To trace the further development of the totemic märchen-myth is to find the gradual emergence of characteristic changes. The relation between man and the animal is slowly altered. This is most clearly apparent in connection with the transformation of human beings into animals. This change is no longer held to be one in which man, because of the magical powers which he acquires, is the gainer, and not the loser. The transformation now more and more comes to be regarded as a degradation. The man who has changed into an animal is portrayed by the märchen as denounced and persecuted by his fellow-tribesmen. He is compelled to withdraw into solitude or to live exclusively with the animal herd, because he is no longer regarded by his fellows as an equal. Later, near the end of the totemic period, the change is conceived, not as degradation but as the result of an evil magic from which an innocent person suffers, and, eventually, as a punishment which overtakes a person because of some misdeed or other. Of these notions, that of malevolent magic again apparently antedates that of punishment. When the latterappears, the relation which was characteristic of totemism at its height becomes practically reversed. Quite naturally, therefore, the idea that transformation into an animal is a punishment arises long after the close of the totemic age. Indeed, it is to be found far into the period of ideas of requital, which are a relatively late product of deity cult, and whose development is largely influenced by philosophical reflection. Thus considered, the doctrine of metempsychosis developed by the Brahmans of India and by the Pythagorean sect of the Occident is the last metamorphosis of a very ancient totemic animal tale. These changes, however, have had practically no influence on the development of the märchen itself. This is shown by the fact that the folk märchen of to-day have universally retained the idea that the transformation of men into animals is the result of malevolent magic. The latter, indeed, is the form in which these survivals of a distant totemic past are even to-day most easily comprehensible to the child mind.
Thus, the animal märchen is an important product of totemic culture, directly embodying the views that dominate the life of this age. In addition to such tales, however, and, in part, in combination with them, there are several other forms of the märchen-myth, consisting chiefly of ideas concerning nature and, to some extent, of magical ideas sustained by the human emotions of fear and of hope.Twosorts of märchen, especially, should here be mentioned,celestial talesandtales of fortune, both of which owe their development to totemic culture. The celestial märchen, however, disappears comparatively early, mainly, no doubt, because it is displaced or assimilated by the celestial mythology of the post-totemic age. The märchen of fortune, on the other hand, remains as a permanent form of märchen-fiction, and all later narrative composition has been influenced by it.
The celestial märchen affords a direct record of the impression made by celestial phenomena on the consciousness of an age whose ideas were as yet circumscribed by the environment. By the environment, however, must asyet be understood the entire visible world—sun, moon, and stars, as well as hills and valleys, animals and men. The distant, moreover, was always likened to that which was near at hand and immediately accessible. Animals and men were supposed to inhabit the clouds and the heavenly bodies, precisely as they do the earth, and the relations which they were there held to sustain to one another are identical with those described in the animal tale. When the new moon appears, a wolf is devouring the moon; in an eclipse of the sun, the sun is swallowed up by a black monster; and when, in the evening, the sun disappears behind a dark cloud, it likewise is overpowered by a monster, and the red glow of the sunset is the blood which it sheds.Threethemes in particular are dominant in the most primitive celestial tales: the ascension of man into the heavens, his descent from heaven, and the devourment of the great heavenly bodies, in particular of the sun, at sunset. One of the earliest of these conceptions is the journey to heaven. This is indicated by the very fact that the means for this journey are always derived directly from nature, or consist of the weapons and implements of primitive culture. There is a conception current in Australia and Oceania that beings have climbed to heaven by means of high trees, or have allowed themselves to be raised up by the branch of a tree that had been bent down to the earth. Where the bow and arrow exist, as in Melanesia and America, the arrow-ladder is frequently employed for the celestial journey. A hunter shoots an arrow into the heavens, where it remains fixed; he then sends a second arrow which catches into the notch of the first, then a third, a fourth, etc., until the ladder reaches to the earth. The downward journey is not so difficult. This is generally accomplished by means of a basket or a rope sustained by cords; it is thus that the celestial inhabitant is enabled to descend to the earth. Many märchen relate that the sun and the moon were originally human beings who journeyed to the heavens. Here they are thought to remain, or occasionally, perhaps, to return to the earth while other human beings take their place.
Besides the märchen telling of the interrelations of human and celestial beings, there are also a number of other sorts. Of them we may here single out, as a particularly characteristic type, those which deal withdevourment. Obviously, as has already been noticed, it is the setting of the sun that very frequently constitutes the central theme of these tales. These märchen of devourment, however, differ from those that deal with celestial journeys in that they clearly exemplify narratives in which onlyoneof the elements consists of a celestial phenomenon; in addition to it, there are regularly also other elements borrowed from the terrestrial environment. Indeed, the latter may of itself originate märchen, independently of the influence of celestial phenomena. We must distinguish at the outset, therefore, between those märchen of devourment that contain celestial elements and others in which these elements are apparently lacking. A familiar example of märchen of devourment is the Biblical legend of Jonah. In its traditional rendering, this is clearly of a relatively late origin, though it is probably based on much older tales. Many of the tales of devourment, which are common to all parts of the earth, centre about a hero, who is generally a courageous youth seeking adventure. The hero is devoured by a monster; he kindles a fire in the belly of the monster, and, by burning up its entrails, rescues himself. The fact that fire figures so prominently in these tales makes it highly probable that they took shape under the influence of observations of the setting sun. Other tales make no mention of fire, but relate that the belly of the monster is extremely hot, and that the heat singes the hair of the one who has been swallowed. In an old illustrated Bible which was recently discovered, Jonah is pictured as having a luxuriant growth of hair at the moment when he is being swallowed; in a second picture, when he comes forth from the belly of the whale, he is entirely bald. But even though this reference to fire and to heat indicates an influence on the part of the sunset, this type of celestial märchen is none the less entirely different from that which deals withjourneys to heaven and the return to earth. In the latter, the heaven is itself the scene of action upon which men and animals play their rôles. In the märchen of devourment, the celestial phenomenon imparts certain characteristics to the terrestrial action that is being described, but the latter continues to preserve its terrestrial nature. The narrator of the märchen or legend, therefore, may be wholly unconscious of any reference to the heavens. The psychological process of assimilation causes elements of a celestial phenomenon to be fused into an action of the terrestrial environment and to communicate to the latter certain characteristics without, however, thereby changing the setting of the action. The shark and the alligator are animals capable of devouring men, though this occurs less frequently in reality than in story. Yet because thoughts of this sort arouse strong emotions, they may of themselves very well come to form themes of märchen of devourment. This has frequently been the case. It seems to have happened, for example, in the Jonah legend. The above-mentioned picture in which the prophet is represented as hairless after having been in the belly of the fish, may very well have its source in some other märchen of devourment. In thus combining numerous elements of different origins, the märchen is truly representative of myth development. It shows clearly that the main theme of the myth is usually taken from man's terrestrial environment. True, celestial elements may enter into its composition and may sometimes give to the mythological conception its characteristic features. Even in such cases, however, a consideration of the tale as a whole will show that the celestial elements are completely absorbed by the terrestrial theme; their very existence may be completely unknown to the narrators of the tale. In a similar manner, celestial elements have probably been involved in the formation of other widely current märchen. Thus, the märchen theme underlying the legends of the Babylonian Sargon, the Israelitic Moses, and the Egyptian Osiris, as well as other tales in which a child, secreted in a chest, is borne awayby the waves and lands on a distant shore, is generally regarded as having been suggested by the temporary disappearance and reappearance of the sun in a cloudy sky. In this case, however, the supposition is doubtless much more uncertain than in the case of the märchen of devourment. The theme relating to fire in the belly of the monster may be regarded as fairly unambiguous evidence of the influence of celestial phenomena, precisely because it is related only externally and apparently accidentally to the action. It should further be said that the märchen of the floating chest, at least in its connection with the personalities of the saga and of history, does not appear until the post-totemic age. It is probably an old märchen-theme which was assimilated by these legends of origin because the origin of a hero or a god was unknown and demanded explanation. Once appropriated, it underwent a number of changes in form.
