Thus it is clearly seen that use, rather than reason, has power to introduce new things amongst us, and to do away with old things.—Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano, I, § 1.

What custom wills, in all things should we do't.
Coriolanus, II, 3.

 

[iii]

PREFACE↩

In 1899 I began to write out a text-book of sociology from material which I had used in lectures during the previous ten or fifteen years. At a certain point in that undertaking I found that I wanted to introduce my own treatment of the "mores." I could not refer to it anywhere in print, and I could not do justice to it in a chapter of another book. I therefore turned aside to write a treatise on the "Folkways," which I now offer. For definitions of "folkways" and "mores" see secs. 1, 2, 34, 39, 43, and 66. I formed the word "folkways" on the analogy of words already in use in sociology. I also took up again the Latin word "mores" as the best I could find for my purpose. I mean by it the popular usages and traditions, when they include a judgment that they are conducive to societal welfare, and when they exert a coercion on the individual to conform to them, although they are not coördinated by any authority (cf. sec. 42). I have also tried to bring the word "Ethos" into familiarity again (secs. 76, 79). "Ethica," or "Ethology," or "The Mores" seemed good titles for the book (secs. 42, 43), but Ethics is already employed otherwise, and the other words were very unfamiliar. Perhaps "folkways" is not less unfamiliar, but its meaning is more obvious. I must add that if any one is liable to be shocked by any folkways, he ought not to read about folkways at all. "Nature her custom holds, let shame say what it will" (Hamlet, IV, 7, ad fin.). I have tried to treat all folkways, including those which are most opposite to our own, with truthfulness, but with dignity and due respect to our own conventions.

Chapter I contains elaborate definitions and expositions of the folkways and the mores, with an analysis of their play in human [iv] society. Chapter II shows the bearing of the folkways on human interests, and the way in which they act or are acted on. The thesis which is expounded in these two chapters is: that the folkways are habits of the individual and customs of the society which arise from efforts to satisfy needs; they are intertwined with goblinism and demonism and primitive notions of luck (sec. 6), and so they win traditional authority. Then they become regulative for succeeding generations and take on the character of a social force. They arise no one knows whence or how. They grow as if by the play of internal life energy. They can be modified, but only to a limited extent, by the purposeful efforts of men. In time they lose power, decline, and die, or are transformed. While they are in vigor they very largely control individual and social undertakings, and they produce and nourish ideas of world philosophy and life policy. Yet they are not organic or material. They belong to a superorganic system of relations, conventions, and institutional arrangements. The study of them is called for by their social character, by virtue of which they are leading factors in the science of society.

When the analysis of the folkways has been concluded it is necessary that it should be justified by a series of illustrations, or by a setting forth of cases in which the operation of the mores is shown to be what is affirmed in the analysis. Any such exposition of the mores in cases, in order to be successful, must go into details. It is in details that all the graphic force and argumentative value of the cases are to be found. It has not been easy to do justice to the details and to observe the necessary limits of space. The ethnographical facts which I present are not subsequent justification of generalizations otherwise obtained. They are selections from a great array of facts from which the generalizations were deduced. A number of other very important cases which I included in my plan of proofs and illustrations I have been obliged to leave out for lack of space. Such are: Demonism, Primitive Religion, and Witchcraft; The Status of Women; War; Evolution and the Mores; Usury; Gambling; Societal [ v] Organization and Classes; Mortuary Usages; Oaths; Taboos; Ethics; Æsthetics; and Democracy. The first four of these are written. I may be able to publish them soon, separately. My next task is to finish the sociology.

W. G. SUMNER

    Yale University

With the reprinting of Folkways it seems in place to inform the admirers of this book and of its author concerning the progress of Professor Sumner's work between 1907 and his death, in his seventieth year, in April, 1910. Several articles bearing on the mores, and realizing in part the programme outlined in the last paragraph of the foregoing Preface, have been published: "The Family and Social Change," in the American Journal of Sociology for March, 1909 (14: 577-591); "Witchcraft," in the Forum for May, 1909 (41: 410-423); "The Status of Women in Chaldea, Egypt, India, Judea, and Greece to the time of Christ," in the Forum for August, 1909 (42: 113-136); "Mores of the Present and the Future," in the Yale Review for November, 1909 (18: 233-245); and "Religion and the Mores," in the American Journal of Sociology for March, 1910 (15: 577-591). Of these the first and last were presidential addresses before the American Sociological Society. All are included in Volume I (War and Other Essays) of a four-volume set of Sumner's writings, published since his death by the Yale University Press.

