The Conditions of Civilization PDF

CHAPTER I The Conditions of Civilization· Definition - Geological conditions - Geograpbical- Economic- Racial-Psychological-Causes of the decay of civilizations C IVILIZATION is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision...

CHAPTER I The Conditions of Civilization· Definition - Geological conditions - Geograpbical- Economic- Racial-Psychological-Causes of the decay of civilizations C IVILIZATION is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment- of life. Certain factors condition civilization, and may encourage or impede it. First, geological conditions. Civilization is an interlude between ice ages: at any time the current of glaciation may rise again, cover with ice and stone the works of man, and reduce life to some narrow segment of the earth. Or the demon of earthquake, by whose leave we build our cities, may shrug his shoulders and consume us indifferently. Second, geographical conditions. The heat of the tropics, and the in- numerable parasites that infest them, are hostile to civilization; lethargy and disease, and a precocious maturity and decay, divert the energies from those inessentials of life that make civilization, and absorb them in hunger and reproduction; nothing is left for the play of the arts and the mind. Rain is necessary; for water is the medium of life, more important even than the light of the sun; the unintelligible whim of the elements may condemn to desiccation regions that once flourished with empire and in- dustry, like Nineveh or Babylon, or may help to swift strength and wealth cities apparently off the main line of transport and communication, like those of Great Britain or Puget Sound. If the soil is fertile in food or minerals, if rivers offer an easy avenue of exchange, if the coast-line is indented with natural harbors for a commercial fleet, if, above all, a nation lies on the highroad of the world's trade, like Athens or Carthage, Flor- The reader will find. at the end of this volume, a glossary defining foreign tenns, a bibliography with guidance for further reading, a pronouncing index, and a body of references corresponding to the superior figures in the text. I  THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. I ence or Venice-then geography, though it can never create it, smiles upon civilization, and nourishes it. Economic conditions are more imponant. A people may possess or- dered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the minor forms of an, like the American Indians; and yet if it remains in the hunting stage, if it depends for its existence upon the precarious fortunes of the chase, it will never quite pass from barbarism to civilization. A nomad stock, like the Bedouins of Arabia, may be exceptionally intelligent and vigorous, it may display high qualities of character like courage, generosity and nobility; but without that simple sine qua non of culture, a continuity of food, its intelligence will be lavished on the perils of the hunt and the tricks of trade, and nothing will remain for the laces and frills, the cunsies and amenities, the arts and comfons, of civilization. The first form of culture is agriculture. It is when man settles down to till the soil and lay up pro- visions for the uncertain future that he finds time and reason to be civilized. Within that little circle of security-a reliable supply of water and food- he builds his huts, his temples and his schools; he invents productive tools, and domesticates the dog, the ass, the pig, at last himself. He learns to work with regularity and order, maintains a longer tenure of life, and transmits more completely than before the mental and moral heritage of his race. Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the city. In one aspect civilization is the habit of civility; and civility is the refinement which townsmen, who made the word, thought possible only in the civitas or city.... For in the city are gathered, rightly or wrongly, the wealth and brains produced in the countryside; in the city invention and industry multiply comforts, luxuries and leisure; in the city traders meet, and baner goods and ideas; in that cross-fenilization of minds at the cross- roads of trade intelligence is sharpened and stimulated to creative power. In the city some men are set aside from the making of material things, and produce science and philosophy, literature and an. Civilization begins in the peasant's hut, but it comes to flower only in the towns. There are no racial conditions to civilization. It may appear on any continent and in any color: at Pekin or Delhi, at Memphis or Babylon, at Ravenna or London, in Peru or Yucatan. It is not the great race that makes The word civilization (Latin civilis-penaining to the civis, citizen) is comparatively young. Despite Boswell's suggestion Johnson refused to admit it to his Dictionary in 1771.. he preferred to use the word civilJt;y! CHAP. I) THE CONDITIONS OF CIVILIZATION 3 the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circum- stances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type. The Englishman does not make British civilization, it makes him; if he carries it with him wherever he goes, and dresses for dinner in Timbuktu, it is not that he is creating his civilization there anew, but that he acknowledges even there its mastery over his soul. Given like ma- terial conditions, and another race would beget like results; Japan repro- duces in the twentieth century the history of England in the nineteenth. Civilization is related to race only in the sense that it is often preceded by the slow intermarriage of different stocks, and their gradual assimilation into a relatively homogeneous people."" These physical and biological conditions are only prerequisites to civ- ilization; they do not constitute or generate it. Subtle psychological factors muSt enter into play. There must be political order, even if it be so near to chaos as in Renaissance Florence or Rome; men must feel, by and large, that they need not look for death or taxes at every tum. There must be some unity of language to serve as a medium of mental exchange. Through church, or family, or school, or otherwise, there must be a uni- fying moral code, some rules of the game of life acknowledged even by those who violate them, and giving to conduct some order and regularity, some direction and stimulus. Perhaps there must also be some unity of basic belief, some faith, supernatural or utopian, that lifts morality from calcu- lation to devotion, and gives life nobility and significance despite our mortal brevity. And finally there must be education-some technique, however primitive, for the transmission of culture. Whether through imi- tation, initiation or instruction, whether through father or mother, teacher or priest, the lore and heritage of the tribe-its language and knowledge, its morals and manners, its technology and arts-must be handed down to the young, as the very instrument through which they are turned from animals into men. The disappearance of these conditions-sometimes of even one of them -may destroy a civilization. A geological cataclysm or a profound cli- matic change; an uncontrolled epidemic like that which wiped out half the population of the Roman Empire under the Antonines, or the Black Death that helped to end the Feudal Age; the exhaustion of the land, or the ruin Blood, as distinct from race, may affect a civilization in the sense that a nation may be retarded or advanced by breeding from the biologically (not racially) worse or bettel strains among the people. 4 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. I of agriculture through the exploitation of the country by the town, result- ing in a precarious dependence upon foreign food supplies; the failure of natural resources, either of fuels or of raw materials; a change in trade routes, leaving a nation off the main line of the world's commerce; mental or moral decay from the strains, stimuli and contacts of urban life, from the breakdown of traditional sources of social discipline and the inability to replace them; the weakening of the stock by a disorderly sexual life, or by an epicurean, pessimist, or quietist philosophy; the decay of leadership through the infertility of the able, and the relative smallness of the fami- lies that might bequeath most fully the cultural inheritance of the race; a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die. For civilization is not something inborn or imper- ishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization. Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in ~ur own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.  CHAPTER II The Economic Elements of Civilization· I N one important sense the "savage," too, is civilized, for he carefully transmits to his children the heritage of the tribe-that complex of economic, political, mental and moral habits and institutions which it has developed in its efforts to maintain and enjoy itself on the earth. It is impossible to be scientific here; for in calling other human beings "savage" or "barbarous" we may be expressing no objective fact, but only our fierce fondness for ourselves, and our timid shyness in the presence of alien ways. Doubtless we underestimate these simple peoples, who have so much to teach us in hospitality and morals; if we list the bases and constituents of civilization we shall find that the naked nations invented or arrived at all but one of them, and left nothing for us to add except embellishments and writing. Perhaps they, too, were once civilized, and desisted from it as a nuisance. We must make sparing use of such terms as "savage" and "bar- barous" in referring to our "contemporaneous ancestry." Preferably we shall call "primitive" all tribes that make little or no provision for un- productive days, and little or no use of writing. In contrast, the civilized may be defined as literate providers. I. FROM HUNTING TO TILLAGE Primitive improvidence-Beginnings of provision-Hunting and fishing-Herding-The domestication of animals-Agri- culture-Food-C ooking-Cannibalism "Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution. Savages gorge themselves or fast.'" The wilder tribes among the American Indians con- Despite recent high example to the contrary,' the wurd civilization will be used in this volume to mean social organization, moral order, and cultural activity; while culture will mean, according to the context, either the practice of manners and the arts, or the sum-total of a people's institutions, customs and arts. It is in the latter sense that the word culture will be used in reference to primitive or prehistoric societies. 