Thus, the celestial märchen transcends the ideas characteristic of the totemic age. No less do the tales offortuneoradventuregenerally mark the transition from the supremacy of the animal to the dominance of man. These tales, however, exhibit but a gradual and continuous development. In the earliest märchen-myths, of which several examples have already been mentioned, the narrative describes an event with entire objectivity, without any apparent colouring derived from the emotional attitude of the narrator. Later, however, even the totemic animal märchen more and more betrays a love of the adventurous and of shifting fortunes. This change varies with the degree in whichmansteps into the centre of action, and animals, though not entirely disappearing, receive a place, similarly to monsters and other fantastic beings, only in so far as they affect the destinies of the hero of the tale. The main theme of the narrative then consists of the adventures of the hero, who is represented as experiencing many changes of fortune, always, however, with a happy ending. But even at this stage of development the hero is a boy; at a somewhat later period, a young girl sometimes assumes therôle, or a youth wins a maiden after numerous adventures. At this point, the tale of fortune ceases to be a true märchen-myth. Just as the dance changes from a cult ceremony into a direct expression of lively emotions of pleasure, themselves heightened by the joy in the rhythm of the bodily movements, so also does the märchen develop into a narrative that ministers to the mere delight in fluctuations of life-events and in their happy outcome.
Thus, the beginnings of the tale of fortune go back to early totemic culture, though its more perfect development is to be found only among the semi-cultural peoples of the totemic era. The hero of the märchen then gradually passes over into the hero of the saga and of the epic. Instead of the boy who sets forth upon magical adventures, we find the youth who has matured into manhood and whose mighty deeds fill the world with his fame. The preliminary steps to this transition are taken when the märchen hero, particularly in the tale of fortune, acquires a more and morepersonalcharacter. Thus, even at a very early age, we find that two types of hero appear side by side—the strong and the clever. These types, portrayed by the märchen, survive also in the heroes of the epic. Moreover, in addition to the strong and the clever, the Achilles and the Ulysses, the märchen introduces also the malevolent, quarrelsome, and despicable hero, the Thersites.
The expression 'the age of heroes and gods' may meet with objection no less than may 'totemic age.' The latter has an air of strangeness, because the conceptions of totem and totemism, borrowed from modern ethnology, have as yet remained unfamiliar to historians, and especially to the historians of civilization. The former expression may be objected to on the ground that the conceptions 'heroes' and 'gods' are altogether too familiar to be extended beyond their specific meaning and applied to an entire age. The word 'hero' suggests to us perhaps the Homeric Achilles, or Siegfried of the Niebelungen saga—those mighty, victorious warriors of epic song who, as we have already seen, gradually evolved out of the heroes of primitive märchen. It is self-evident, however, that, when applied to a great and important period of culture, the expression 'hero' must not be limited to the narrow meaning which it possesses in hero-lore. True, we must not go so far as does Carlyle when, in his "Heroes and Hero Worship," he begins the race of heroes with Odin of the Northmen and ends it with Shakespeare and Goethe, thus extending the heroic age from prehistoric times down to the present. Nevertheless, if we would do justice to the significance of the conception 'heroic' as applied to an important period of human development, we must be permitted to include under the broader conception 'heroic age,' not merely the heroic hero but also the hero who has factored in the spiritual realm, as the founder of cities or states, or the creator ofreligions. These latter heroes were gradually evolved, in the course of political and religious development, out of the ancient epic heroes; in them, the heroic age continues its existence after the heroes of the powerful and crafty types have disappeared. In this broader significance of the word, a hero is any powerful individuality whatsoever, and the general characteristic of this new age, therefore, is the predominance of theindividual personality. Externally, this expresses itself primarily in the fact that the age regards even all past events as the deeds of individual persons. Bound up with this is a progressive individualization of human personalities, and a constant refinement of the crude distinctions that characterize the tale of adventure and the older hero-lore.
The gods of this age are likewise patterned entirely after powerful human personalities. They are anthropomorphic in every respect—human beings of a higher order, whose qualities, though found only among men, are magnified to infinitude. Just as the hero is a man endowed with more than ordinary human capacities, so the god is a hero exalted above the measure of earthly heroes. This itself implies that the hero necessarily precedes the god, just as man antedates the hero. Any fairly detailed account of this period, therefore, must deal with the hero before considering the god. The god is created after the image of the hero, and not, as traditional mythology still believes, the hero after the image of the god. It would, indeed, be a strange procedure for man first to create the ideal conception of his god and only subsequently to transform this into human outlines, and thus produce the hero. In the advance from man to the anthropomorphic god, the hero would surely already have been encountered. This, of course, does not imply that gods may not occasionally be transformed into heroes; it simply means that in the development as a whole the hero must have preceded the god. The relation here is precisely the same as that found everywhere else in connection with the development and degeneration of mythological conceptions. The fact of sequence, however, mustnot be interpreted to mean that we can point to a time in which there were heroes but no gods. Hero and god belong together. Both reflect an effort to exalt human personality into the superhuman. In this process, no fixed line may be drawn separating the hero, whose activity still falls within the human sphere, from the god, who is exalted above it. In fact, the differences between hero and god are by no means merely quantitative, measurable in terms of the elevation above the plane of human characteristics; the differentiating marks are essentiallyqualitative. The hero remains human in all his thought and action. The god, on the other hand, possesses not merely human capacities raised to their highest power, but also characteristics which are lacking in man and therefore also in the hero. Especially noteworthy among the latter is the ability through his own power to perform magical acts, and thus to interfere at will in the course of nature as well as in human life. True, the hero of saga and poetry also employs magical agencies. The means of magic which he controls, however, have been bestowed upon him by some strange demoniacal being, either by one of those demons which, in the form of a man, an animal, or a fantastic monster, are recognized even by the early mythical tales as magical beings, or by a god, who, as such, combines the highest qualities of the hero with those of the demon. The conception of an anthropomorphic god, therefore, results from a fusion of hero with demon. Of these, the hero is a new creation, originating in the mental life of this later age. He was long foreshadowed, however, first by the animal ancestor (especially in so far as the latter brought blessings and good fortune), and then by the subsequent cult of human ancestors. But the figure of the hero is not completely developed until the human personality enters into the very forefront of mythological thought; then, through regular transitions, the value placed on personal characteristics is enhanced until the ideal of the hero is reached. Doubtless the hero may still incidentally be associated with the ancestor, yet personality as such has now come so todominate the interest of the age that in comparison with it the genealogical feature is but secondary.