Regarding the treatise on the "science of society" (for he had decided to call it that instead of "sociology") mentioned in the Preface, it should be said that Professor Sumner left a considerable amount of manuscript in the rather rough form of a first draft, together with a great mass of classified materials. He wrote very little on this treatise after the completion of Folkways, and not infrequently spoke of the latter to the present writer as "my last book." It is intended, however, that the Science of Society shall be, at some time in the future, completed, and in such form as shall give to the world the fruits of Professor Sumner's intellectual power, clarity of vision, and truly herculean industry.

The present revision of Folkways incorporates but few and unimportant corrections. Certain of these are from the hand of the author, and others from that of the present writer.

[vi] A photograph of Professor Sumner has been chosen for insertion in the present edition. It was taken April 18, 1902, and is regarded by many as being the most faithful representation in existence of Sumner's expression and pose, as he appeared in later years. This is the Sumner of the "mores," with mental powers at ripe maturity and bodily vigor as yet unimpaired by age. The Yale commencement orator of 1909 said of Sumner, in presenting him for the Doctorate of Laws: "His intellect has broadened, his heart has mellowed, as he has descended into the vale of years." While advancing age weakened in no respect the sheer power and the steady-eyed fearlessness of mind and character which made Sumner a compelling force in the university and in the wider world, it seems to some of us that the essential kindliness of his nature came out with especial clearness in his later years. And it is the suggestion of this quality which lends a distinctive charm, in our eyes, to the portrait chosen to head this volume.

A. G. KELLER

    Yale University

[vii]

[1]

FOLKWAYS

CHAPTER I. FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF THE FOLKWAYS AND OF THE MORES↩

Definition and mode of origin of the folkways.—The folkways are a societal force.—Folkways are made unconsciously.—Impulse and instinct; primeval stupidity; magic.—The strain of improvement and consistency.—The aleatory element.—All origins are lost in mystery.—Spencer on primitive custom.—Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness.—Illustrations.—Immortality and compensation.—Tradition and its restraints.—The concepts of "primitive society"; "we-groups" and "others-groups."—Sentiments in the in-group towards out-groups.—Ethnocentrism.—Illustrations.—Patriotism.—Chauvinism.—The struggle for existence and the competition of life; antagonistic coöperation.—Four motives: hunger, love, vanity, fear.—The process of making folkways.—Suggestion and suggestibility.—Suggestion in education.—Manias.—Suggestion in politics.—Suggestion and criticism.—Folkways based on false inferences.—Harmful folkways.—How "true" and "right" are found.—The folkways are right; rights; morals.—The folkways are true.—Relations of world philosophy to folkways.—Definition of the mores.—Taboos.—No primitive philosophizing; myths; fables; notion of social welfare.—The imaginative element.—The ethical policy and the success policy.—Recapitulation.—Scope and method of the mores.—Integration of the mores of a group or age.—Purpose of the present work.—Why use the word "mores."—The mores are a directive force.—Consistency in the mores.—The mores of subgroups.—What are classes?—Classes rated by societal value.—Class; race; group solidarity.—The masses and the mores.—Fallacies about the classes and the masses.—Action of the masses on ideas.—Organization of the masses.—Institutions of civil liberty.—The common man.—The "people"; popular impulses.—Agitation.—The ruling element in the masses.—The mores and institutions.—Laws.—How laws and institutions differ from mores.—Difference between mores and some cognate things.—Goodness or badness of the mores.—More exact definition of the mores.—Ritual.—The ritual of the mores.—Group interests and policy.—Group interests and folkways.—Force in the folkways.—Might and right.—Status.—Conventionalization.—Conventions indispensable.—The "ethos" or group character; Japan.—Chinese ethos.—Hindoo ethos.—European ethos.