5 6 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. II sidered it weak-kneed and unseemly to preserve food for the next day: The natives of Australia are incapable of any labor whose reward is not immediate; every Hottentot is a gentleman of leisure; and with the Bush- men of Mrica it is always "either a. feast or a famine.'" There is a mute wisdom in this improvidence, as in many "savage" ways. The moment man begins to take thought of the morrow he passes out of the Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety; the pale cast of worry settles down upon him, greed is sharpened, property begins, and the good cheer of the "thoughtless" native disappears. The American Negro is making this transition today. "Of what are you thinking?" Peary asked one of his Eskimo guides. "I do not have to think," was the answer; "I have plenty of meat." Not to think unless we have to-there is much to be said for this as the summation of wisdom. Nevertheless, there were difficulties in this care-Iessness, and those or- ganisms that outgr~w it came to possess a serious advantage in the struggle for survival. The dog that buried.the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day-these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they, or other subtle creatures like them, who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer's time of plenty. With what skill those ancestors ferreted out, from land and sea, the food that was the basis of their simple societies! They grubbed edible things from the earth with bare hands; they imitated or used the claws and tusks of the aniInals, and fashioned tools out of ivory, bone or stone; they made nets and traps and snares of rushes or fibre, and devised innumerable artifices for fishing and hunting their prey. The Polynesians had nets a thousand ells long, which could be handled only by a hundred men; in such ways economic provision grew hand in hand with political organization, and the united quest for food helped to generate the state. The Tlingit fisherman put upon his head a cap like the head of a seal, and hiding his body among the rocks, made a noise like a seal; seals came toward him, and he speared them with the clear conscience of primitive war. Many tribes threw narcotics into the streams to stupefy the fish into cooperation with the fishermen; the Tahitians, for example, put into the water an in- toxicating mixture prepared from the buteo nut or the bora plant; the fish, drunk with it, floated leisurely on the surface, and were caught at the CHAP. II) E CON 0 M ICE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 7 anglers' will. Australian natives, swimming under water while breathing through a reed, pulled ducks beneath the surface by the legs, and gently held them there till they were pacified. The T arahumaras caught birds by stringing kernels on tough fibres half buried under the ground; the birds ate the kernels, and the Tarahumaras ate the birds. G Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death. For hunting was not merely a quest for food, it was a war for security and mastery, a war beside which all the wars of recorded history are but a little noise. In the jungle man still fights for his life, for though there is hardly an animal that will attack him unless it is desperate for food or cornered in the chase, yet there is not always food for all, and sometimes only the fighter, or the breeder of fighters, is allowed to eat. We see in our museums the relics of that war of the species in the knives, clubs, spears, arrows, lassos, bolas, lures, traps, boomerangs and slings with which primitive men won posses- sion of the land, and prepared to transmit to an ungrateful posterity the gift of security from every beast except man. Even today, after all these wars of elimination, how many different populations move over the earth! Sometimes, during a walk in the woods, one is awed by the variety of languages spoken there, by the myriad species of insects, reptiles, carni- vores and birds; one feels that man is an interloper on this crowded scene, that he is the object of universal dread and endless hostility. Some day, perhaps, these chattering quadrupeds, these ingratiating centipedes, these insinuating bacilli, will devour man and all his works, and free the planet from this marauding biped, these mysterious and unnatural weapons, these careless feet! Hunting and fishing were not stages in economic development, they were modes of activity destined to survive into the highest forms of civil- ized society. Once the center of life, they are still its hidden foundations; behind our literature and philosophy, our ritual and art, stand the stout killers of Packingtown. We do our hunting by proxy, not having the stomach for honest killing in the fields; but our memories of the chase linger in our joyful pursuit of anything weak or fugitive, and in the games of our children-even in the word game. In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply. The cathedral and the capitol, the museum and the concert chamber, the library and the university are the fa~ade; in the rear are the shambles. 8 THE S TOR Y 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION (CHAP. II To live by hunting was not original; if man had confined himself to that he would have been just another carnivore. He began to be human when out of the uncertain hunt he developed the greater security and continuity of the pastoral life. For this involved advantages of high import- ance: the domestication of animals, the breeding of cattle, and the use of milk. We do not know when or how domestication began-perhaps when the helpless young of slain beasts were spared and brought to the camp as playthings for the children." The animal continued to be eaten, but not so soon; it acted as a beast of burden, but it was accepted almost demo- cratically into the society of man; it became his comrade, and formed with him a community of labor and residence. The miracle of reproduc- tion was brought under control, and two captives were multiplied into a herd. Animal milk released women from prolonged nursing, lowered infantile mortality, and provided a new and dependable food. Population increased, life became more stable and orderly, and the mastery of that timid parvenu, man, became more secure on the earth. Meanwhile woman was making the greatest economic discovery of all-the bounty of the soil. While man hunted she grubbed about the tent or hut for whatever edible things lay ready to her hand on the ground. In Australia it was understood that during the absence of her mate on the chase the wife would dig for roots, pluck fruit and nuts from the trees, and collect honey, mushrooms, seeds and natural grains: Even today, in certain tribes of Australia, the grains that grow spontaneously out of the earth are harvested without any attempt to separate and sow the seed; the Indians of the Sacramento River Valley never advanced beyond this stage.8 We shall never discover when men first noted the function of the seed, and turned collecting into sowing; such beginnings are the mysteries of his- tory, about which we may believe and guess, but cannot know. It is possible that when men began to collect unplanted grains, seeds fell along the way between field and camp, and suggested at last the great secret of growth. The Juangs threw the seeds together into the ground, leaving them to find their own way up. The natives of Borneo put the seed into holes which they dug with a pointed stick as they walked the fields.· The simplest known culture of the earth is with this stick or "digger." In Mada- gascar fifty years ago the traveler could still see women armed with pointed sticks, standing in a row like soldiers, and then, at a signal, digging their sticks into the ground, turning over the soil, throwing in the seed, stamp- ing the earth flat, and \>assing on to another furrow. The second stage in 1O CHAP. II) E CON 0 M ICE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 9 complexity was culture with the hoe: the digging stick was tipped with bone, and fitted with a crosspiece to receive the pressure of the foot. When the Conquistadores arrived in Mexico they found that the Aztecs knew no other tool of tillage than the hoe. With the domestication of animals and the forging of metals a heavier implement could be used; the hoe was enlarged into a plough, and the deeper turning of the soil revealed a fertility in the earth that changed the whole career of man. Wild plants were domesticated, new varieties were developed, old varieties were improved. Finally nature taught man the art of provision, the virtue of prudence, * the concept of time. Watching woodpeckers storing acorns in the trees, and the bees storing honey in hives, man conceived-perhaps after millen- niums of improvident savagery-the notion of laying up food for the future. He found ways of preserving meat by smoking it, salting it, freezing it; better still, he built granaries secure from rain and damp, vermin and thieves, and gathered food into them for the leaner months of the year. Slowly it became apparent that agriculture could provide a better and steadier food supply than hunting. With that realization man took one of the three steps that led from the beast to civilization-speech, agriculture, and writing. It is not to be supposed that man passed suddenly from hunting to tillage. Many tribes, like the American Indians, remained permanently becalmed in the transition-the men given to the chase, the women tilling the soil. Not only was the change presumably gradual, but it was never complete. Man merely added a new way of securing food to an old way; and for the most pan, throughout his history, he has preferred the old food to the new. We picture early man experimenting with a thousand products of the earth to find, at much cost to his inward comfort, which of them could be eaten safely; mingting these more and more with the fruits and nuts, the flesh and fish he was accustomed to, but always yearn- ing for the booty of the chase. Primitive peoples are ravenously fond of meat, even when they live mainly on cereals, vegetables and milk.ll If they come upon the carcass of a recently dead animal the result is likely to be a wild debauch. Very often no time is wasted on cooking; the prey is eaten raw, as fast as good teeth can tear and devour it; soon nothing is left but the bones. Whole tribes have been known to feast for a week on a Note the ultimate identity of the words prO'lJisio7l, providence and prudence. 10 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. II whale thrown up on the shore." Though the Fuegians can cook, they prefer their meat raw; when they catch a fish they kill it by biting it behind the gills, and then consume it from head ·to tail without further ritual.'" The uncertainty of the food supply made these nature peoples almost lit- erally omnivorous: shellfish, sea urchins, frogs, toads, snails, mice, rats, spiders, earthworms, scorpions, moths, centipedes, locusts, caterpillars, liz- ards, snakes, boas, dogs, horses, roots, lice, insects, larva:, the eggs of rep- tiles and birds-there is not one of these but was somewhere a delicacy, or even a piece de resistance, to primitive men." Some tribes are expert hunt- ers of ants; others dry insects in the sun and then store them for a feast; others pick the lice out of one another's hair, and eat them with relish; if a great number of lice can be gathered to make a petite marmite, they are devoured with shouts of joy, as enemies of the human race."" The menu of the lower hunting tribes hardly differs from that of the higher apes.!e The discovery of fire limited this indiscriminate voracity, and cooperated with agriculture to free man from the chase. Cooking broke down the cellulose and starch of a thousand plants indigestible in their raw state, and man turned more and more to cereals and vegetables as his chief reli- ance. At the same time cooking, by softening tough foods, reduced the need of chewing, and began that decay of the teeth which is one of the insignia of civilization. To all the varied articles of diet that we have enumerated, man added the greatest delicacy of all-his fellowman. Cannibalism was at one time practically universal; it has been found in nearly all primitive tribes~ and among such later peoples as the Irish, the Iberians, the Picts, and the eleventh-century Danes." Among many tribes human flesh was a staple of trade, and funerals were unknown. In the Upper Congo living men, women and children were bought and sold frankly as articles of food;lB on the island of New Britain human meat was sold in shops as butcher's meat is sold among ourselves; and in some of the Solomon Islands human victims, preferably women, were fattened for a feast like pigs. The lD Fuegians ranked women above dogs because, they said, "dogs taste of otter." In Tahiti an old Polynesian chief explained his diet to Pierre Loti: "The white man, when well roasted, tastes like a ripe banana." The Fiji- ans, however, complained