither pastoral nor agricultural--the Thlinkets, Haidas, Nootkas, and others. On the shore of the sea or some river they have permanent houses, each of which is inhabited by a number of families;[49] the houses are grouped in villages, some of which are very populous;[50] and though the tribal bond is not conspicuous for its strength, there are councils which discuss and decide all important questions concerning the tribe.[51] The territory inhabited by these peoples, with its bays, sounds, and rivers, supplies them with food in abundance; "its enormous wealth of fish allows its inhabitants to enjoy a pampered existence."[52]

[Footnote 39: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 43 sqq. Hildebrand, Recht und Sitte, p. 1 sqq.]

[Footnote 40: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 45.]

[Footnote 41: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 8 sqq.]

[Footnote 42: Ibid. p. 18.]

[Footnote 43: Ibid. p. 31.]

[Footnote 44: Ibid. p. 544.]

[Footnote 45: Ibid. p. 14.]

[Footnote 46: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 272.]

[Footnote 47: Ibid. p. 32.]

[Footnote 48: Ibid. pp. 7, 44.]

[Footnote 49: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 22.]

[Footnote 50: Krause (Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 100) speaks of a Thlinket village which consisted of sixty-five houses and five or six hundred inhabitants.]

[Footnote 51: Boas, loc. cit. p. 36 sq.]

[Footnote 52: Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 92.]

{201} To pastoral people sociality, up to a certain degree, is of great importance. They have not only to defend their own persons against their enemies, but they have also to protect valuable property, their cattle. Moreover, they are often anxious to increase their wealth by robbing their neighbours of cattle, and this is best done in company. But at the same time a pastoral community is never large, and, though cohesive so long as it exists, it is liable to break up into sections. The reason for this is that a certain spot can pasture only a limited stock of cattle. The thirteenth chapter of Genesis well illustrates the social difficulties experienced by pastoral peoples. Abraham went up out of Egypt together with his wife and all that he had, and Lot went with him. Abraham was very rich in cattle, and Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents. But "the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together"; they were obliged to separate.[53]

[Footnote 53: Genesis, xiii. 1 sqq. See Hildebrand, op. cit. p. 29 sq.; Grosse, Die Formen der Familie, pp. 99, 100, 124 sq.]

The case is different with people subsisting on agriculture. A certain piece of land can support a much larger number of persons when it is cultivated than when it consists merely of pasture ground. Its resources largely depend on the labour bestowed on it, and the more people the more labour. The soil also constitutes a tie which cannot be loosened. It is a kind of property which, unlike cattle, is immovable; hence even where individual ownership in land prevails, the heirs to an estate have to remain together. As a matter of fact, the social union of agricultural communities is very close, and the households are often enormous.[54]

[Footnote 54: See Grosse, op. cit. p. 136 sqq.]

But living together is not the only factor which, among savages, establishes a social unit. Such a unit may be based not only on local proximity, but on marriage or a common descent; it may consist not only of persons who live together in the same district, but of persons who are of the same family, or who are, or consider themselves to be, {202} of the same kin. These different modes of organisation often, in a large measure, coincide. The family is a social unit made up of persons who are either married or related by blood, and at the same time, in normal cases, live together. The tribe is a social unit, though often a very incoherent one,[55] consisting of persons who inhabit the same district and also, at least in many cases, regard themselves as descendants of some common ancestor. The clan, which is essentially a body of kindred having a common name, may likewise on the whole coincide with the population of a certain territory, with the members of one or more hordes or villages. This is the case where the husband takes his wife to his own community and descent is reckoned through the father, or where he goes to live in his wife's community and descent is reckoned through the mother. But frequently the system of maternal descent is combined with the custom of the husband taking his wife to his own home, and this, in connection with the rule of clan-exogamy, occasions a great discrepancy between the horde and the clan. The local group is then by no means a group of clansmen; the children, live in their father's community, but belong to their mother's clan, whilst the next generation of children within the community must belong to another clan.[56]

[Footnote 55: See Cunow, Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger, p. 121, n. 1.]

[Footnote 56: Cf. Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 259.]