Not so with the demon-idea. Though it has come down from very remote times and has assumed many forms as a result of varying cultural conditions, the demon has always remained a magic being, arousing now hope, now fear and terror. This was its nature up to the very time when the ideal of the hero arose. This new idea it then appropriated, just as it did, in earlier times, the ideas of a soul that survives the deceased, of the totem animal, of the ancestor, and of other mythological figures. The very nature of the demon has always been constituted by such incorporated elements. From this point of view, the god also is only a new form of demon. In its earlier forms, however, as spirit-demon, animal-demon, and, finally, even as ancestor-demon, the demon was an impersonal product of the emotions, and possessed characteristics which underwent constant transformations. When it became a hero, it for the first time rose to the level of a personal being. Through the enhancement of the qualities of the hero it was then elevated into the sphere of the superhuman. Thus it came to constitute a human ideal far transcending the hero. This accounts for the uniqueness of the god-conception, and for the fact that, though the god assumes the essential characteristics of the demon, the two are nevertheless more widely distinct than were any of the earlier forms of demon conceptions from those that anteceded them. The rise of the god-idea, therefore, ushers in a new epoch of religious development. Just because of the contrast between personal god and impersonal demon, this epoch may be designated as that of theorigin of religion, in the narrower and proper sense of the word. The various forms of pure demon-belief are preparatory to religion; religion itself begins with the belief in gods. The relation which the belief in demons sustains to the belief in gods is another evidence that hero and god must be grouped together, for there can be no clearly marked temporal difference in the origin of these two ideals of personality. Just as soon asthe figure of the human hero arises, it assimilates the demon-conception, which was already long in existence and which continually underwent changes as a result of the various ideas with which it came into contact. Alongside of the being that arose from this fusion, however, there continued also the hero in his purity, as well as the demon, whose various forms were at most crowded into the background by the appearance of the gods. To however great an extent, therefore, the age of heroes and gods may introduce a completely new spiritual movement that proves fundamental to all future culture and religion, it nevertheless also includes all the elements of previous development. These elements, moreover, are not merely present in forms that have been altered and in part completely changed by the processes of assimilation; side by side with such forms, there are always also the original elements, which may be traced back to the earliest beginnings of mythological thought. The dominant factor determining the character of this new age, however, is thehero. The ideal of human personality which the hero engenders in the folk consciousness conditions all further development, and especially the origin of the god. For this reason the 'age of heroes and gods' might also, and more briefly, be called theheroic age.
As the direct incarnation of the idea of personality, it is the hero about whom the new development of myth and religion centres. Similarly, the hero also stands in closest relation to the transformations that occur in all other departments of human life. Enormous changes in economic conditions and in the forms of life dependent upon them, new social institutions, with their reactions upon custom and law, transformations and creations in all branches of art—all give expression to the new development upon which this age has entered. Here also, just as at the beginning of the anteceding age, there are numerous reciprocal relations between these various factors. The hero and the god cannot be conceived apart from theState, whose founding marks the beginning of this period. Custom and law are just as much results of the new political society as they are themselvesessential factors in its creation. Neither the State nor the worship of gods protected by it could survive apart from the great changes in economic life that took place at the beginning of this period, and that were further established and perfected in the course of time. Thus, here also each element reinforces every other; all the factors of life are in constant interaction. At the beginning of the totemic period, as we have seen, it was the new creations of mythological thought that constituted the centre from which radiated all the other elements of culture. At the beginning of the age of heroes and gods it is the creative power of thereligiousconsciousness whose activities most accurately mirror the various spiritual achievements of the period.
The heroic era is so comprehensive and comprises so large a part of human history that any attempt to arrive at even the barest outlines of its external culture makes it clear that this culture is even less unitary than is that of the preceding period. The differentiation of phenomena naturally increases with advancing development. Even the various forms of totemic culture manifest wide differences in detail; indeed, when taken as a whole, they represent distinct stages. When we come to the heroic age, however, whose beginning is practically coincident with the beginnings of history in the usual sense of the term, and which includes within itself a large part of the succeeding course of events, the multiplicity and diversity of the forms of culture are incomparably greater. Every nation has its particular heroes, even though there are also certain general hero-types which everywhere recur. Even more does each nation have its gods. Heroes and gods are ideals created in the image of men, and therefore they always reflect—if possible, in a heightened degree—the characteristic differences of peoples. Nevertheless, amid all these differences of times and peoples, there are certain constant features that distinguish the heroic period both from the preceding age and from the era that follows. Most important of all these features is the establishment of theState. It was a long step fromtotemic tribal organization to political institutions. In the surge and press of the folk migrations which occurred at the beginning of the heroic period, traces of the preceding tribal organization were still everywhere present. Tribes did not change suddenly into States. Nevertheless, along with the emergence of the heroic age and its concomitant phenomena, there was a noticeable tendency towards the formation of a political order. This development pursued different courses, depending on the character of the nations or of their heroes and gods. It is primarily the resultant differences in political organization which, when considered in connection with the parallel changes in mythological and religious development, clearly show that in this period, just as in the totemic age, all other aspects of culture were closely dependent upon mythological and religious ideas. 'Totemism' connotes not merely a complex of mythological beliefs in which a certain stage of culture had its setting, but also a unique form of tribal organization, which, in spite of many differences of detail, remained constant in its general features. Similarly, political society, in the original form in which it long survived, was closely bound up with the heroic age, even though the increasing differences between national cultures led, from the very outset, to a greater diversity of forms than were to be found in the case of totemism. In spite of these differences, however, the factor fundamental to political society remained the same. The formation of States was always conditioned by individualrulership. This itself is indicative of the character of the age as a whole: its typical expression is to be found in the personalities of heroes and of gods. Again it was the migrations and wars of peoples that brought about the dissolution of the old tribal organization and the creation of political society. But these migrations and wars were on an incomparably broader scale and had more intimate interconnections than had previously been the case. This gave them a correspondingly greater significance, both intensively and extensively. As a matter of comparison, we may refer to the migrations of the Malayan race during the totemic age. It would be difficult to conceive of moreextensive migrations. But they took place gradually, in separate waves, and left no traces, for the most part, beyond changes in the physical characteristics and in the languages of peoples. These migrations, which frequently involved long voyages across the sea, were carried on by but small numbers of people, who set out from restricted groups. It cannot be doubted that these migrations exercised an influence on the character and the culture of the resulting mixed races. They were never able, however, completely to transform the culture as a whole. Even when these tribal migrations occurred in oft-repeated waves, they never resulted in more than such imperfect beginnings of a political organization as we find among the Polynesians or, in other parts of the earth, among many of the semi-cultural peoples of America and Africa.