that the flesh of the whites was too salty and tough, and that a European sailor was hardly fit to eat; a Polynesian tasted better."" CHAP. II) E CON 0 M ICE L E MEN T S 0 F C 1 V 1 LIZ A T ION II What was the origin of this practice? There is no surety that the custom arose, as formerly supposed, out of a shortage of other food; if it did, the taste once formed survived the shortage, and became a passionate predilection." Everywhere among nature peoples blood is regarded as a delicacy-never with horror; even primitive vegetarians take to it with gusto. Human blood is constantly drunk by tribes otherwise kindly and generous; sometimes as medicine, sometimes as a rite or covenant, often in the belief that it will add to the drinker the vital force of the victim." No shame was felt in preferring human flesh; primitive man seems to have recognized no distinction in morals between eating men and eating other animals. In Melanesia the chief who could treat his friends to a dish of roast man soared in social esteem. "When I have slain an enemy," ex- plained a Brazilian philosopher-chief, "it is surely better to eat him than to let him waste.... The worst is not to be eaten, but to die; if I am killed it is all the same whether my tribal enemy eats me or not. But I could not think of any game that would taste better than he would.... You whites are really too dainty."" Doubtless the custom had certain social advantages. It anticipated Dean Swift's plan for the utilization of superfluous children, and it gave the old an opportunity to die usefully. There is a point of view from which funer- als seem an unnecessary extravagance. To Montaigne it appeared more barbarous to torture a man to death under the cover of piety, as was the mode of his time, than to roast and eat him after he was dead. We must respect one another's delusions. II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDUSTRY Fire-Primitive Tools-Weaving and pottery-Building and trans- port-Trade and finance H man began with speech, and civilization with agriculture, industry began with fire. Man did not invent it; probably nature produced the marvel for him by the friction of leaves or twigs, a stroke of lightning, or a chance union of chemicals; man merely had the saving wit to imitate nature, and to improve upon her. He put the wonder to a thousand uses. First, perhaps, he made it serve as a torch to conquer his fearsome enemy, the dark; then he used it for warmth, and moved more freely from his native tropics to less enervating zones, slowly making the planet human; then he applied it to metals, softening them, tempering them, and com-  THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. II bining them into fonns stronger and suppler than those in which they had come to his hand. So beneficent and strange was it that fire always re- mained a miracle to primitive man, fit to be worshiped as a god; he offered it countless ceremonies of devotion, and made it the center or focus (which is Latin for hearth) of his life and home; he carried it carefully with him as he moved from place to place in his wanderings, and would not will- ingly let it die. Even the Romans punished with death the careless vestal virgin who allowed the sacred fire to be extinguished. Meanwhile, in the Inidst of hunting, herding and agriculture, invention was busy, and the primitive brain was racking itself to find mechanical answers to the econoInic puzzles of life. At first man was content, appar- ently, to accept what nature offered him-the fruits of the earth as his food, the skins and furs of the animals as his clothing, the caves in the hillsides as his home. Then, perhaps (for most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice), he iInitated the tools and industry of the animal: he saw the monkey flinging rocks and fruit upon his eneInies, or breaking open nuts and oysters with a stone; he saw the beaver building a dam, the birds making nests and bowers, the chimpanzees raising something very like a hut. He envied the power of their claws, teeth, tusks and horns, and the toughness of their hides; and he set to work to fashion tools and weapons that would resemble and rival these. Man, said Franklin, is a tool-using animal;"' but this, too, like the other distinctions on which we plume our- selves, is only a difference of degree. Many tools lay potential in the plant world that surrounded primitive man. From the bamboo he made shafts, knives, needles and bottles; out of branches he made tongs, pincers and vices; from bark and fibres he wove cord and clothing of a hundred kinds. Above all, he made himself a stick. It was a modest invention, but its uses were so varied that man always looked upon it as a symbol of power and authority, from the wand of the fairies and the staff of the shepherd to the rod of Moses or Aaron, the ivory cane of the Roman consul, the lituus of the augurs, and the mace of the magistrate or the king. In agriculture the stick became the hoe; in war it became the lance or javelin or spear, the sword or bayonet." Again, man used the mineral world, and shaped stones into a museum of anns and implements: hammers, anvils, kettles, scrapers, arrow-heads, saws, planes, wedges, levers, axes and drills. From the animal world he made ladles, spoons, vases, gourds, plates, cups, razors and hooks out of the shells of the shore, and tough or dainty tools out of the horn or ivory, the CHAP. II) ECONOMIC ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 13 teeth and bones, the hair and hide of the beasts. Most of these fashioned articles had handles of wood, attached to them in cunning ways, bound with braids of fibre or cords of animal sinew, and occasionally glued with strange mixtures of blood. The ingenuity of primitive men prob- ably equaled-perhaps it surpassed-that of the average modem man; we differ from them through the social accumulation of knowledge, materials and tools, rather than through innate superiority of brains. Indeed, nature men delight in mastering the necessities of a situation with inventive wit. It was a favorite game among the Eskimos to go off into difficult and de- serted places, and rival one another in devising means for meeting the needs of a life unequipped and unadorned.... This primitive skill displayed itself proudly in the art of weaving. Here, too, the animal showed man the way. The web of the spider, the nest of the bird, the crossing and texture of fibres and leaves in the natural em- broidery of the woods, set an example so obvious that in all probability weav- ing was one of the earliest arts of the human race. Bark, leaves and grass fibres were woven into clothing, carpets and tapestry, sometimes so excellent that it could not be rivaled today, even with the resources of contemporary machinery. Aleutian women may spend a year in weaving one robe. The blankets and garments made by the North American Indians were richly ornamented with fringes and embroideries of hairs and tendon-threads dyed in brilliant colors with berry juice; colors "so alive," says Father Theodut, "that ours do not seem even to approach them."" Again art began where nature left off; the bones of birds and fishes, and the slim shoots of the bamboo tree, were polished into needles, and the tendons of animals were drawn into threads ·delicate enough to pass through the eye of the finest needle today. Bark was beaten into mats and cloths, skins were dried for clothing and shoes, fibres were twisted into the strongest yarn, and supple branches and colored filaments were woven into baskets more beautiful than any modern forms." Akin to basketry, perhaps born of it, was the art of pottery. Clay placed upon wickerwork to keep the latter from being burned, hardened into a fireproof shell which kept its form when the wickerwork was taken away;" this may have been the first stage of a development that was to culminate in the perfect porcelains of China. Or perhaps some lumps of clay, baked and hardened by the sun, suggested the ceramic art; it was but a step from this to substitute fire for the sun, and to form from the earth myriad shapes of vessels for every use-for cooking, storing and transporting, at last for Reduced type, unindented, will be used occasionally for technical or dispensable matter. 14 THE S TOR Y 0 F C 1 V I LIZ A T ION (CHAP. II luxury and ornament. Designs imprinted by finger-nail or tool upon the wet clay were one of the first forms of art, and perhaps one of the origins of writing. Out of sun-dried clay primitive tribes made bricks and adobe, and dwelt, so to speak, in pottery. But that was a late 'Stage of the building art, bind- ing the mud hut of the "savage" in a chain of continuous development with the brilliant tiles of Nineveh and Babylon. Some primitive peoples, like the Veddahs of Ceylon, had no dwellings at all, and were content with the earth and the sky; some, like the Tasmanians, slept in hollow trees; some, like the natives of New South Wales, lived in caves; others, like the Bush- men, built here and there a wind-shelter of branches, or, more rarely, drove piles into the soil and covered their tops with moss and twigs. From such wind-shelters, when sides were added, evolved the hut, which is found among the natives of Australia in all its stages from a tiny cottage of branches, grass and earth large enough to cover two or three persons, to great huts housing thirty or more. The nomad hunter or herdsman pre- ferred a tent, which he could carry wherever the chase might lead him. The higher type of nature peoples, like the American Indian, built with wood; the Iroquois, for example, raised, out of timber still bearing the bark, sprawling edifices five hundred feet long, which sheltered many fami- lies. Finally, the natives of Oceania made real houses of carefully cut boards, and the evolution of the wooden dwelling was complete." Only three further developments were needed for primitive man to create all the essentials of economic civilization: the mechanisms of trans- port, the processes of trade, and the medium of exchange. The porter carrying his load from a modem plane pictures the earliest and latest stages in the history of transportation. In the beginning, doubtless, man was his own beast of burden, unless he was married; to this day, for the most part, in southern and eastern Asia, man is wagon and donkey and all. Then he invented ropes, levers, and pulleys; he conquered and loaded the animal; he made the first sledge by haying his cattle draw along the ground long branches bearing his goods;"" he put logs as rollers under the sledge; he cut cross-sections of the log, and made the greatest of all mechanical inven- tions, the wheel; he put wheels under the sledge and made a cart. Other logs he bound together as rafts, or dug into canoes; and the streams be- came his most convenient avenues of transport. By land he went first through trackless fields and hills, then by trails, at last by roads. He studied the stars, and guided his caravans across mountains and deserts by tracing The American Indians, content with this device, never used the wheel. CHAP.II) ECONOMIC ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 15 his route in the sky. He paddled, rowed or sailed his way bravely from island to island, and at last spanned oceans to spread his modest culture from continent to continent. Here, too, the main problems were solved before written history began. Since human skills and natural resources are diversely and unequally distributed, a people may be enabled, by the development of specific talents, or by its proximity to needed materials, to produce certain articles more cheaply than its neighbors. Of such articles it makes more than it con- sumes, and offers its surplus to other peoples in exchange for their own; this is the origin of trade. The Chibcha Indians of Colombia exported the rock