Kinship certainly gives rise to special rights and duties, but when unsupported by local proximity it loses much of its social force. Among the Australian natives, for instance, the clan rules seem generally to be concerned with little or nothing else than marriage, sexual intercourse, and, perhaps, blood-revenge.[57] "The object of caste" (clan), says Mr. Curr, "is not to create or define a bond of union, but to secure the absence of any blood relationship between {203} persons proposed to marry. So far from being a bond of friendship, no Black ever hesitates to kill one of another tribe because he happens to bear the same caste- (clan-) name as himself."[58] It appears that the system of descent itself is largely influenced by local connections.[59] Sir E. B. Tylor has found by means of his statistical method that the number of coincidences between peoples among whom the husband lives with the wife's family and peoples who reckon kinship through the mother only, is proportionally large, and that the full maternal system never appears among peoples whose exclusive custom is for the husband to take his wife to his own home;[60] and I have myself drawn attention to the fact that where the two customs, the woman receiving her husband in her own hut and the man taking his wife to his, occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former case is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father.[61] Nay, even where kinship constitutes a tie between persons belonging to different local groups, its social force is ultimately derived not merely from the idea of a common origin, but from near relatives' habit of living together. Men became gregarious by remaining in the circle where they were born; if, instead of keeping together with their kindred, they had preferred to isolate themselves or to unite with strangers, there would certainly be no blood-bond at all. The mutual attachment and the social rights and duties which resulted from this gregarious condition were associated with the relation in which members of the group stood to one another--the relation of kinship as expressed by a common name,--and these associations might last even after the local tie was broken. By means of the name former connections were kept up. Even we ourselves are generally more disposed to count kin with distant relatives who have our own surname than with relatives who have a different name; and still greater is the influence which language in this respect exercises on the mind of a savage, {204} to whom a person's name is part of his personality. The derivative origin of the social force in kinship accounts for its formal character, when personal intercourse is wanting; it may enjoin duties, but hardly inspires much affection. If in modern society much less importance is attached to kinship than at earlier stages of civilisation, this is largely due to the fact that relatives, except the nearest, have little communication with each other. And if, as Aristotle observes, friendship between kinsfolk varies according to the degree of relationship,[62] it does so in the first instance on account of the varying intimacy of their mutual intercourse.

[Footnote 57: Cunow, op. cit. pp. 97, 136. Dr. Stirling says (Report of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, 'Anthropology,' p. 43) that the laws arising out of the "class" (clan) divisions "have extraordinary force and are, in general, implicitly obeyed whether in respect of actual marriage, illicit connections, or social relations"; but I find no further reference to these "social relations."]

[Footnote 58: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 69.]

[Footnote 59: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 107 sqq.]

[Footnote 60: Tylor, 'Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xviii. 258.]

[Footnote 61: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 110.]

[Footnote 62: Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, viii. 12. 7.]

A very different explanation of the social influence of kinship has been given by Mr. Hartland. He connects it with primitive superstition. A clan, he says, "is regarded as an unity, literally and not metaphorically one body, the individual members of which are as truly portions as the fingers or the legs are portions of the external, visible body of each of them." Now, a severed limb or lock of hair is believed by the savage to remain in some invisible but real union with the body whereof it once, in outward appearance also, formed a part, and any injury done to it is supposed to affect the organism to which it belonged. "The individual member of a clan was in exactly the same position as a lock of hair cut from the head, or an amputated limb. He had no separate significance, no value apart from his kin. . . . Injury inflicted on him was inflicted on, and was felt by, the whole kin, just as an injury inflicted on the severed lock or limb was felt by the bulk."[63] Mr. Hartland insists upon a literal interpretation of his words;[64] and this implies that the members of a clan are in their behaviour influenced by the idea that what happens to one of them reacts upon all.

[Footnote 63: Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 277.]

[Footnote 64: Ibid. ii. 236, 398, 444.]

In support of his theory Mr. Hartland makes reference to the belief of some savages, that charms may be made from dead bodies against the surviving relatives of the deceased,[65] and to certain rites of healing in which, besides the patient himself, "other members of his tribe, presumably kinsmen," take part.[66] But the former belief is a superstition connected with the wonder of death, from which no conclusion must be drawn as {205} to relations between the living; and in the ceremonies of healing the medicine-man plays a much more prominent part than the other bystanders--whose relationship to the patient, besides, is so little marked that Mr. Hartland only presumes them to be kindred. He further observes that in the wide-spread custom of the Couvade we meet with the idea that the child, being a part of the father, is liable to be affected by various acts committed by him.[67] And from Sir J. G. Frazer's 'Golden Bough' might be quoted many instances of a belief in some mysterious bond of sympathy knitting together absent friends and relations--especially at critical times of life--which has, in particular, led to rules regulating the conduct of persons left at home while a party of their friends is out fishing or hunting or on the war path.[68] But all these rules are taboo restrictions of a definite and altogether special kind, generally, it seems, referring to members of the same family, and frequently to wives in their husbands' absence. In order to make his hypothesis acceptable, Mr. Hartland ought to have produced a fair number of facts proving that the members of the same clan really are believed to be connected with each other in such a manner, that whatever affects one of them at the same time in a mysterious way affects the rest. But we look in vain for a single well-established instance of such a belief.