Quite different are thefolk migrationsthat occur at the very dawn of the history of the great cultural peoples. The difference between tribal and racial migrations is an important one. When a race migrates, it retains its peculiar characteristics, its traditions, its heroes, and its gods, and transplants these into the new territory. True, these various elements do not remain unchanged. They inevitably become fused with the culture of the original inhabitants, and it is from these fusions, when they are at all deep-going, that new peoples arise. None of the great cultural nations that mark the beginning of this age of heroes and gods, from the Babylonians down to the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans, is homogeneous. Indeed, recent Babylonian investigations have shown that the Semitic immigration into Babylon was preceded by that of other peoples who were probably of different origin—namely, the Sumerians. We know of the latter only through linguistic traces in Babylonian inscriptions, of which, however, the religious parts, especially, show that the Sumerians exercised a great influence upon later civilization. Similarly, the settlement of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans in the territory which they eventually occupied, followed upon great earlier migrations to these regions. The people that finally formed the Greek race left the mountain country ofThrace and Thessaly in prehistoric times; wandering towards the sea, they fused with the original inhabitants of the regions into which they entered. In view of these migrations of early history, the theory of the desirability of racial purity, which has recently been so ardently championed in many quarters, is scarcely tenable. Political organization, on the one hand, and mythology and religion, on the other, represent important creations which for the most part sprang into existence only in the wake of migration and of the resultant fusion of peoples of different races.
Though political organization has been mentioned as the first important feature distinguishing the heroic age from the preceding era, there is a second and not less significant differentia. This relates to the material conditions of life. Two things are of outstanding importance for the new culture. The first of these consists in what we ordinarily call agriculture—that is, the tilling of the soil by the aid of theplough, or, as it is therefore more properly called in contrast to the earlier hoe-culture, plough-culture. In addition, there is thebreeding of domestic animals, particularly of food-supplying cattle, and, later, of sheep and goats.
It is even to-day widely believed that, of the various modes of procuring food, hunting came first. The hunter is thought to have been seized, one fine day, with an impulse to domesticate animals instead of hunting them. He tamed the wild creatures, and thus turned from a hunter into a nomad. In the course of time, the nomad is then supposed to have tired of his wandering life and to have settled down in permanent habitations. Instead of obtaining milk by herding his cattle, he hitched the ox to the plough, after having (with that wisdom and foresight which such theories always attribute to primitive man) invented the plough. This theory is an impossible fiction from beginning to end. It is just as intrinsically improbable as is the above-mentioned hypothesis that in prehistoric times the Australians invented totemic tribal organization and exogamy for the purpose of preventing the marriage of relatives. We haveseen, on the contrary, that the prohibition of such marriages was a consequence of exogamy, and that the latter, in turn, was not a deliberate invention but the natural result of certain conditions inherent in the culture of the age. All these institutions were originally due to influences whose outcome could not possibly have been foreseen. The same is true of the subject under discussion. In the first place, the assumed order of succession of the three stages of life is contradicted by facts. It is hardly correct to speak of a hunting life which is not supplemented by a certain amount of agriculture in the form of hoe-culture—an industry which, as a rule, is carried on by the woman in the immediate vicinity of the hut. This primitive agriculture existed even at a very early age. We find it widely prevalent among the American aborigines, who possessed no domesticated animal whatever except the dog, and the dog, as was above observed, was never tamed at all, but domesticated itself at the very dawn of prehistoric times. The supposition that the nomadic life followed upon that of the hunter is impossible, in the second place, because the animals that are hunted are not identical with those that form the care of the nomad. Cattle were never objects of the chase; the closely related buffalo, on the other hand, was never domesticated, but has remained exclusively a game animal down to the present day. Game animals have never been domesticated and utilized for the purpose of supplying milk and drawing the plough. No doubt the domestic animals of the nomad at one time existed in a wild state. Wild cattle, of course, preceded tame cattle. But the latter did not develop from the former by the indirect way of the hunted animal. Nor does agriculture at all presuppose a nomadic life. There are vast stretches of the Old World, as, for instance, all of China, Indo-China, and Indonesia, where the production of milk was never engaged in but where agriculture in the form of plough-culture has existed, in part, since early times. Agriculture, however, involves the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen. These male cattle are castrated, usually when very young. They are thus madetractable, so that they may be hitched to the plough and used for agricultural purposes more easily than is possible in the case of bulls, which are never completely manageable. What, then, were the motives which led to the raising of cattle, an occupation which, in many places at least, is carried on solely in the interests of agriculture? What motives led to the castration of male cattle, a practice which everywhere obviously serves agricultural purposes?
The traditional mode of explanation would lead us to suppose that man foresaw the effects of castration, that he knew beforehand that if the bull were subjected to this operation he would become an animal fitted to draw the plough. The impossibility of this supposition is evident. Such an effect could be learned only from experience, prior to which, therefore, it could not have been known. The problem relating to the cultivation of the soil by means of the plough, therefore, divides into two questions: How may we account for the ox? How for the plough? These questions are closely related, and yet they lead us back to divergent explanations. For in all probability the plough was originally drawn by man. Moreover, the plough was not the first implement to be thus drawn; it was anteceded by thewagon. Even on the early Babylonian and Assyrian monuments there were figures of a wagon bearing either an image of a god or else the king or chief priest, both of whom were probably regarded as uniting inone personthe function of their offices with that of representative of the deity. Thus, the question as to the origin of the plough carries us back directly to that of the origin of the wagon. Now, the earliest wagon had but two wheels; the four-wheeled wagon came as a later discovery or as an improvement. The two-wheeled wagon, however, presupposes the wheel. But how did the wheel come to be recognized as a useful object of locomotion? The first traces of a wheel or of wheel-like objects are to be found in the latter part of the stone age. A number of such objects have been discovered in Europe; in their centre is a hole, and there are spokes that radiate to thecircumference. The fact that these wheels are of small size indicates that they may have been worn about the neck as amulets. But even in early culture the wheel was also put to an entirely different use. Widely prevalent over the earth and probably connected with ancient sun worship, is the custom of kindling a fire to celebrate the festival of the summer solstice. In ancient Mexico, tradition tells us, this fire was started by turning a notched disk of wood about a stake until the heat thus generated gave rise to fire—the same method of producing fire by friction that is still in use among primitive peoples. This fiery wheel was then rolled down a hill as an image of the sun, and later, when the custom had lost its original magical significance, as a symbol of the sun moving in the heavens. According to the report of W. Mannhardt, a remarkably similar custom existed in East Prussia not so very long ago. Perhaps the wheel that was worn about the neck as an amulet or article of adornment likewise had some connection with the idea that the sun was a celestial wheel rolling across the heavens. After the early sun cults had once created the rolling wheel in imitation of the sun and its movements, it was but a short step to the idea of securing regular, continuous movements by means of which some sort of work might be performed. An early application of this idea is to be found in the practice of spinning with distaff and whorl. This invention was credited even by the ancients to prehistoric times. Doubtless its origin belongs to the beginnings of the heroic age. This same early period, however, probably also used the wheel for transporting heavy articles. This was the original purpose of the one-wheeled barrow. It alone enabled the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians to overcome the difficulties of transporting by human agencies the mighty blocks of stone required for their temples and pyramids. From this it was not a far advance to the two-wheeled wagon. The barrow was pulled or pushed by men. The wagon, in contrast to the barrow, was apparently from the beginning an aristocratic mode of transit, never used by the common people. The two-wheeled wagon was in the first instance avehicle of the gods. Later it served as the vehicle of the ruler, the terrestrial counterpart of the deity. Finally, the nobleman employed it in war, in going forth to battle. A vivid portrayal of battles in which such two-wheeled wagons played a part is presented in the Iliad. True, the wagon is here also, as a rule, only a means for carrying the hero to the scene of combat. The fighting itself is seldom done from it. Upon its arrival at the appointed place, the warrior dismounts, to try his strength, shield against shield, with his opponent. The general populace, however, always goes on foot.