salt that abounded in their territory, and received in return the cereals that could not be raised on their barren soil. Certain American Indian villages were almost entirely devoted to making arrow-heads; some in New Guinea to making pottery; some in Africa to blacksmithing, or to making boats or lances. Such specializing tribes or villages sometimes ac- quired the names of their industry (Smith, Fisher, Potter. ), and these names were in time attached to specializing families...... Trade in surpluses was at first by an interchange of gifts; even in our calculating days a present (if only a meal) sometimes precedes or seals a trade. The ex- change was facilitated by war, robbery, tribute, fines, and compensation; goods had to be kept moving! Gradually an orderly system of barter grew up, and trading posts, markets and bazaars were established-occa- sionally, then periodically, then permanently-where those who had some article in excess might offer it for some article of need.8L For a long time commerce was purely such exchange, and centuries passed before a circulating medium of value was invented to quicken trade. A Dyak might be seen wandering for days through a bazaar, with a ball of beeswax in his hand, seeking a customer who could offer him in return something that he might more profitably use." The earliest mediums of exchange were articles universally in demand, which anyone would take in payment: dates, salt, skins, furs, ornaments, implements, weapons; in such traffic two knives equaled one pair of stockings, all three equaled a blanket, all four equaled a gun, all five equaled a horse; two elk-teeth equaled one pony, and eight ponies equaled a wife." There is hardly any thing that has not been employed as money by some people at some time: beans, fish-hooks, shells, pearls, beads, cocoa seeds, tea, pepper, at last sheep, pigs, cows, and slaves. Cattle were a convenient standard of value and medium of exchange among hunters and herders; they bore interest 16 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. n through breeding, and they were easy to carry, since they transported themselves. Even in Homer's days men and things were valued in terms of cattle: the armor of Diomedes was wonh nine head of cattle, a skilful slave was worth four. The Romans used kindred words-pecus and pecunia-for cattle and money, and placed the image of an ox upon their early coins. Our own words capital, chattel and cattle go back through the French to the Latin capitale, meaning property: and this in turn derives from caput, meaning head-i.e., of cattle. When metals were mined they slowly replaced other articles as standards of value; copper, bronze, iron, finally-because of their convenient representation of great wonh in little space and weight-silver and gold, became the money of mankind. The advance from token goods to a metallic currency does not seem to have been made by primitive men; it was left for the historic civilizations to invent coinage and credit, and so, by further facilitating the exchange of surpluses, to increase again the wealth and comfort of man.'" III. ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION Primitive communism-Causes of its disappearance-Origins of private property-Slavery-Classes Trade was the great disturber of the primitive world, for until it came, bringing money and profit in its wake, there was no property, and there- fore little government. In the early stages of economic development property was limited for the most part to things personally used; the property sense applied so strongly to such articles that they (even the wife) were often buried with their owner; it applied so weakly to things not personally used that in their case the sense of property, far from being innate, required perpetual reinforcement and inculcation. Almost everywhere, among primitive peoples, land was owned by the community. The Nonh American Indians, the natives of Peru, the Chittagong Hill tribes of India, the Borneans and South Sea Islanders seem to have owned and tilled the soil in common, and to have shared the fruits together. "The land," said the Omaha Indians, "is like water and wind- what cannot be sold." In Samoa the idea of selling land was unknown prior to the coming of the white man. Professor Rivers found communism in land still existing in Melanesia and Polynesia; and in inner Liberia it may be observed today." Only less widespread was communism in food. It was usual among CHAP.II) ECONOMIC ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 17 "savages" for the man who had food to share it with the man who had none, for travelers to be fed at any home they chose to stop at on their way, and for communities harassed with drought to be maintained by their neighbors." If a man sat down to his meal in the woods he was expected to call loudly for some one to come and share it with him, before he might justly eat alone." When Turner told a Samoan about the poor in London the "savage" asked in astonishment: "How is it? No food? No friends? No house to live in? Where did he grow? Are there no houses belonging to his friends?"88 The hungry Indian had but to ask to receive; no matter how small the supply was, food was given him if he needed it; "no one can want food while there is com anywhere in the town."" Among the Hottentots it was the custom for one who had more than others to share his surplus till all were equal. White travelers in Africa before the advent of civilization noted that a present of food or other valuables to a "black man" was at once distributed; so that when a suit of clothes was given to one of them the donor soon found the recipient wearing the hat, a friend the trousers, another friend the coat. The Eskimo hunter had no personal right to his catch; it had to be divided among the inhabitants of the village, and tools and provisions were the common property of all. The Nonh American Indians were described by Captain Carver as "strangers to all distinctions of property, except in the articles of domestic use... They are extremely liberal to each other, and supply the deficiencies of their friends with any superfluity of their own." "What is extremely surprising," reports a missionary, "is to see them treat one another with a gentleness and consideration which one does not find among common people in the most civilized nations. This, doubt- less, arises from the fact that the words 'mine' and 'thine,' which St. Chrysostom says extinguish in our hearts the fire of charity and kindle that of greed, are unknown to these savages." "I have seen them," says another observer, "divide game among themselves when they sometimes had many shares to make; and cannot recollect a single instance of their falling into a dispute or finding fault with the distribution as being unequal or otherwise objectionable. They would rather lie down themselves on an empty stomach than have it laid to their charge that they neglected to satisfy the needy.... They look upon themselves as but one great family."" Why did this primitive communism disappear as men rose to what we, with some partiality, call civilization? Sumner believed that communism  --------- -------- -- ---- 18 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP.n proved unbiological, a handicap in the struggle for existence; that it gave insufficient stimulus to inventiveness, industry and thrift; and that the failure to reward the more able, and punish the less able, made for a level- ing of capacity which was hostile to growth or to successful competition with other groups." Loskiel reported some Indian tribes of the northeast as "so lazy that they plant nothing themselv~, but rely entirely upon the expectation that others will not refuse to share their produce with them. Since the industrious thus enjoy no more of the fruits of their labor than the idle, they plant less every year."" Darwin thought that the perfect equality among the Fuegians was fatal to any hope of their becoming civilized;'" or, as the Fuegians might have put it, civilization would have been fatal to their equality. Communism brought a certain security to all who survived the diseases and accidents due to the poverty and ignorance of primitive society; but it did not lift them out of that poverty. In- dividualism brought wealth, but it brought, also, insecurity and slavery; it stimulated the latent powers of superior men, but it intensified the com- petition of life, and made men feel bitterly a poverty which, when all shared it alike, had seemed to oppress none.... Communism could survive more easily in societies where men were always on the move, and danger and want were ever present. Hunters and herders had no need of private property in land; but when agriculture became the settled life of men it soon appeared that the land was most fruitfully tilled when the rewards of careful husbandry accrued to the family that had provided it. Consequently-since there is a natural selec- tion of institutions and ideas as well as of organisms and groups-the passage from hunting to agriculture brought a change from tribal property to family property; the most economical unit of production became the Perhaps one reason why communism tends to appear chiefly at the beginning of civili- zations is that it flourishes most readily in times of dearth, when the common danger of starvation fuses the individual into the group. When abundance comes, and the danger subsides, social cohesion is lessened, and individualism increases; communism ends where luxury begins. As the life of a society becomes more complex, and the division of labor differentiates men into diverse occupations and trades, it becomes more and more unlikely that all these services will be equally valuable to the group; inevitably those whose greater ability enables them to perform the more vital functions will take more than their equal share of the rising wealth of the group. Every growing civilization is a scene of multiply- ing inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity to produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at last a bursting point where the poor have nothing to lose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution. Hence the dream of communism lurks in every modem society as a racial memory of a CHAP.n) ECONOMIC ~LEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 19 unit of ownership. As the family took on more and more a patriarchal form, with authority centralized in the oldest male, property became increasingly individualized,.and personal bequest arose. Frequently an enterprising individual would leave the family haven, adventure beyond the traditional boundaries, and by hard labor reclaim land from the forest, the jungle or the marsh; such land he guarded jealously as his own, and in the end society recognized his right, and another form of individual property began.... As the pressure of population increased, and older lands were exhausted, such reclamation went Qn in a widening circle, until, in the more complex societies, individual ownership became the order of the day. The invention of mon~y cooperated with these factors by facili- tating the accumulation, transport and transmission of property. The old tribal rights and traditions reasserted themselves in the technical owner- ship of the soil by the village community or the king, and in periodical redistributions of the land; but after an epoch of natur~ oscillation between the old and the new, private property established itself definitely as the basic economic institution of historical society. Agriculture, while generating civilization, led not only to private prop- erty but to slavery. In purely hunting communities slavery had been unknown; the hunter's wives and children sufficed to do the menial work. The men alternated between the excited activity of hunting or war, and the exhausted lassitude of satiety or peace. The characteristic laziness of primitive peoples had its origin, presumably, in this habit of slowly re- cuperating from the fatigue of battle or the chase; it was not so much laziness as rest. To transform this spasmodic activity into regular work two things were needed: the routine of tillage, and the organization of labor. Such organization remains loose and spontaneous where men are work- ing for themselves; where they work for others, the organization of labor simpler and more equal life; and where inequality or insecurity rises beyond sufferance, men welcome a return to a condition which they idealize by recalling its equality and. forgetting its poverty. Periodically the land gets itself redistributed, legally or not, whether by the Gracchi in Rome, the Jacobins in. France, or the Communists in Russia; - periodically wealth is redistributed, whether by the violent. confiscation of property, or by confiscatory taxation of incomes and bequests. Then the race for wealth, goods and power begins again, and the pyramid of ability takes form once more; under whatever laws may be enacted the abler man manages somehow to get the richer soil, the better place, the lion's share; soon he is strong enough to dominate the state and rewrite or interpret the laws; and in time the inequality is as great as before. In this aspect all economic history is the slow heart-beat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of naturally concentrating wealth and naturally explosive revoiution. 