[Footnote 65: Ibid. ii. 437 sq.]

[Footnote 66: Ibid. ii. 432 sqq.]

[Footnote 67: Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 406.]

[Footnote 68: Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 27 sqq. See also Haddon, Magic and Fetishism, p. 11 sq.]

It seems that the importance which savages attach to a common blood has been much exaggerated. Clanship is based on a method of counting descent by means of names, either through the father or through the mother, but not through both at once. This, however, by no means implies that the other line is not recognised as a line of blood-relationship. The paternal system of descent is not necessarily associated with the idea that the mother has no share in parentage, nor is the maternal system necessarily associated with unconsciousness of the child's relation to its father;[69] even the Couvade, which assumes the recognition of a most intimate relationship between the child and its father, has been found to prevail among some peoples who regard the child as a member of the mother's clan.[70] Nay, there are instances in which the clan-bond is obviously {206} not regarded as a blood-bond at all, in the strict sense of the word. Of some tribes in New South Wales Mr. Cameron tells us that, although a daughter belongs not to her father's clan but to that of her mother's brother, they believe that she emanates from her father solely, being only nurtured by her mother;[71] and the Arunta of Central Australia, who have the paternal system of descent, maintain that a child really descends neither from its father nor from its mother, but is the reincarnation of a mythical totem-ancestor.[72] Their theory is "that the child is not the direct result of intercourse, that it may come without this, which merely, as it were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth also of an already-formed spirit child who inhabits one of the local totem centres";[73] and its totem-name, which is derived from the spot where it is supposed to have been conceived,[74] is different from its clan-name. It is useful to scrutinise Mr. Hartland's theory in the light of this class of facts. They evidently prove that clanship and what we are used to call the system of counting "descent," is not necessarily based on the notion of actual blood-relationship, but on kinship as a fact combined with a name; whereas Mr. Hartland's hypothesis presupposes, not that the members of a clan really are, but that they consider themselves to be all of one blood.

[Footnote 69: Mr. Swan informs me that the Waguha of West Tanganyika, among whom children are generally named after their father, recognise the part taken by both parents in generation; and Archdeacon Hodgson writes the same concerning certain other tribes of Eastern Central Africa, who trace descent through the mother.]

[Footnote 70: Ling Roth, 'Signification of Couvade,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxii. 227, 238.]

[Footnote 71: Cameron, 'Notes on some Tribes of New South Wales,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xiv. 352.]

[Footnote 72: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. iv. especially pp. 121, 124.]

[Footnote 73: Ibid. p. 265.]

[Footnote 74: Ibid. p. 124 sqq.]

Yet another practice has been adduced as evidence of the supreme importance which the primitive clan is supposed to attach to unity in blood--the so-called blood-covenant. The members of a clan, Mr. Hartland observes, may not be all descended from a common ancestry. Though descent is the normal, the typical cause of kinship and a common blood, kinship may also be acquired. "To acquire kinship, the blood of the candidate for admission into the kin must be mingled with that of the kin. In this way he enters into the brotherhood, is reckoned as of the same stock, obtains the full privileges of a kinsman."[75] As Professor Robertson Smith puts it, "he who has drunk a clansman's blood is no longer a stranger but a brother, and included in the mystic circle of those who have a share in the life-blood that is common to all the clan."[76] Mr. Hartland gives us a short account of the rite:--"It is sufficient that an incision be made in the neophyte's arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of the clansmen, upon whom the {207} operation is repeated in turn by the neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless variations. . . . But, whatever may be the exact form adopted, the essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide." Then there follows a list of peoples from various quarters of the world among whom it is said to prevail.[77]

[Footnote 75: Hartland, op. cit. ii. 237.]

[Footnote 76: Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 315.]

[Footnote 77: Hartland, op. cit. 237 sqq.]