[2] 1. Definition and mode of origin of the folkways. If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts. Every moment brings necessities which must be satisfied at once. Need was the first experience, and it was followed at once by a blundering effort to satisfy it. It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some guiding instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit and predisposition along which dexterities and other psychophysical activities would run easily. Experiments with newborn animals show that in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends, efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and disappointments. Nevertheless, it is a method of rude experiment and selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things were selected, which were expedient. They answered the purpose better than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed. The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was concurrence towards that which proved to be most expedient. All at last adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways turned into customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed in connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the[3] folkways become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so. A sanction also arises from ghost fear. The ghosts of ancestors would be angry if the living should change the ancient folkways (see sec. 6).

2. The folkways are a societal force. The operation by which folkways are produced consists in the frequent repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or, at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need. The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual and custom in the group. It is, therefore, in the highest degree original and primitive. By habit and custom it exerts a strain on every individual within its range; therefore it rises to a societal force to which great classes of societal phenomena are due. Its earliest stages, its course, and laws may be studied; also its influence on individuals and their reaction on it. It is our present purpose so to study it. We have to recognize it as one of the chief forces by which a society is made to be what it is. Out of the unconscious experiment which every repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and then, so far as the men are capable of reflection, convictions that the ways are conducive to societal welfare. These two experiences are not the same. The most uncivilized men, both in the food quest and in war, do things which are painful, but which have been found to be expedient. Perhaps these cases teach the sense of social welfare better than those which are pleasurable and favorable to welfare. The former cases call for some intelligent reflection on experience. When this conviction as to the relation to welfare is added to the folkways they are converted into mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to them, they win utility and importance and become the source of the science and the art of living.

3. Folkways are made unconsciously. It is of the first importance to notice that, from the first acts by which men try to satisfy needs, each act stands by itself, and looks no further than the immediate satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits for [4] the individual and customs for the group, but these results are consequences which were never conscious, and never foreseen or intended. They are not noticed until they have long existed, and it is still longer before they are appreciated. Another long time must pass, and a higher stage of mental development must be reached, before they can be used as a basis from which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future, problems whose pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, or they are like the instinctive ways of animals, which are developed out of experience, which reach a final form of maximum adaptation to an interest, which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose. From this it results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that "It is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a man's actions,—his bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking, and fasting. From his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient usage. In his life there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing spontaneous, no progress towards a higher and better life, and no attempt to improve his condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually."1 All men act in this way with only a little wider margin of voluntary variation.

4. Impulse and instinct. Primeval stupidity. Magic. "The mores (Sitten) rest on feelings of pleasure or pain, which either directly produce actions or call out desires which become causes of action."2 "Impulse is not an attribute of living creatures, [5] like instinct. The only phenomenon to which impulse applies is that men and other animals imitate what they see others, especially of their own species, do, and that they accomplish this imitation the more easily, the more their forefathers practiced the same act. The thing imitated, therefore, must already exist, and cannot be explained as an impulse." "As soon as instinct ceased to be sole ruler of living creatures, including inchoate man, the latter must have made mistakes in the struggle for existence which would soon have finished his career, but that he had instinct and the imitation of what existed to guide him. This human primeval stupidity is the ultimate ground of religion and art, for both come without any interval, out of the magic which is the immediate consequence of the struggle for existence when it goes beyond instinct." "If we want to determine the origin of dress, if we want to define social relations and achievements, e.g. the origin of marriage, war, agriculture, cattle breeding, etc., if we want to make studies in the psyche of nature peoples,—we must always pass through magic and belief in magic. One who is weak in magic, e.g. a ritually unclean man, has a 'bad body,' and reaches no success. Primitive men, on the other hand, win their success by means of their magical power and their magical preparations, and hence become 'the noble and good.' For them there is no other morality [than this success]. Even the technical dexterities have certainly not been free from the influence of belief in magic."3

5. The strain of improvement and consistency. The folkways, being ways of satisfying needs, have succeeded more or less well, and therefore have produced more or less pleasure or pain. Their quality always consisted in their adaptation to the purpose. If they were imperfectly adapted and unsuccessful, they produced pain, which drove men on to learn better. The folkways are, therefore, (1) subject to a strain of improvement towards better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the adaptation is so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2) subject to a strain of consistency with each other, because they all answer their several purposes with less friction and antagonism when [6] they coöperate and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms of the family, the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and the types of religion show the strain of consistency with each other through the whole history of civilization. The two great cultural divisions of the human race are the oriental and the occidental. Each is consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints, different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life, and in the views of earthly existence by which life policy may be controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what ways are most expedient for well living.