10 TH E STORY 0 F CIVIL I ZATION (CHAP. II depends in the last analysis upon force. The rise of agriculture and the inequality of men led to the employment of the socially weak by the socially strong; not till then did it occur to the victor in war that the only good prisoner is a live one. Butchery and cannibalism lessened, slavery grew." It was a great moral improvement when men ceased to kill or eat their fellowmen, and merely made them slaves. A similar develop- ment on a larger scale may be seen today, when a nation victorious in war no longer exterminates the enemy, but enslaves it with indemnities. Once slavery had been established and had proved profitable, it was extended by condemning to it defaulting debtors and obstinate criminals, and by raids undertaken specifically to capture slaves. War helped to make slavery, and slavery helped to make war. Probably it was through centuries of slavery that our race acquired its traditions and habits of toil. No one would do any hard or persistent work if he could avoid it without physical, economic or social penalty. Slavery became part of the discipline by which man was prepared for industry. Indirecdy it furthered civilization, in so far as it increased wealth and-for a minority-created leisure. After some centuries men took it for granted; Aristode argued for slavery as natural and inevitable, and St. Paul gave his benediction to what must have seemed, by his time, a divinely ordained institution. Gradually, through agriculture and slavery, through the division of labor and the inherent diversity of men, the comparative equality of natural society was replaced by inequality and class divisions. "In the primitive group we find as a rule no distinction between slave and free, no serfdom, no caste, and lime if any distinction between chief and followers."'" Slowly the increasing complexity of tools and trades sub- jected the unskilled or weak to the skilled or strong; every invention was a new weapon in the hands of the strong, and further strengthened them in their mastery and use of the weak.'" Inheritance added· superior oppor- tunity to superior possessions, and stratified once homogeneous societies into a maze of classes and castes. Rich and poor became disruptively conscious of wealth and poverty; the class war began to run as a red thread through all history; and the state arose as an indispensable instru- ment for the regulation of classes, the protection of property, the waging of war, and the organization of peace. So in our time that Mississippi of inventions which we call the Industrial Revolution has en(mnously intensified the natural inequality of men.  CHAPTER III The Political Elements of Civilization I. THE ORIGINS OF GOVERNMENT The unsocial instinct-Primitive anarchism-The clan and the tribe-The king-War M AN is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imitation, and the compulsion of circumstance; he does not love society so much as he fears solitude. He combines with other men because isolation endangers him, and because there are many things that can be done better together than alone; in his heart he is a solitary individual, pitted heroically against the world. H the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. H he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous. In the simplest societies there is hardly any government. Primitive hunters tend to accept regulation only when they join the hunting pack and prepare for action. The Bushmen usually live in solitary families; the Pygmies of Africa and the simplest natives of Australia admit only temporarily of political organization, and then scatter away to their family groups; the Tasmanians had no chiefs, no laws, no regular govern- ment; the Veddahs of Ceylon formed small circles according to family relationship, but had no government; the Kuhus of Sumatra "live without men in authority," every family governing itself; the Fuegians are seldom more than twelve together; the T ungus associate sparingly in groups of ten tents or so; the Australian "horde" is seldom larger than sixty souls: In such cases association and cooperation are for special purposes, like hunting; they do not rise to any permanent political order. The earliest form of continuous social organization was the clan-a group of related families occupying a common tract of land, having the same 21 -~~--~ --------- THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. m totem, and governed by the same customs or laws. When a group of clans united under the same chief the tribe was formed, and became the second step on the way to the state. But this was a slow development; many groups had no chiefs at all,' and many more seem to have tolerated them only in time of war" Instead of democracy being a wilted feather in the cap of our own age, it appears at its best in several primitive groups where such government as exists is merely the rule of the family-heads of the clan, and no arbitrary authority is allowed.' The Iroquois and Delaware Indians recognized no laws or restraints beyond the natural order of the family and the clan; their chiefs had modest powers, which might at any time be ended by the elders of the tribe. The Omaha Indians were ruled by a Council of Seven, who deliberated until they came to a unanimous agreement; add this to the famous League of the Iroquois, by which many tribes bound themselves-and honored their pledge-to keep the peace, and one sees no great gap between these "savages" and the modern states that bind themselves revocably to peace in the League of Nations. It is war that makes the chief, the king and the state, just as it is these that make war. In Samoa the chief had power during war, but at other times no one paid much attention to him. The Dyaks had no other government than that of each family by its head; in case of strife they chose their bravest warrior to lead them, and obeyed him stricdy; but once the conflict was ended they literally sent him about his business" In the intervals of peace it was the priest, or head magician, who had most authority and influence; and when at last a permanent kingship developed as the usual mode of government among a majority of tribes, it combined- and derived from-the offices of warrior, father and priest. Societies are ruled by two powers: in peace by the word, in crises by the sword; force is used only when indoctrination fails. Law and myth have gone hand in hand throughout the centuries, cooperating or taking turns in the manage- ment of mankind; until our own day no state dared separate them, and perhaps tomorrow they will be united again. How did war lead to the state? It is not that men were naturally in- clined to war. Some lowly peoples are quite peaceful; and the Eskimos could not understand why Europeans of the same pacific faith should hunt one another like seals and steal one another's land. "How well it is"- they apostrophized their soil-"that you are covered with ice and snow! How well it is that if in your rocks there are gold and silver, for which the Christians are so greedy, it is covered with so much snow that they CHAP. III) POLITICAL ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 2.3 cannot get at it! Your unfruitfulness makes us happy, and saves us from molestation."" Nevertheless, primitive life was incarnadined with inter- mittent war. Hunters fought for happy hunting grounds still rich in prey, herders fought for new pastures for their flocks, tillers fought for virgin soil; all of them, at times, fought to avenge a murder, or to harden and discipline their youth, or to interrupt the monotony of life, or for simple plunder and rape; very rarely for religion. There were institutions and customs for the limitation of slaughter, as among ourselves-certain hours, days, weeks or months during which no gentleman savage would kill; certain functionaries who were inviolable, certain roads neutralized, certain markets and asylums set aside for peace; and the League of the Iroquois maintained the "Great Peace" for three hundred years.' But for the most part war was the favorite instrument of natural selection among primitive nations and groups. Its results were endless. It acted as a ruthless eliminator of weak peoples, ~md raised the level of the race in courage, violence, cruelty, intelligence and skill. It stimulated invention, made weapons that became useful tools, and arts of war that became arts of peace. (How many railroads today begin in strategy and end in trade!) Above all, war dissolved primitive communism and anarchism, introduced organization and discipline, and led to the enslavement of prisoners, the subordination of classes, and the growth of government. Property was the mother, war was the father, of the state. II. THE STATE As the organization of force-Tbe village community-The psycbological aides of the state "A herd of blonde beasts of prey," says Nietzsche, "a race of con- querors and masters, which with all its warlike organization and all its organizing power pounces with its terrible claws upon a population, in numbers possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, such is the origin of the state. m "The state as distinct from tribal organization," says Lester Ward, "begins with the conquest of one race by another."· "Everywhere," says oppenheimer, "we find some warlike tribe breaking through the -boundaries of some less warlike people, settling down as nobility, and founding its state."'