Chapter 93

29Aristotle,Ethica Nicomachea, viii. 12. 2.

30Sully,Studies of Childhood, p. 243.

31Seesupra,i. 618sq.

Besides parental, conjugal, and filial attachment we find among all existing races of men altruism of the fraternaltype, 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,32we 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.”33It 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 ofsufficient food is obvious from several facts which I have stated in full in another place.34These 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.

32Savage, ‘Observations on the External Characters and Habits of theTroglodytes Niger, inBoston Journal of Natural History, iv. 384.Cf.von Koppenfels, ‘Meine Jagden auf Gorillas,’ inDie Gartenlaube, 1877, p. 419.

33Spencer,Principles of Psychology, ii. 558.

34Westermarck,op. cit.p. 43sqq.

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.”35In 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 ofthe 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.

35Darwin,Descent of Man, p. 48sq.

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,36and 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 betweenegoandalterloses much of its importance.

36In 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.37Considering 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 aninanimate 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.

37Darwin,op. cit.p. 100sqq.Kropotkin,Mutual Aid, ch. i.sq.

38Bain,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 largerfamily groups including in addition a few other individuals closely allied.39But 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,40the 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.41Every family, consisting of a man and one or more wives and children, has a separate lean-to of shrubs;42but clusters of these shelters are always found in spots where food is more or less easily obtainable,43and the members of each group are bound together by a strong “local feeling.”44The 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.”45At the time when the series of initiation ceremonies called theEngwuraare performed, men and women gather together from all parts of the tribe, councils of the eldermen 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.”46Nay, 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.47Now 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.”48Circumstances 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;49the houses are grouped in villages, some of which are very populous;50and though the tribal bond is not conspicuous for its strength, there are councils which discuss and decide all important questions concerning the tribe.51The 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

39Westermarck,op. cit.p. 43sqq.Hildebrand,Recht und Sitte, p. 1sqq.

40Westermarck,op. cit.p. 45.

41Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 8sqq.

42Ibid.p. 18.

43Ibid.p. 31.

44Ibid.p. 544.

45Ibid.p. 14.

46Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 272.

47Ibid.p. 32.

48Ibid.pp. 7, 44.

49Boas, inFifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 22.

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

51Boas,loc. cit.p. 36sq.

52Ratzel,History of Mankind, ii. 92.

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

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

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

54See Grosse,op. cit.p. 136sqq.

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,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,55consisting 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

55See Cunow,Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger, p. 121, n. 1.

56Cf.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 betweenpersons 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.”58It appears that the system of descent itself is largely influenced by local connections.59Sir 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;60and 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.61Nay, 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,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,62it does so in the first instance on account of the varying intimacy of their mutual intercourse.

57Cunow,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.”

58Curr,The Australian Race, i. 69.

59Westermarck,op. cit.p. 107sqq.

60Tylor, ‘Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xviii. 258.

61Westermarck,op. cit.p. 110.

62Aristotle,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.”63Mr. Hartland insists upon a literal interpretation of his words;64and 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.

63Hartland,Legend of Perseus, ii. 277.

64Ibid.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,65and to certain rites of healing in which, besides the patient himself, “other members of his tribe, presumably kinsmen,” take part.66But the former belief is a superstition connected with the wonder of death, from which no conclusion must be drawn asto 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.67And 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.68But 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.

65Ibid.ii. 437sq.

66Ibid.ii. 432sqq.

67Hartland,Legend of Perseus, ii. 406.

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

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;69even 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.70Nay, there are instances in which the clan-bond is obviouslynot 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;71and 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.72Their 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”;73and its totem-name, which is derived from the spot where it is supposed to have been conceived,74is 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.

69Mr. 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.

70Ling Roth, ‘Signification of Couvade,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxii. 227, 238.

71Cameron, ‘Notes on some Tribes of New South Wales,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xiv. 352.

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

73Ibid.p. 265.

74Ibid.p. 124sqq.

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.”75As 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.”76Mr. 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 theoperation 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

75Hartland,op. cit.ii. 237.

76Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, p. 315.

77Hartland,op. cit.237sqq.

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.”78His 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.”79This 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 tieof blood-covenanting is reckoned in the East even a closer tie than that of natural descent,”80and the same was the case among the ancient Scandinavians.81I do not see how Mr. Hartland’s theory can account for this.

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