6. The aleatory interest. If we should try to find a specimen society in which expedient ways of satisfying needs and interests were found by trial and failure, and by long selection from experience, as broadly described in sec. 1 above, it might be impossible to find one. Such a practical and utilitarian mode of procedure, even when mixed with ghost sanction, is rationalistic. It would not be suited to the ways and temper of primitive men. There was an element in the most elementary experience which was irrational and defied all expedient methods. One might use the best known means with the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a calamity without any fault of his own. This was the aleatory element in life, the element of risk and loss, good or bad fortune. This element is never absent from the affairs of men. It has greatly influenced their life philosophy and policy. On one side, good luck may mean something for nothing, the extreme case of prosperity and felicity. On the other side, ill luck may mean failure, loss, calamity, and disappointment, in spite of the most earnest and well-planned endeavor. The minds of men always dwell more on bad luck. They accept ordinary prosperity as a matter of course. Misfortunes arrest their attention and remain in their memory.

[7] Hence the ills of life are the mode of manifestation of the aleatory element which has most affected life policy. Primitive men ascribed all incidents to the agency of men or of ghosts and spirits. Good and ill luck were attributed to the superior powers, and were supposed to be due to their pleasure or displeasure at the conduct of men. This group of notions constitutes goblinism. It furnishes a complete world philosophy. The element of luck is always present in the struggle for existence. That is why primitive men never could carry on the struggle for existence, disregarding the aleatory element and employing a utilitarian method only. The aleatory element has always been the connecting link between the struggle for existence and religion. It was only by religious rites that the aleatory element in the struggle for existence could be controlled. The notions of ghosts, demons, another world, etc., were all fantastic. They lacked all connection with facts, and were arbitrary constructions put upon experience. They were poetic and developed by poetic construction and imaginative deduction. The nexus between them and events was not cause and effect, but magic. They therefore led to delusive deductions in regard to life and its meaning, which entered into subsequent action as guiding faiths, and imperative notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for the latter (see sec. 9).

7. All origins are lost in mystery. No objection can lie against this postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be raised. We go up the stream of history to the utmost point for which we have evidence of its course. Then we are forced to reach out into the darkness upon [8] the line of direction marked by the remotest course of the historic stream. This is the way in which we have to act in regard to the origin of capital, language, the family, the state, religion, and rights. We never can hope to see the beginning of any one of these things. Use and wont are products and results. They had antecedents. We never can find or see the first member of the series. It is only by analysis and inference that we can form any conception of the "beginning" which we are always so eager to find.

8. Spencer on primitive custom. Spencer4 says that "guidance by custom, which we everywhere find amongst rude peoples, is the sole conceivable guidance at the outset." Custom is the product of concurrent action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem to begin because the mass wants to act together. The less they know what it is right and best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an incident in nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current doctrines of ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the action begins the men are never conscious of historical action, or of the historical importance of what they are doing. When they become conscious of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is already far behind.

9. Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness. There are in nature numerous antagonistic forces of growth or production and destruction. The interests of man are between the two and may be favored or ruined by either. Correct knowledge of both is required to get the advantages [9] and escape the injuries. Until the knowledge becomes adequate the effects which are encountered appear to be accidents or cases of luck. There is no thrift in nature. There is rather waste. Human interests require thrift, selection, and preservation. Capital is the condition precedent of all gain in security and power, and capital is produced by selection and thrift. It is threatened by all which destroys material goods. Capital is therefore the essential means of man's power over nature, and it implies the purest concept of the power of intelligence to select and dispose of the processes of nature for human welfare. All the earliest efforts in this direction were blundering failures. Men selected things to be desired and preserved under impulses of vanity and superstition, and misconceived utility and interest. The errors entered into the folkways, formed a part of them, and were protected by them. Error, accident, and luck seem to be the only sense there is in primitive life. Knowledge alone limits their sway, and at least changes the range and form of their dominion. Primitive folkways are marked by improvidence, waste, and carelessness, out of which prudence, foresight, patience, and perseverance are developed slowly, by pain and loss, as experience is accumulated, and knowledge increases also, as better methods seem worth while. The consequences of error and the effects of luck were always mixed. As we have seen, the ills of life were connected with the displeasure of the ghosts. Per contra, conduct which conformed to the will of the ghosts was goodness, and was supposed to bring blessing and prosperity. Thus a correlation was established, in the faith of men, between goodness and happiness, and on that correlation an art of happiness was built. It consisted in a faithful performance of rites of respect towards superior powers and in the use of lucky times, places, words, etc., with avoidance of unlucky ones. All uncivilized men demand and expect a specific response. Inasmuch as they did not get it, and indeed the art of happiness always failed of results, the great question of world philosophy always has been, What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none. The whole strength of the notion that they are correlated is in the opposite experience which proves that no evil thing brings happiness. The oldest religious literature consists of formulas of worship and prayer by which devotion and obedience were to produce satisfaction of the gods, and win favor and prosperity for men.5 The words "ill" and "evil" have never yet thrown off the ambiguity between wickedness and calamity. The two ideas come down to us allied or combined. It was the rites which were the object of tradition, not the ideas which they embodied.6

10. Illustrations. The notions of blessing and curse are subsequent explanations by men of great cases of prosperity or calamity which came to [10] their knowledge. Then the myth-building imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account for the prosperity or calamity.7 The Greek notion of the Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of Crœsus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Crœsus had done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was very pious and lived by the rules of religion. The story is told in different forms. "The people could not make up their minds that a prince who had been so liberal to the gods during his prosperity had been abandoned by them at the moment when he had the greatest need of their aid."8 They said that he expiated the crime of his ancestor Gyges, who usurped the throne; that is, they found it necessary to adduce some guilt to account for the facts, and they introduced the notion of hereditary responsibility. Another story was that he determined to sacrifice all his wealth to the gods. He built a funeral pyre of it all and mounted it himself, but rain extinguished it. The gods were satisfied. Crœsus afterwards enjoyed the friendship of Cyros, which was good fortune. Still others rejected the doctrines of correlation between goodness and happiness on account of the fate of Crœsus. In ancient religion "the benefits which were expected from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished, the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."9 Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.10 This is like the case of Œdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the mouths of prophets.11 Hezekiah expostulated with God because, although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had done what was right in His sight, he suffered calamity.12 In the seventy-third Psalm, the author is perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked, and the contrast of his own fortunes. "Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in innocency, for all day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning." He says that at last the wicked were cast down. He was brutish and ignorant not to see the solution. It is that the wicked prosper for a time only. He will cleave unto God. The book of Job is a discussion of the relation between goodness and happiness. The crusaders [11] were greatly perplexed by the victories of the Mohammedans. It seemed to be proved untrue that God would defend His own Name or the true and holy cause. Louis XIV, when his armies were defeated, said that God must have forgotten all which he had done for Him.

11. Immortality and compensation. The notion of immortality has been interwoven with the notion of luck, of justice, and of the relation of goodness and happiness. The case was reopened in another world, and compensations could be assumed to take place there. In the folk drama of the ancient Greeks luck ruled. It was either envious of human prosperity or beneficent.13 Grimm14 gives more than a thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and proverbs about "luck." The Italians of the fifteenth century saw grand problems in the correlation of goodness and happiness. Alexander VI was the wickedest man known in history, but he had great and unbroken prosperity in all his undertakings. The only conceivable explanation was that he had made a pact with the devil. Some of the American Indians believed that there was an hour at which all wishes uttered by men were fulfilled.15 It is amongst half-civilized peoples that the notion of luck is given the greatest influence in human affairs. They seek devices for operating on luck, since luck controls all interests. Hence words, times, names, places, gestures, and other acts or relations are held to control luck. Inasmuch as marriage is a relationship in which happiness is sought and not always found, wedding ceremonies are connected with acts "for luck." Some of these still survive amongst us as jests. The fact of the aleatory element in human life, the human interpretations of it, and the efforts of men to deal with it constitute a large part of the history of culture. They have produced groups of folkways, and have entered as an element into folkways for other purposes.