· "Violence," says Ratzenhofer, "is the agent which has created the state."n The state, says Gumplowicz, is the result of conquest, the establishment of the victors as a ruling caste --------------------------- -- THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. In over the vanquished.l I "The state," says Sumner, "is the product of force, and exists by force. ma This violent subjection is usually of a settled agricultural group by a tribe of hunters and herders.u For agriculture teaches men pacific ways, inures them to a prosaic routine, and exhausts them with the long day's toil; such men accumulate wealth, but they forget the arts and sentiments of war. The hunter and the herder, accustomed to danger and skilled in killing, look upon war as but another form of the chase, and hardly more perilous; when the woods cease to give them abundant game, or flocks decrease through a thinning pasture, they look with envy upon the ripe fields of the village, they invent with modem ease some plausible reason for attack, they invade, conquer, enslave and rule.... The state is a late development, and hardly appears before the time of written history. For it presupposes a change in the very principle of social organization-from kinship to domination; and in primitive societies the former is the rule. Domination succeeds best where it binds diverse natural groups into an advantageous unity of order and trade. Even such conquest is seldom lasting except where the progress of invention has strengthened the strong by putting into their hands new tools and weapons for suppress-.ing revolt. In permanent conquest the principle of domination tends to be- come concealed and almost unconscious; the French who rebelled in 1789 hardly realized, until Camille Desmoulins reminded them, that the aris- tocracy that had ruled them for a thousand years had come from Germany and had subjugated them by force. Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft, in the hands of the robber's grandchildren, becomes sacred and inviolable property. Every state begins in compulsion; but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right; for however the state begins, it soon becomes an in- dispensable prop to order. As trade unites clans and tribes, relations spring up that depend not on kinship but on contiguity, and therefore require an artificial principle of regulation. The village community may serve as an example: it displaced tribe and clan as the mode of local organization, and It is a law that holds only for early societies, since under more complex conditions a variety of other factors-greater wealth, better weapons, higher intelligence-contribute to determine the issue. So Egypt was conquered not only by Hyksos, Ethiopian, Arab and Turkish nomads, but also by the settled civilizations of Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome and England-though not until these nations had become hunters and nomads on an imperial- istic scale. CHAP. III) POL I TIC ALE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 15 achieved a simple, almost democratic government of small areas through a concourse of family-heads; but the very existence and number of such com- munities created a need for ~ome external force that could regulate their interrelations and weave them into a larger economic web. The state, ogre though it was in its origin, supplied this need; it became not merely an or- ganized force, but an instrument for adjusting the interests of the thousand conflicting groups that constitute a complex society. It spread the tentacles of its power and law over wider and wider areas, and though it made external war more destructive than before, it extended and maintained internal peace; the state may be defined as internal peace for external war. Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all. What an inter- regnum meant to a society accustomed to government may be judged from the behavior of the Baganda, among whom, when the king died, every man had to arm himself; for the lawless ran riot, killing and plundering every- where.1IS "Without autocratic rule," as Spencer said, "the evolution of so- ciety could not have commenced. m.. A state which should rely upon force alone would soon fall, for though men are naturally gullible they are also naturally obstinate, and power, like taxes, succeeds best when it is invisible and indirect. Hence the state, in order to maintain itself, used and forged many instruments of in- doctrination-the family, the church, the school-to build in the soul of the citizen a habit of patriotic loyalty and pride. This saved a thousand policemen, and prepared the public mind for that docile coherence which is indispensable in war. Above all, the ruling minority sought more and more to transform its forcible mastery into a body of law which, while consolidating that mastery, would afford a welcome security and order to the people, and would recognize the rights of the "subject"· sufficiently to win his acceptance of the law and his adherence to the State. III. LAW Lflw-lessness-Lflw find custom-Revenge-Fines-Courts-Ordefll -The duel-Punishment-Primitive freedom Law comes with property, marriage and government; the lowest societies manage to get along without it. "I have lived with communities of savages in South America and in the East," said Alfred Russel Wallace, "who Note how this word betrays the origin of the state.  ------------------------- 26 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. III have no law or law-courts but the public opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellows, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. In such a com- munity all are nearly equal."" Herman Melville writes similarly of the Marquesas Islanders: "During the time I have lived among the Typees no one was ever put upon his trial for any violence to the public. Every- thing went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associationS' of mortals in Christendom."lS The old Russian Government established courts of law in the Aleutian Islands, but in fifty years those courts found no employment. "Crime and offenses," reports Brinton, "were so infre- quent under the social system of the Iroquois that they can scarcely be said to have had a penal code."19 Such are the ideal-perhaps the idealized- conditions for whose return the anarchist perennially pines. Certain amendments must be made to these descriptions. Natural socie- ties are comparatively free from law first because they are ruled by cus- toms as rigid and inviolable as any law; and secondly because crimes of violence, in the beginning, are considered to be private matters, and are left to bloody personal revenge. Underneath all the phenomena of society is the great terra firma of cus- tom, that bedrock of time-hallowed modes of thought and action which provides a society with some measure of steadiness and order through all absence, changes, and interruptions of law. Custom gives the same stability to the group that heredity and instinct give to the species, and habit to the individual. It is the routine that keeps men sane; for if there were no grooves along which thought and action might move with unconscious ease, the mind would be perpetually hesitant, and would soon take refuge in lunacy. A law of economy works in instinct and habit, in custom and convention: the most convenient mode of response to repeated stimuli or traditional sit- uations is automatic response. Thought and innovation are disturbances of regularity, and are tolerated only for indispensable readaptations, or promised gold. When to this natural basis of custom a supernatural sanction is added by religion, and the ways of one's ancestors are also the will of the gods, then custom becomes stronger than law, and subtracts substantially from primi- tive freedom. To violate law is to win the admiration of half the populace, who secretly envy anyone who can outwit this ancient enemy; to violate custom is to incur almost universal hostility. For custom rises out of the people, whereas law is forced upon them from above; law is usually a de- CHAP. III) POLITICAL ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 27 cree of the master, but custom is the natural selection of those modes of action that have been found most convenient in the experience of the group. Law partly replaces custom when the state replaces the natural order of the family, the clan, the tribe, and the village community; it more fully replaces custom when writing appears, and laws graduate from a code carried down in the memory of elders and priests into a system of legislation pro- claimed in written tables. But the replacement is never complete; in the determination and judgment of human conduct custom remains to the end the force behind the law, the power behind the throne, the last "magis- trate of men's lives." The first stage in the evolution of law is personal revenge. "Vengeance is mine," says the primitive individual; "I will repay." Among the Indian tribes of Lower California every man was his own policeman, and admin- istered justice in the form of such vengeance as he was strong enough to take. So in many early societies the murder of A by B led to the murder of B by A's son or friend C, the murder of C by B's son or friend D, and so on perhaps to the end of the alphabet; we may find examples among the purest-blooded American families of today. This principle of revenge persists throughout the history of law: it appears in the Lex Talionis*-or Law of Retaliation-embodied in Roman Law; it plays a large role in the Code of Hammurabi, and in the "Mosaic" demand of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"; and it lurks behind most legal punishments even in our day. The second step toward law and civilization in the treatment of crime was the substitution of damages for revenge. Very often the chief, to maintain internal harmony, used his power or influence to have the re- vengeful family content itself with gold or goods instead of blood. Soon a regular tariff arose, determining how much must be paid for an eye, a tooth, an arm, or a life; Hammurabi legislated extensively in such terms. The Abyssinians were so meticulous in this regard that when a boy fell from a tree upon his companion and killed him, the judges decided that the bereaved mother should send another of her sons into the tree to fall upon the culprit's neck.- The penalties assessed in cases of composi- tion might vary with the sex, age and rank of the offender and the injured; among the Fijians, for example, petty larceny by a common man was con- sidered a more heinous crime than murder by a chief.lIl Throughout the A phrase apparendy invented by Cicero. 18 TH E STORY OF CI VIL I ZATION (CHAP. III history of law the magnitude of the crime has been lessened by the magni- tude of the criminal. «0 Since these fines or compositions, paid to avert revenge, required some adjudication of offenses and damages, a third step towards law was taken by the formation of courts; the chief or the elders or the priests sat in judgment to settle the conflicts of their people. Such courts were not always judgment seats; often they were boards of volun- tary conciliation, which arranged some amicable settlement of the dis- pute.t For many centuries, and among many peoples, resort to courts remained optional; and where the offended party was dissatisfied with the judgment rendered, he was still free to seek personal revenge." In many cases disputes were settled by a public contest between the parties, varying in bloodiness from a harmless boxing-match-as among the wise Eskimos-to a duel to the death. Frequently the primitive mind re- sorted to an ordeal not so much on the medieval theory that a deity would reveal the culprit as in the hope that the ordeal, however unjust, would end a feud that might otherwise embroil the tribe for generations. Some- times accuser and accused were asked to choose between two bowls of food of which one was poisoned; the wrong party might be poisoned (usually not beyond redemption), but then the dispute was ended, since both parties ordinarily believed in the righteousness of the ordeal. Among some tribes it was the custom for a native who acknowledged his guilt to hold out his leg and permit the injured party to pierce it with a spear. Or the accused submitted to having spears thrown at him Ly his accusers; if they all missed him he was declared innocent; if he was hit, even by one, he was adjudged guilty, and the affair was closed.1Il! From such early forms the ordeal persisted through the laws of Moses and Hammurabi and down into the Middle Ages; the duel, which is one form of the ordeal, and which historians thought dead, is being revived in