This sketch gives us the main outlines of the history of the wagon. But how did the animal, first the ox and later the horse, come to be hitched to the wagon? Originally, the wagon bearing the image of the god was very probably drawn by men, as was likewise, in imitation of this, the chariot of the king. But the breeding of animals soon changed matters. Oxen were used for the purpose of drawing wagons much earlier than were horses. The horse did not appear until late in the history of civilization. There are no Egyptian pictures of horses that date back farther than the fifteenth dynasty, whereas those of cattle occur considerably earlier. In Oriental civilization, furthermore, the ass antedates the horse. In harmony with ancient custom, the ass even to-day continues, in the Orient, to be a favourite beast of burden as well as a riding animal. The horse seems to make its first appearance in history along with the Indo-Germanic tribes, who were probably indebted for it to the Turanian peoples of the Asiatic steppes. As a result of its superior speed, it then superseded its rivals in all the civilized countries of the ancient world. The Assyrian king went forth to the chase and the Homeric hero proceeded to battle in a chariot drawn by steeds. It was only later that the Greeks used the horse for saddle purposes, and not merely to draw the chariot. When this took place, equestrian combat came into favour among the aristocracy.
This development, however, was preceded not only by the taming of cattle but probably also by the use of the ox for drawing the wagon. How the latter came about may,of course, only be conjectured. The bull has remained unmanageable even to the present day; the attempt to hitch him to a wagon, therefore, must always have failed. The cow was not forced into this service—at least, not in those places where milk was valued. On the other hand, the castrated male animal is thoroughly suited to the task of drawing the wagon. It is stronger than the cow, and also more tractable. It is inconceivable, however, that castration was originally performed with the purpose of engendering these characteristics. Before there could be such a purpose, the results must already have been known—that is, the operation must already have been performed for other purposes. Eduard Hahn has offered a suggestion with reference to our problem. He has called attention to the ancient Asiatic cults of the Phrygian Cybele and the Syrio-Phœnician Astarte. These cults are similar to the vegetation festivals which, as was mentioned in the preceding chapter, may be found among the Pueblo peoples of America. Similar orgiastic phenomena recur wherever peoples are primarily concerned with agriculture and are anxious for the welfare of the grain. The beginnings of vegetation cults, found in the earlier period of hoe-culture, were succeeded by more developed deity cults, connected with plough-culture. The ecstatic motives associated with the tilling of the soil then extended their influence beyond the limits of vegetation cults proper and became universal elements of the deity cults. The powers shared by the numerous demoniacal beings of the more primitive cults were now centralized in asinglegoddess mother. The life-giving activity of the deity in connection with human procreation came to be of focal interest. The exaggerated development of cult ecstasy caused the orgy to become a form of self-mortification. The cult associates, especially the priests, lacerated and emasculated themselves in the fury of religious excitement. By becoming a permanent custom, this gave rise to a group of eunuchs consecrated to the service of the deity. These were doubtless the earliest eunuchs of history. In the guardians of Turkish haremsand in the singers of the Sistine Chapel, survivals of these unrestrained cults of the past still exist. Now, when the group of emasculated priests paced beside the chariot of the goddess, they might easily have hit upon the idea of hitching a castrated animal to the wagon. But, however plausible this hypothesis may appear, in that it avoids the impossible assumption of an invention, it nevertheless leaves one question unanswered. Even though the castration of the priest may be understood as the result of the well-known effects of extreme religious excitement, the castration of the bull is not yet accounted for. Are we to suppose that the priest merely aimed to render the animal similar to himself? Neither ecstasy nor reflection could account for such a purpose. But there is another factor which has always been significant for cult, and which attained to increased importance precisely in the worship of the deity. I refer tosacrifice. In its highest stages, sacrifice assumes new forms, in that man offers either himself or parts of his own body, his blood, his hair, or a finger. A late survival of such sacrifices is to be found in a custom that is still prevalent in Catholic countries. Here it frequently occurs that a sick man lays a wax replica of the diseased part of his body upon the altar of the saint. This idea of sacrificing parts of one's own body is also exemplified in the self-emasculation practised by the Russian sect of Skopzi even in our own Christian age. Such sacrifice, moreover, may receive a wider application, so as to include, among the sacrificial objects, parts of the animal. Now at one time the kidneys with their connected organs were regarded as vehicles of the soul, and, as such, were sacrificed to the gods. The castration of the bull, therefore, may originally well have been regarded as the sacrifice of the most readily accessible of the favourite vehicles of the soul. Thus, it may have been in the case of the animal whose generative organs had been sacrificed to the deity that man first observed the change of characteristics which fitted the animal to be hitched to the chariot of the deity, and finally, through an extension of its sphere of usefulness, to draw the ploughacross the fields. This hypothesis, which presupposes the joint influence of orgiastic vegetation cults and ancient sacrificial usages, is, of course, not susceptible of positive demonstration. Nevertheless, to one concerned with the transition from ancient field cults to the agriculture of later times, the combination of conditions just indicated may reasonably be regarded as affording the basis of an hypothesis that is psychologically not improbable.
Whether the raising of the milch cow was coincident with the taming of the ox for the purposes of agriculture, and whether it came about as the result of a similar transformation of motives, it is hardly possible to determine. Though such changes are of more importance for the development of culture than are many of the campaigns and ancient folk wars of which history has preserved a record, no positive clue as to their origin has anywhere survived. All that we know with certainty is that the taming of the ox to draw the plough and the raising of the milch cow are not necessarily bound up with one another. For plough-culture and the milk industry are by no means always to be found together. In spite of his highly developed agriculture, the Chinaman loathes milk, whereas the Hindoo regards it as a valuable gift of civilization, prizing it not only because of the butter which he secures from it but especially as a food and as a sacrifice to the gods. The Israelites received the promise that Canaan was to be a land "that floweth with milk and honey." The latter expression suggests the cultural conditions of two widely different periods. Milk represents the most valuable product of later culture, while even primitive man regarded the honey which he gathered from the hives of wild bees as his most precious article of food.