12. Tradition and its restraints. It is evident that the "ways" of the older and more experienced members of a society deserve great authority in any primitive group. We find that this rational authority leads to customs of deference and to etiquette in favor of the old. The old in turn cling stubbornly to tradition and to the example of their own predecessors. Thus tradition and custom become intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. Children see their parents always yield to the same custom and obey the same persons. They see that the elders are allowed to do all the talking, and that if an outsider enters, he is saluted by those who are at home according to rank and in fixed order. [12] All this becomes rule for children, and helps to give to all primitive customs their stereotyped formality. "The fixed ways of looking at things which are inculcated by education and tribal discipline, are the precipitate of an old cultural development, and in their continued operation they are the moral anchor of the Indian, although they are also the fetters which restrain his individual will."16

13. The concept of "primitive society"; we-group and others-group. The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance, connubium and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups, out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it are adopted persons, guest friends, and slaves.

14. Sentiments in the in-group and towards the out-group. The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war towards others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to [ 13] correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without,—all grow together, common products of the same situation. These relations and sentiments constitute a social philosophy. It is sanctified by connection with religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with whose ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. The ghosts of the latter will see with pleasure their descendants keep up the fight, and will help them. Virtue consists in killing, plundering, and enslaving outsiders.

15. Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. The Tupis called the Portuguese by a derisive epithet descriptive of birds which have feathers around their feet, on account of trousers.17 For our present purpose the most important fact is that ethnocentrism leads a people to exaggerate and intensify everything in their own folkways which is peculiar and which differentiates them from others. It therefore strengthens the folkways.

16. Illustrations of ethnocentrism. The Papuans on New Guinea are broken up into village units which are kept separate by hostility, cannibalism, head hunting, and divergences of language and religion. Each village is integrated by its own language, religion, and interests. A group of villages is sometimes united into a limited unity by connubium. A wife taken inside of this group unit has full status; one taken outside of it has not. The petty group units are peace groups within and are hostile to all outsiders.18 The Mbayas of South America believed that their deity had bidden them live by making war on others, taking their wives and property, and killing their men.19

[14] 17. When Caribs were asked whence they came, they answered, "We alone are people."20 The meaning of the name Kiowa is "real or principal people."21 The Lapps call themselves "men," or "human beings."22 The Greenland Eskimo think that Europeans have been sent to Greenland to learn virtue and good manners from the Greenlanders. Their highest form of praise for a European is that he is, or soon will be, as good as a Greenlander.23 The Tunguses call themselves "men."24 As a rule it is found that nature peoples call themselves "men." Others are something else—perhaps not defined—but not real men. In myths the origin of their own tribe is that of the real human race. They do not account for the others. The Ainos derive their name from that of the first man, whom they worship as a god. Evidently the name of the god is derived from the tribe name.25 When the tribal name has another sense, it is always boastful or proud. The Ovambo name is a corruption of the name of the tribe for themselves, which means "the wealthy."26 Amongst the most remarkable people in the world for ethnocentrism are the Seri of Lower California. They observe an attitude of suspicion and hostility to all outsiders, and strictly forbid marriage with outsiders.27

18. The Jews divided all mankind into themselves and Gentiles. They were the "chosen people." The Greeks and Romans called all outsiders "barbarians." In Euripides' tragedy of Iphigenia in Aulis Iphigenia says that it is fitting that Greeks should rule over barbarians, but not contrariwise, because Greeks are free, and barbarians are slaves. The Arabs regarded themselves as the noblest nation and all others as more or less barbarous.28 In 1896, the Chinese minister of education and his counselors edited a manual in which this statement occurs: "How grand and glorious is the Empire of China, the middle kingdom! She is the largest and richest in the world. The grandest men in the world have all come from the middle empire."29 In all the literature of all the states equivalent statements occur, although they are not so naïvely expressed. In Russian books and newspapers the civilizing mission of Russia is talked about, just as, in the books and journals of France, Germany, and the United States, the civilizing mission of those countries is assumed and referred to as well understood. Each state now regards itself as the leader of civilization, the best, the freest, and the wisest, and all others as inferior. Within a few years our own man-on-the-curbstone has learned to class all foreigners of the Latin [15] peoples as "dagos," and "dago" has become an epithet of contempt. These are all cases of ethnocentrism.