our own day. So brief and narrow, in some respects, is the span between primitive and modern man; so short is the history of civilization. The fourth advance in the growth of law was the assumption, by the chief or the state, of the obligation to prevent and punish wrongs. It is but a step from settling ~isputes and punishing offenses to making some Perhaps an exception should be made in the case of the Brahmans, who, by the Code of Manu (VIII, 336-8), were called upon to bear greater punishments for the same crime than members of lower castes; but this regulation was well honored in the breach. t Some of our most modem cities are trying to revive this ancient time-saving institu- tion. CHAP. III) P Q LIT I CAL E L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 29 effon to prevent them. So the chief becomes not merely a judge but a lawgiver; and to the general body of "common law" derived from the customs of the group is added a body of "positive law," derived from the decrees of the government; in the one case the laws grow up, in the other they are handed down. In either case the laws carry with them the mark of their ancestry, and reek with the vengeance which they tried to replace. Primitive punishments are cruel," because primitive society feels insecure; as social organization becomes more stable, punishments become less severe. In general the individual has fewer "rights" in natural society than under civilization. Everywhere man is born in chains: the chains of heredity, of environment, of custom, and of law. The primitive in- dividual moves always within a web of regulations incredibly stringent and detailed; a thousand tabus restrict his action, a thousand terrors limit his will. The natives of New Zealand were apparently without laws, but in actual fact rigid custom ruled every aspect of their lives. Unchangeable and unquestionable conventions determined the sitting and the rising, the standing and the walking, the eating, drinking and sleeping of the natives of Bengal. The individual was hardly recognized as a separate entity in natural society; what existed was the family and the clan, the tribe and the village community; it was these that owned land and exercised power. Only with the coming of private property, which gave him economic authority, and of the state, which gave him a legal status and defined rights, did the individual begin to stand out as a distinct reality.1II RightS do not come to us from nature, which knows no rights except cunning and strength; they are privileges assured to individuals by the community as advantageous to the common good. Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization. IV. THE FAMILY Its function in civilization-The clan vs. the family-Growth of parental care-Unimportance of th~ father-Separation of the sexes-Mother-right-Status of 'Woman-Her occupa- tions - Her economic achievements - The patri- archate-The subjection of 'Woman & the basic needs of man are hunger and love, so the fundamental func- tions of social organization are economic provision and biological main- tenanl:e; a stream of children is as vital as a continuity of food. To insti- -~-------- ~~~~~~~- 30 TH E STORY OF CIVIL I ZA TI ON (CHAP. III tutions which seek material welfare and political order, society always adds institutions for the perpetuation of the race. Until the state-towards the dawn of the historic civilizations-becomes the central and permanent source of social·order, the clan undertakes the delicate task of regulating the relations between the sexes and between the generations; and even after the state has been established, the essential government of mankind remains in that most deep-rooted of all historic institutions, the family. It is highly improbable that the first human beings lived in isolated fami- lies, even in the hunting stage; for the inferiority of man in physiological organs of defense would have left such families a prey to marauding beasts. Usually, in nature, those organisms that are poorly equipped for individual defense live in groups, and find in united action a means of survival in a world bristling with tusks and claws and impenetrable hides. Presumably it was so with man; he saved himself by solidarity in the hunting-pack and the clan. When economic relations and political mastery replaced kinship as the principle of social organization, the clan lost its position as the sub- structure of society; at the bottom it was supplanted by the family, at the top it was superseded by the state. Government took over the problem of maintaining order, while the family assumed the tasks of reorganizing indus- try and carrying on the race. Among the lower animals there is no care of progeny; consequently eggs are spawned in great number, and some survive and develop while the great majority are eaten or destroyed. Most fish lay a million eggs per year; a few species of fish show a modest solicitude for, their offspring, and find half a hundred eggs per year sufficient for their purposes. Birds care better for their young, and hatch from five to twelve eggs yearly; mammals, whose very name suggests parental care, master the earth with an average of three young per female per year."" Throughout the animal world fertility and destruction decrease as parental care increases; through- out the human world the birth rate and the death rate fall together as civilization rises. Better family care makes possible a longer adolescence, in which the young receive fuller training and' development before they are flung upon their own resources; and the lowered birth rate releases human energy for other activities than reproduction. Since it was the mother who fulfilled most of the parental functions, the family was at first (so far as we can pierce the mists of history) organ- ized on the assumption that the position of the man in the family was CHAP. III) POL I TIC ALE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 31 superficial and incidental, while that of the woman was fundamental and supreme. In some existmg tribes, and probably in the earliest human groups the physiological role of the male in reproduction appears to have escaped notice quite as completely as among animals, who rut and mate and breed with happy unconsciousness of cause and effect. The Trobriand Islanders attribute pregnancy not to any commerce of the sexes, but to the entrance of a baloma, or ghost, into the woman. Usually the ghost enters while the woman is bathing; "a fish has bitten me," the girl reports. "When," says Malinowski, "I asked who was the father of an illegitimate child, there was only one answer-that there was no father, since the girl was unmarried. If, then, I asked, in quite plain terms, who was the physiological father, the question was not understood.... The answer would be: 'It is a baloma who gave her this child.''' These islanders had a strange belief that the baloma would more readily enter a girl given to loose relations with men; nevertheless, in choosing precautions against pregnancy, the girls preferred to avoid bathing at high tide rather than to forego relations with men."" It is a delightful story, which must have proved a great convenience in the embarrassing aftermath of generosity; it would be still more delightful if it had been invented for anthropologists as well as for husbands. In Melanesia intercourse was recognized as the cause of pregnancy, but unmarried girls insisted on blaming some article in their diet." Even where the function of the male was understood, sex relationships were so irregular that it was never a simple matter to determine the father. Con- sequently the quite primitive mother seldom bothered to inquire into the paternity of her child; it belonged to her, and she belonged not to a huS'- band but to her father-or her brother-and the clan; it was with these that she remained, and these were the only male relatives whom her child would know."" The bonds of affection between brother and sister were usually stronger than between husband and wife. The husband, in many cases, remained in the family and clan of his mother, and saw his wife only as a clandestine visitor. Even in classical civilization the brother was dearer than the husband: it was her brother, not her husband, that the wife of Intaphernes saved from the wrath of Darius; it was for her brother, not for her husband, that Antigone sacrificed herself." "The notion that a man's wife is the nearest person in the world to him is a relatively modern notion, and one which is restricted to a comparatively small part uf the human race."" 32 THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. III So slight is the relation between father and children in primitive society that in a great number of tribes the sexes live apart. In Australia and British New Guinea, in Mrica and Micronesia, in Assam and Burma, among the Aleuts, Eskimos and Samoyeds, and here and there over the earth, tribes may still be found in which there is no visible family life; the men live apart from the women, and visit them only now and then; even the meals are taken separately. In northern Papua it is not considered right for a man to be seen associating socially with a woman, even if she is the mother of his children. In Tahiti "family life is quite unknown." Out of this segregation of the sexes come those secret fraternities-usually of males-which appear everywhere among primitive races, and serve most often as a refuge against women." They resemble our modem fraternities in another point-their hierarchical organization. The simplest form of the family, then, was the woman and her children, living with her mother or her brother in the clan; such an arrangement was a natural outgrowth of the animal family of the mother and her litter, and of the biological ignorance of primitive man. An alternative early form was "matrilocal marriage": the husband left his clan and went to live with the clan and family of his wife, laboring for her or with her in the service of her parents. Descent, in such cases, was traced through the female line, and inheritance was through the mother; sometimes even the kingship passed down through her rather than through the male.sa This "mother-right" was not a "matriarchate"-it did not imply the rule of women over men." Even when property was transmitted through the woman she had little power over it; she was used as a means of tracing relationships which, through primitive laxity or freedom, were otherwise obscure." It-is true that in any system of society the woman exercises a certain authority, rising naturally out of her importance in the home, out of her function as the dispenser of food, and out of the need that the male has of her, and her power to refuse him. It is also true that there have been, occasionally, women rulers among some South Mrican tribes; that in the Pelew Islands the chief did nothing of consequence without the advice of a council of elder women; that among the Iroquois the squaws had an equal right, with the men, of speaking and voting in the tribal council;" and that among the Seneca Indians women held great power, even to the selection of the chief. But these are rare and exceptional cases. All in all the position of woman in early societies was one of sub- jection verging upon slavery. Her periodic disability, her unfamiliarity CHAP. III) POL I TIC ALE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 33 with weapons, the biological absorption of her strength in carrying, nurs- ing and rearing children, handicapped her in the war of the sexes, and doomed her to a subordinate status in all but the very lowest and the very highest societies. Nor was her position necessarily to rise with the develop- ment of civilization; it was destined to be lower in Periclean Greece than among the North American Indians; it was to rise and fall with her strategic