Whatever may be the relation of the two factors in the domestication of cattle, whether the taming of the ox preceded the raising of cows or vice versa, the production of milk, at any rate, represents the more difficult and slower task. The taming of the ox is essentially an act that affects only the particular animal in question; even to-dayit must be repeated in the case of every male calf; the inheritance of acquired characteristics is here not operative. The cow, just as all female mammals in their natural condition, produces very little milk except during the period of suckling, and then only so much as is necessary for the support of her young. Only through efforts continued throughout generations and as a result of the inheritance of acquired characteristics could she be brought to that tremendous over-production of her secretion of which she has become capable. In this case, therefore, there must from the very outset have been a systematic striving toward the desired goal. It is not absolutely essential to assume a change of motives such as occurred in the taming of the ox; from the very beginning there may have been an attempt to make personal use of the milk which Nature intended for the calf. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that religious motives here also played a part. This is made all the more probable by the fact that the cow, no less than the bull and the ox, was worshipped by many peoples even in the earliest period of deity cults. Such worship is particularly noteworthy, inasmuch as cattle were never favourite totem animals as was, for instance, the buffalo among the hunting peoples of the American prairies. Even though the general idea of animal cult was carried over from the totemic period to the beginnings of the agrarian deity cults, this animal cult was essentially changed, and it became associated with different objects. The latter are now no longer connected with the old totem beliefs that sprang, in part, from primitive animism; they are determined entirely by the conditions of a later culture, one of whose essential elements is the domestication of cattle. The two fundamental constituents of this later culture, agriculture and the milk industry, are not everywhere equally prized. Hence there is a difference as regards the relative importance of the male and the female member of the species in the cult worship that is accorded to the most valued domestic animal of the new economic era. In the Opis-worship of the Egyptians, as well as in the Persian cult of Mithra, the bull was regarded as an incarnationof the supreme deity. In many sections of Northern Europe it is even to-day customary, at harvest-time, to bedeck an ox with ribbons and wreaths of flowers and to lead him in a festal procession. On the other hand, we find that the Vedas and the Avesta, in harmony with the high value which the ancient Indian and Iranian peoples place on milk, extol the cow as the most sacred of animals. In the first stages of the domestication of cattle, it was possible to gain only a small supply of milk, since its over-production could be developed but slowly; just for this reason, however, milk was all the more valuable. This may probably also throw light on the high value which was long placed on butter as a sacrificial gift. The attempt to secure this valuable product for sacrificial purposes may then itself in turn have reacted upon the milk industry. Thus, the two great advances in material culture that attend the heroic age—the tilling of the soil with the plough and the systematic endeavour to secure milk and its products—seem to be, in part, directly due to, and, in part, closely bound up with, motives of cult. External culture and inner religious impulses have always attested themselves to be elements of a totality all of whose parts are interrelated.
Of the new forms of industry which thus arose, the cultivation of the soil by means of the plough led to a further important change. This change was just as much an effect of the new conditions of life as it was an expression of the altered spirit of the times. The guidance of the plough is a task which prevents the field work from being any longer done in common, as it was at the height of hoe-culture and during the time of the origin of the great vegetation festivals of totemism. The individual must guide his own plough. The appearance of plough-cultureindividualizes labour. Just as the individual comes to the fore in political development and is extolled in legend as the founder of cities and States, so also is it the individual who cultivates the land. This individualistic tendency also gradually makes itself felt in the raising of domestic animals. Plough-culture gives rise toprivate propertyas regards both the soil and its products.
Here again, however, the new social order influences economic life, and both together produce further changes in external culture. Individual activity receives emphasis not alone in the cultivation of the soil but also inwarfare. Primitive man was not at all familiar with war. He slew his enemy from an ambush, attacking him but seldom in open combat. In the totemic age, when actual weapons of war first made their appearance, tribal war was a strife of many against many. As yet the individual combatants were not sharply differentiated from one another. The masses clashed with each other in unregulated strife, without definite leadership or fixed system. Only with the dawn of the political era do we find regulated single combat. Such combat then becomes the decisive factor in warfare. Consider the Homeric description of the battles before the walls of Troy. The battle is decided by champions (promachoi). These alight from their chariots of war and fight, man against man. The masses stand in the background, hurling lances or stones. Their actions, however, have little importance. They flee as soon as their champion falls. The result of the battle thus depends upon individuals and not upon the masses. The weapons also conform to these altered conditions. In earlier times, practically none but long-distance weapons were used—the sling, the hurled spear, or the bow and arrow, weapons similar to those employed in the chase. Single combat necessitated weapons of close range—the axe, held fast in the hand, the lance, used as a thrusting weapon, and the sword. Instead of the long shield, covering almost the entire body—shields such as even the Australians and also the earliest Greeks carried—a small round shield was demanded by reason of the use of swords in fighting. Of the various weapons found at the zenith of the heroic age, therefore, the sword is the most characteristic. It is also the most typical creation of this period. It obviously originated through a gradual shortening of the lance, thus becoming a weapon specifically adapted for individual combat at close range. Thus, the tendency toward the assertion of individual personality made itselffelt in warfare and in weapons, just as it did in the State, in agriculture, and in the cult of personal gods.
Similar fundamental factors underlie the last great cultural change. This we have already touched upon in our discussion of agriculture, namely, therise of private property. Following inevitably upon the appearance of private property are distinctions in wealth; these lead to differences in social position. In the totemic age, the contrasting conditions of rich and poor are, on the whole, not in particular evidence; even towards the decline of the period, indeed, they are only beginning to arise. Every man is the equal of the other. Only the chiefs and a small number of the older men have a superior rank. This rank, moreover, is not due to property but to the services which ability and experience enable them to render, or to the reverence which custom metes out to them. It is not until the heroic age that a propertied class becomes differentiated from a class owning little or nothing. This change is due in an important measure to the folk migrations that inaugurate the beginning of the new age. The propertied class derives from the victorious conquerors; the original inhabitants are without property. In the warfare connected with these migrations, slaves are captured; these are employed particularly in the cultivation of the soil. Thus, the more aristocratic are exalted by their greater possessions above those who have less property. As free individuals, however, both of these classes are superior to the slaves, who, similarly to the animals used in agriculture, are themselves regarded as the possession of the free and the rich.
Bound up with these social distinctions is thedivision of labourwhich now arises. The landowner no longer himself manufactures the tools which he needs or the weapons with which he goes to war. A class of artisans is formed, consisting partly of those who have little property, and partly of slaves. This differentiation of labour leads totwophenomena which long continue to influence the development of culture. I refer totradeandcolonization. The former consists in the transmission of the products of labour; thelatter, in the migration of a part of the people itself into distant places, where the same conditions that led to the founding of the mother State result in daughter States. In the totemic age, there were no colonies. Extensive as were the wanderings of the Papuans, the Malays, the Polynesians, and of some of the American and African tribes, these peoples never established colonies; moreover, the group which settled in distant places always lost its connection with the mother group. True, new living conditions were sought and found, and, through mixture with the native populations, new races were produced. Nevertheless, it was not until the political age that those parts of a particular people which settled down in foreign lands continued to retain a consciousness of connection with the mother race.