From this the reader undoubtedly gets the impression that the mingling of blood is a frequently practised ceremony of adoption, by which a person is admitted into a strange clan. But the facts stated by the chief authorities on the subject, to whom Mr. Hartland refers, prove nothing of the kind. In most cases with which we are acquainted the mingling of blood is a form of covenant between individuals, although an engagement with a chief or king naturally embraces his subjects also; and sometimes the covenanters are tribes or kingdoms. But of the "world-wide" adoption rite there is hardly a single instance which corresponds to Mr. Hartland's description. He admits himself that "in the same measure as the clan relaxed its hold upon the individual members, blood-brotherhood assumed a personal aspect, until, having no longer any social force, it came to be regarded as merely the most solemn and binding form of covenant between man and man."[78] His account of the blood-covenant is, in fact, only an inference based on the assumption that the existing rite is a survival from times when the clan was literally one body and the individual nothing but an amputated limb. But to regard the present blood-covenant as a survival of a previous rite of adoption into the clan is not justified by facts. So far as I know, there is no record of a blood-covenant among savages of the lowest type, unless the aborigines of Australia be included among them; and in Australia it is certainly not a ceremony of adoption. Among the Arunta it is intended to prevent treachery: "if, for example, an Alice Springs party wanted to go on an avenging expedition to the Burt country, and they had with them in camp a man of that locality, he would be forced to drink blood with them, and, having partaken of it, would be bound not to aid his friends by giving them warning of their danger."[79] This instance is instructive. The Australian native is obliged to help those with whom he has drunk blood against his own relatives, nay, against members of his own totem group. So also "the tie {208} of blood-covenanting is reckoned in the East even a closer tie than that of natural descent,"[80] and the same was the case among the ancient Scandinavians.[81] I do not see how Mr. Hartland's theory can account for this.

[Footnote 78: Ibid. ii. 240.]

[Footnote 79: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 461.]

[Footnote 80: Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 10.]

[Footnote 81: Maurer, Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes, ii. 171.]

Mingling of blood is sometimes supposed to be a direct cause of mutual sympathy and agreement, in accordance with the principle of transmission of properties by contact;[82] even in Europe there are traces of the belief that a few drops of blood transferred from one person to another inspire the recipient with friendly feelings towards him with whose blood he is inoculated.[83] But the genuine blood-covenant imposes duties on both parties, and also contains the potential punishment for their transgression. It involves a promise, and the transference of blood is vaguely or distinctly supposed to convey to the person who drinks it, or who is inoculated with it, a conditional curse which will injure or destroy him should he break his promise. That this is the main idea underlying the blood-covenant appears from the fact that it is regularly accompanied by curses or self-imprecations.[84] In Madagascar, for instance, when two or more persons have agreed on forming the bond of fraternity, a fowl is procured, its head is nearly cut off, and it is left in this state to continue bleeding during the ceremony. The parties then pronounce a long imprecation and mutual vow over the blood, saying, inter alia "O this miserable fowl weltering in its blood! thy liver do we eat, thy liver do we eat; and should either of us retract from the terms of this oath, let him instantly become a fool, let him instantly become blind, let this covenant prove a curse to him." A small portion of blood is then drawn from each individual and drunk by the covenanting parties with execrations of vengeance on each other in case of either violating the sacred oath.[85] According to another description the parties, after they have drunk each other's blood, drink a mixture from the same bowl, praying that it may turn into {209} poison for him who fails to keep the oath.[86] As we have seen before, blood is commonly regarded as a particularly efficient conductor of curses, and what could in this respect be more excellent than the blood of the very person who utters the curse? But the blood of a victim sacrificed on the occasion may serve the same purpose, or some other suitable vehicle may be chosen to transfer the imprecation. The Masai in the old days "spat at a man with whom they swore eternal friendship";[87] and the meaning of this seems clear when we hear that they spit copiously when cursing, and that "if a man while cursing spits in his enemy's eyes, blindness is supposed to follow."[88] The ancient Arabs, besides swearing alliance and protection by dipping their hands in a pan of blood and tasting the contents, had a covenant known as the [h.]ilf al-fo[d.]ûl, which was made by taking Zemzem water and washing the corners of the Ka[(]ba with it, whereafter it was drunk by the parties concerned.[89] The blood-covenant is essentially based on the same idea as underlies the Moorish custom of sealing a compact of friendship by a common meal at the tomb of some saint, the meaning of which is obvious from the phrase that "the food will repay" him who breaks the compact.[90]

[Footnote 82: Cf. Crawley, Mystic Rose, p. 236 sq.]

[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.]