importance rather than with the culture and morals of men. In the hunting stage she did almost all the work except the actuai capture of the game. In return for exposing himself to the hardships and risks of the chase, the male rested magnificently for the greater part of the year. The woman bore her children abundantly, reared them, kept the hut or home in repair, gathered food in woods and fields, cooked, cleaned, and made the clothing and the boots.'" Because the men, when the tribe moved, had to be ready at any moment to fight off attack, they carried nothing but their weapons; the women carried all the rest. Bush- women were used as servants and beasts of burden; if they proved too weak to keep up with the march, they were abandoned.as \Vhen the natives of the Lower Murray saw pack oxen they thought that these were the wives of the whites.89 The differences in strength which now divide the sexes hardly existed in those days, and are now environmental rather than innate: woman, apart from her biological disabilities, was almost the equal of man in stature, endurance, resourcefulness and courage; she was not yet an ornament, a thing of beauty, or a sexual toy; she was a robust animal, able to perform arduous work for long hours, and, if necessary, to fight to the death for her children or her clan. "Women," said a chieftain of the Chippewas, "are created for work. One of them can ~raw or carry as much as two men. They also pitch our tents, make our clothes, mend them, and keep us warm at night.. We absolutely cannot get along without them on a journey. They do everything and cost only a little; for since they must be forever cooking, they can be satisfied in lean times by licking their fingers."'" Most economic advances, in early society, were made by the woman rather than the man. While for centuries he clung to his ancient ways of hunting and herding, she developed agriculture near the camp, and those busy arts of the home which were to become the most important industries of later days. From the "wool-bearing tree," as the Greeks called the cotton plant, the primitive woman rolled thread and made cotton cloth." It was she, apparently, who developed sewing, weaving, basketry, pottery,  THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (CHAP. In woodworking, and building; and in many cases it was she who carried on primitive trade." It was she who developed the home, slowly adding man to the list of her domesticated animals, and training him in those social dispositions and amenities which are the psychological basis and cement of civilization. But as agriculture became more complex and brought larger rewards, the stronger sex took more and more of it into its own hands." The growth of cattle-breeding gave the man a new source of wealth, stability and power; even agriculture, which must have seemed so prosaic to the mighty Nimrods of antiquity, was at last accepted by the wandering male, and the economic leadership which tillage had for a time given to women was· wrested from them by the men. The application to agri- culture of those very animals that woman had first domesticated led to her replacement by the male in the control of the fields; the advan~e from the hoe to the plough put a premium upon physical strength, and enabled the man to assert his supremacy. The growth of transmissible property in cattle and in the products of the soil led to the sexual subordination of woman, for the male now demanded from her that fidelity which he thought would enable him to pass on his accumulations to children pre- sumably his own. Gradually the man had his way: fatherhood became recognized, and property began to descend through the male; mother- right yielded to father-right; and the patriarchal family, with the oldest male at its head, became the economic, legal, political and moral unit of society. The gods, who had been mostly feminine, became great bearded patriarchs, with such harems as ambitious men dreamed of in their solitude. This passage to the patriarchal-father-ruled-family was fatal to the position of woman. In all essential aspects she and her children became the property first of her father or oldest brother, then of her husband. She was bought in marriage precisely as a slave was bought in the market. She was bequeathed as property when her husband died; and in some places (New Guinea, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, India, etc.) she was strangled and buried with her dead husband, or was expected to commit suicide, in order to attend upon him in the other world." The father had now the right to treat, give, sell or lend his wives and daughters very much as he pleased, subject only to the social condemnation of other fathers exercising the same rights. While the male reserved the privilege of extending his sexual favors beyond his home, the woman-under patri- CHAP. III) POL I TIC ALE L E MEN T S 0 F C I V I LIZ A T ION 35 archal institutions-was vowed to complete chastity before marriage, and complete fidelity after it. The double standard was born. The general subjection of woman which had existed in the hunting stage, and had persisted, in diminished form, through the period of mother- right, became now more pronounced and merciless than before. In ancient Russia, on the marriage of a daughter, the father struck her gently with a whip, and then presented the whip to the bridegroom," as a sign that her beatings were now to come from a rejuvenated hand. Even the American Indians, among whom mother-right survived indefinitely, treated their women harshly, consigned to them all drudgery, and often called them dogs,'" Everywhere the life of a woman was considered cheaper than that of a man; and when girls were born there was none of the rejoicing that marked the coming of a male. Mothers sometimes destroyed their female children to keep them from misery. In Fiji wives might be sold at pleasure, and the usual price was a musket." Among some tribes man and wife did not sleep together, lest the breath of the woman should enfeeble the man; in Fiji it was not thought proper for a man to sleep regularly at home; in New Caledonia the wife slept in a shed, while the man slept in the house. In Fiji dogs were allowed in some of the temples, but women were excluded from all;'· such exclusion of women from religious services survives in Islam to this day. Doubtless woman enjoyed at all times the mastery that comes of long-continued speech; the men might be rebuffed, harangued, even-now and then- beaten,'" But all in all the man was lord, the woman was servant. The Kaffir bought wom~n like slaves, as a form of life-income insurance; when he had a sufficient number of wives he could rest for the remainder of his days; they would do all the work for him. Some tribes of ancient India reckoned the women of a family as part of the property inheritance, along with the domestic animals;" nor did the last commandment of Moses dis- tinguish very clearly in this matter. Throughout negro Africa women hardly differed from slaves, except that they were expected to provide sexual as well as economic satisfaction. Marriage began as a form of the law of property, as a part of the institution of slavery.61  CHAPTER IV The Moral Elements of Civilization S INCE no society can exist without order, and no order without regu- lation, we may take it as a rule of history that the power of custom varies inversely as the multiplicity of laws, much as the power of instinct varies inversely as the multiplicity of thoughts. Some rules are necessary for the game of life; they may differ in different groups, but within the group they must be essentially the same. These rules may be conven- tions, customs, morals, or laws. Conventions are forms of behavior found / expedient by a people; customs are conventions accepted by successive generations, after natural selection through trial and error and elimination; morals are such customs as the group considers vital to its welfare and development. In primitive societies, where there is no written law, these vital customs or morals regulate every sphere of human existence, and give stability and continuity to the social ordp.r. Through the slow magic of time such customs, by long repetition, become a second 'nature in the individual; if he violates them he feels a certain fear, discomfort or shame; this is the origin of that conscience, or moral sense, which Darwin chose as the most impressive distinction between animals and men: In its higher development conscience is social consciousness-the feeling of the individual that he belongs to a group, and owes it some measure of loyalty and consideration. Morality is the cooperation of the part with the whole, and of each group with some larger whole. Civilization, of course, would be impossible without it. I. MARRIAGE The meaning of marriage-Its biological origins-Sexual com- munism-Trial marriage-Group marriage-Individual mar- riage-Polygamy-Its eugenic value-Exogamy-Mar- riage by service-By capture-By purchase-Primi- tive love-The economic function of marriage The first task of those customs that constitute the moral code of a group is to regulate the relations of the sexes, for these are a perennial source of discord, violence, and possible degeneration. The basic form of this 36 CHAP. IV) MORAL ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 37 sexual regulation is marriage, which may be defined as the association of mates for the care of offspring. It is a variable and fluctuating institution, which has passed through almost every conceivable form and experiment in the course of its history, from the primitive care of offspring without the association of mates to the modem association of mates without the care of offspring. Our animal forefathers invented it. Some birds seem to live as repro- ducing mates in a divorceless monogamy. Among gorillas and orang- utans the association of the parents continues to the end of the breeding season, and has many human features. Any approach to loose behavior on the part of the female is severely punished by the male.· The orangs of Borneo, says De Crespigny, "live in families: the male, the female, and a young one"; and Dr. Savage reports of the gorillas that "it is not unusual to see the 'old folks' sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while their children are leaping around them and swing- ing from branch to branch in boisterous merriment."" Marriage is older than man. Societies without marriage are rare, but the sedulous inquirer can find enough of them to form a respectable transition from the promiscuity of the lower mammals to the marriages of primitive men. In Futuna and Hawaii the majority of the people did not marry at all;' the Lubus mated freely and indiscriminately, and had no conception of marriage; certain tribes of Borneo lived in marriageless association, freer than the birds; and among some peoples of primitive Russia "the men utilized the women without distinction, so that no woman had her appointed husband." African pygmies have been described as having no marriage institutions, but as following "their animal instincts wholly without restraint."" This primitive "nationalization of women," corresponding to primitive com- munism in land and food, passed away at so early a stage that few traces of it remain. Some memory of it, however, lingered on in divers forms: in the feeling of many nature peoples that monogamy-which they would define as the monopoly of a woman by one man-is unnatural and immoral;" in periodic festivals of license (still surviving faintly in our Mardi Gras), when sexual restraints were temporarily abandoned; in the demand that a woman should give herself-as at the Temple of Mylitta in Babylon-to any man that solicited her, before she would be allowed to marry;'*' In Cf. below, p. 245. - - - - - - - - - - -- -.----~-.------------- ---