Of the two above-mentioned elements of the newer culture, commerce naturally preceded colonization. Of all civilized peoples, the Semitic race was the first to open up great channels of trade. Phœnician commerce dates back to the earliest records of history. Even the Mycenian graves of Greece contain gold jewelry of Phœnician workmanship. Spacially, the trade relations of the ancient Phœnicians extended over the whole of the known Occident. It is characteristic of the Semitic race, however, that they rarely undertook actual colonization. Trade and all that is connected with it, the industrial ardour necessary to supply the objects of trade and to exchange them for grain and other natural products, has always been their chosen sphere. The Indo-Germanic races, on the other hand, have naturally inclined to colonization from early times on. In the foremost rank were the Greeks, with their colonies in Thrace, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, and Sicily. These colonial groups, moreover, always retained their connection with the mother people. Thus, the earliest culture of the Greeks was that of the colonies in Asia Minor. Later, the colonies of southern Italy exercised a strong reaction on the mother country in science and art. It was not until relatively late that the highest cultural development of the mother country followed upon that of these outposts of Greek culture.
The fundamental characteristics of totemic society appear to be purely a product of nature. This is especially true of totemic tribal organization. Its simple regularity and the constant recurrence of essentially the same characteristics are the natural result of original conditions of life that were universally prevalent. A horde split up into two halves. In the simplest cases, such as we have noticed in our account of the Australians, tribal organization remained limited to this dual division. The condition that brought about this organization arose as soon as a horde that spoke the same language spread out over a fairly broad territory. The same process of division might then repeat itself in the case of each of the two halves. This gave rise to a clan organization of four or eight divisions, as found among most of the Australian tribes, and frequently also in Melanesia. Such an organization was developed also by the original inhabitants of North America, although the totemic basis here degenerated and became essentially an external form. Totemic tribal organization is unquestionably a phenomenon that arises with immanent necessity; indeed, one might almost say that its appearance involves no co-operation on the part of man himself. The division takes place of itself; it is a result of the natural conditions underlying the propagation and growth of society.
From the very beginning of the heroic age on, the development of political society gave rise to phenomena that were fundamentally different from those of earlier times. The irreconcilability of this fact with the view, still held by historians and philosophers, that the State represents the earliest form of an ordered community life, is evident. Such theories were possible only when the whole of totemic culture was as yet aterra incognita. Totemic tribal organization cannot possibly be interpreted as an incomplete and undeveloped form of the State. Rather is it true that totemic and political societies are completely different in kind. Essentially different characteristics and conditions of origindemarcate them from one another, even though there are certain hybrid forms, representing primarily a partial survival of older tribal customs within the newly established political society. Now, in so far as mental history always involves a regular order of development, one would, of course, be justified in maintaining that human society also necessarily eventuates in the State—that is, in a political society. Indeed, this may perhaps be the meaning of Aristotle's statement that man is a "political animal." This statement may be interpreted to refer to apredispositionrather than to an inherited characteristic. Nevertheless, Aristotle's view that the State gradually developed out of the family and the village community is in contradiction with the actual facts. To read back a tendency toward political development into the very beginnings of human society, moreover, results in a failure to give proper emphasis to those essential differences which distinguish the great periods of this development—differences which at the crucial points assume the form of antitheses. Furthermore, we must not overlook the fact that there are peoples who have even as yet not progressed beyond totemic tribal organization and who will very possibly never advance to the formation of a State, particularly in case this depends upon their own initiative. On the other hand, it is doubtless to be assumed that those peoples who later acquired a political organization at one time possessed a totemic tribal structure. The higher stage of political organization, however, obviously differs fundamentally from that which preceded it. The older motives have been superseded by such as are connected with the great folk migrations and tribal fusions, and with the changes consequent upon them. True, when the time was ripe, these migrations and fusions of peoples came to pass with the same necessity as did the original division of the primitive horde into two halves. Nevertheless, a new set of conditions became operative. These, of course, arose in a regular course of development out of the most primitive modes of life, and yet they were not directly derived from them. The creativepower characteristic of all mental activity here manifested itself, not in the performance of miracles, but in a constant engenderment of new motives out of the interaction of existing motives with changing external conditions of life. In consequence of this constant change of motives and of existing conditions, even totemic culture made numerous attempts in the direction of political organization. Such steps were taken particularly by the semi-cultural peoples of America, who possess a relatively high civilization. It is precisely in the case of these peoples that it is instructive to notice the contrast between this political tendency and the original tribal organization.
The difference between the two fundamental forms of society, the totemic and the political, is most strikingly evident in the case of their most external characteristic—namely, in thenumbersaccording to which society as a whole, as well as in its parts, is organized and divided. These numbers are the expression of inner motives; hence they form a basis from which we may draw conclusions concerning the latter. In the case of totemic tribal organization, these motives are apparently very simple; natural expansion over a broader territory leads to separation into groups, and this of itself gives rise to the customary division into two, four, and eight parts. How different and more complicated from its very beginnings is the organization of political society! Here also the development proceeds according to law, and yet there is not a constant recurrence of the same motive as is in the case of totemic tribal organization. On the contrary, we find a continuous fluctation between contradictory phenomena, and the frequent appearance of new motives. Early, and still partly legendary, tradition tells us of an organization of society on the basis of the numbertwelve. This mode of organization seems to have emanated from the Babylonians. They were the people who first attempted to govern human affairs in accordance with celestial phenomena. These they observed, not in the unsystematic, imaginative, mythological manner of the natural peoplesof Polynesia and America, but with the aid of astronomical instruments. True, the science of the Babylonians was also still based on mythological foundations. These mythological features, however, were combined with the idea of an all-embracing, divine rule of law. The endeavour to find this law and order in the starry sky, the greatest and most sublime sight that the human eye may behold, resulted in observations that were scientific and exact. Thus, the union of the two ideas led with a sort of inner necessity to the acceptance of the number twelve as a norm. The application of this norm to human relations was a direct result of the belief that it was of divine origin. The Babylonian calendar, whose fundamental principles, in spite of numerous reforms, have retained their authority even down to the present, was the first to emphasize the principle of bringing the courses of the sun and moon into an ordered numerical relation for the purpose of reckoning time. Taking as their point of departure the position of the sun at the vernal equinox, and following the movements of the moon until the sun returned to the same position, the Babylonians found that twelve revolutions of the moon were equivalent to one of the sun. While this observation is in reality, of course, only approximately true, to the first astronomers it might have appeared sufficiently exact to be regarded as the law of a divine world order. Thus, the year came to be divided into twelve months; and, since the moon presents four phases in each month, first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and new moon—an observation which long antedates astronomical calculation—the month was at once divided into four parts. Since the month has approximately twenty-eight days, the result was aweek, comprisingseven days. This number, therefore, was not, as has sometimes been erroneously assumed, derived from the seven planets. Rather is it true, conversely, that the number of the planets was, with a certain arbitrariness, first fixed at seven after this number, as well as twelve, had come to be regarded assacred, because of its relation to the movements of the sun and moon. These numbers were believed to bewritten by the gods themselves in flaming letters on the sky. To the Babylonian, the sky furnished a revelation of the laws that should govern terrestrial life. The number twelve, especially, was adopted as the basis of the organization of human society. Of this oldest form of division, however, only meagre and occasional survivals have remained. We may refer to the legendary twelve tribes of pre-exilic Israel—later a source of much difficulty to Talmudic scholars, inasmuch as these tribes are not to be found in history—and also to the twelve gods of Greece, the twelve Apostles, etc. But the number twelve has not merely left its traces in legend; it has also inscribed itself in the records of history. Thus, the Athenian population originally comprised twelve divisions, there being four clans (phyles), each of which was composed of threephratries. Similarly, the colonial territory of the Greeks in Asia Minor is said to have included twelve Ionic cities. Moreover, even in later times, the Amphictyonic League, which undertook the protection of the Delphic oracle, consisted of twelve amphictyons, though this, it is true, was also connected with the division of time, each of the twelve tribal groups being entrusted with the guardianship of the shrine for one month in the year. With few unimportant exceptions, however, the number twelve, which was at one time probably very widely regnant, has lost its influence. Its place in the organization of society as well as in the regulation of other aspects of human life has been taken by a numerical system that still dominates our entire culture—thedecimalsystem. Even prior to the age of Columbus, the decimal system made its appearance in certain more civilized parts of the Western world where the duodecimal system was never known. That the former originated independently in different places, is rendered all the more likely by the fact that even primitive man used his ten fingers as an aid in counting, in spite of the fact that he had not as yet formed words for numbers greater than three or four. But, however natural this method of counting may be, its application to the organization of the group and the division of peoples nevertheless represents adeliberately adoptedplan. If possible, this is even more true here than in the case of the duodecimal system. We are now face to face with the wide difference that separates political society from totemic tribal organization. In developing on the principle of dual division, the latter resembles a natural process which runs its own course apart from any operation of conscious intention, even though directly influenced, of course, by the general conditions of human life. The organization of society according to the number ten, on the other hand, can be interpreted only as an intentional act. Hence history not infrequently brings this form of organization into direct association with the names of individual lawgivers, with Clisthenes of Athens or Servius Tullius of Rome. No doubt, a basis for this new order had been prepared by the general conditions of a society which had progressed beyond the totemic stage. Its systematic introduction, however, and the series of decimal subdivisions that ensued, are only conceivable as a legislative act emanating from a personal will. In the formation of social groups, no less than in the classification and enumeration of external objects of nature, there may at times have been some vacillation of choice between the duodecimal and the decimal systems. In its application to human society, however, the decimal system finally prevailed. Indeed, the simple means of counting afforded by our ten fingers supplanted the system suggested by the firmament in every field of use, except in connection with celestial phenomena themselves and with the reckoning of time, which was directly based on the observation of these phenomena. That the victory of the decimal principle was due merely to the practical necessity of choosing the principle that was simplest and most convenient, is shown by the fact that ten was never a sacred number, as was twelve. It has a purely terrestrial and human origin. In the field of the practical necessities of life, man was victorious over the gods. Perhaps, therefore, the organization of society on the decimal principle reflects also the triumph of the secular State over theocracy. The decimal principle likewise exercised a certain influenceupon the division of time, and it is surely not accidental that such influence coincides with epochs that are strongly characterized by a secularization of human interests. As early as the sixth century B.C., the great political organizer of Athens, Clisthenes, made an attempt to divide the year into ten months instead of twelve. The attempt miscarried, just as did the analogous one on the part of the first French Republic to introduce a week of ten days. As a matter of fact, objective measurements of time are derived from the heavens and not from man. On the other hand, our measurement of terrestrial spaces and our grouping of populations depend entirely upon ourselves, and therefore naturally conform to human characteristics. In these cases, it is the decimal system that is used. In view of the fact that the number ten was deliberately adopted, this number has been thought to represent an idea that emanated from a single source. Since the organization effected by Clisthenes and that of Servius Tullius in Rome fall approximately within the same century, it has been believed that in these cases, especially, we may assume this fundamental idea of division to have been borrowed. The very extensive distribution of the decimal system, however, militates against the probability of this supposition. Thus, the Book of Exodus no longer speaks of the legendary twelve tribes of Israel but tells of onlytentribes. We likewise hear of groups of one hundred, and of more extensive groups consisting of one thousand. These divisions also recur among the Germanic peoples, and in the far-distant realm of the Peruvian Incas. Among the latter, however, there are also distinct traces of a totemic tribal organization that antedated the invasion of the Incas. This was the foundation upon which the Inca kings and their officials finally reared an organization consisting of groups of ten, one hundred, and one thousand—indeed, the latter were even brought together to form groups of ten thousand. In certain cases, such systems may perhaps have been introduced from without or may, in part, have been acquired through imitation. Nevertheless, the suppositionthat they all emanated from a single region is doubtless just as improbable as is the view that the decimal system in general had but a single origin. This new grouping of the population is closely bound up with the conditions of political society. It is dependent upontwomotives, which, though not universally operative at first, became so the very moment that political society took its rise. The first motive is of a subjective nature. It consists in an increased facility in the use of the decimal mode of counting, as a result of which larger groups, consisting of multiples of ten, are formed: besides the single group of ten, it must have become possible to conceive of groups of one hundred, one thousand, and, in rare cases, even of one hundred thousand. The other motive is objective in character. There are changes in the external conditions of life such as to demand more comprehensive and at the same time more highly organized divisions than prevailed in the natural tribal organization of the preceding age. In two distinct directions does the decimal system prove readily applicable. One is in the distribution of landed property. With the appearance of plough-culture, land gradually came to be largely converted into personal property. It was all the more necessary, therefore, for the individual to unite with others for the sake of protection and aid. Thus arose the mark-community. This naturally centred about that part of the territory which, because it was not put under the plough but was reserved for common use as well as common care, temporarily remained common property—namely, the pasture and woodland. Thus, themark-communitywas inevitable: it resulted from the new method of cultivating the soil, which brought with it a combination of personal property with common ownership. The size of the community was, of course, determined by the relation which these two forms of ownership sustained to each other, being dependent upon the fact that the amount of common property had to correspond with the number of individual owners who shared its use. The right proportion of these two sorts of property could be determined only by experience and reflection. Onceascertained, it was but natural to adopt this proportion more generally, in connection with more extensive groups of people. Here the decimal organization into groups of tens and hundreds, to which subjective influences naturally tended, promised to be convenient also from the standpoint of objective conditions.