19. Patriotism is a sentiment which belongs to modern states. It stands in antithesis to the mediæval notion of catholicity. Patriotism is loyalty to the civic group to which one belongs by birth or other group bond. It is a sentiment of fellowship and coöperation in all the hopes, work, and suffering of the group. Mediæval catholicity would have made all Christians an in-group and would have set them in hostility to all Mohammedans and other non-Christians. It never could be realized. When the great modern states took form and assumed control of societal interests, group sentiment was produced in connection with those states. Men responded willingly to a demand for support and help from an institution which could and did serve interests. The state drew to itself the loyalty which had been given to men (lords), and it became the object of that group vanity and antagonism which had been ethnocentric. For the modern man patriotism has become one of the first of duties and one of the noblest of sentiments. It is what he owes to the state for what the state does for him, and the state is, for the modern man, a cluster of civic institutions from which he draws security and conditions of welfare. The masses are always patriotic. For them the old ethnocentric jealousy, vanity, truculency, and ambition are the strongest elements in patriotism. Such sentiments are easily awakened in a crowd. They are sure to be popular. Wider knowledge always proves that they are not based on facts. That we are good and others are bad is never true. By history, literature, travel, and science men are made cosmopolitan. The selected classes of all states become associated; they intermarry. The differentiation by states loses importance. All states give the same security and conditions of welfare to all. The standards of civic institutions are the same, or tend to become such, and it is a matter of pride in each state to offer civic status and opportunities equal to the best. Every group of any kind whatsoever demands that each of its members shall help defend group interests. Every group stigmatizes any one who fails in zeal, labor, and sacrifices for group interests. Thus the sentiment of loyalty to the group, or the group head, which was so strong in the Middle Ages, is kept up, as far as possible, in regard to modern states and governments. The group force is also employed to enforce the obligations of devotion to group interests. It follows that judgments are precluded and criticism is silenced.

20. Chauvinism. That patriotism may degenerate into a vice is shown by the invention of a name for the vice: chauvinism. It is a name for boastful and truculent group self-assertion. It overrules personal judgment and character, and puts the whole group at the mercy of the clique which is ruling at the moment. It produces the dominance of watchwords and phrases which take the place of reason and conscience in determining conduct. The patriotic bias is a recognized perversion of thought and judgment against which our education should guard us.

[16] 21. The struggle for existence and the competition of life; antagonistic coöperation. The struggle for existence must be carried on under life conditions and in connection with the competition of life. The life conditions consist in variable elements of the environment, the supply of materials necessary to support life, the difficulty of exploiting them, the state of the arts, and the circumstances of physiography, climate, meteorology, etc., which favor life or the contrary. The struggle for existence is a process in which an individual and nature are the parties. The individual is engaged in a process by which he wins from his environment what he needs to support his existence. In the competition of life the parties are men and other organisms. The men strive with each other, or with the flora and fauna with which they are associated. The competition of life is the rivalry, antagonism, and mutual displacement in which the individual is involved with other organisms by his efforts to carry on the struggle for existence for himself. It is, therefore, the competition of life which is the societal element, and which produces societal organization. The number present and in competition is another of the life conditions. At a time and place the life conditions are the same for a number of human beings who are present, and the problems of life policy are the same. This is another reason why the attempts to satisfy interest become mass phenomena and result in folkways. The individual and social elements are always in interplay with each other if there are a number present. If one is trying to carry on the struggle for existence with nature, the fact that others are doing the same in the same environment is an essential condition for him. Then arises an alternative. He and the others may so interfere with each other that all shall fail, or they may combine, and by coöperation raise their efforts against nature to a higher power. This latter method is industrial organization. The crisis which produces it is constantly renewed, and men are forced to raise the organization to greater complexity and more comprehensive power, without limit. Interests are the relations of action and reaction between the individual and the life conditions, through which relations the evolution of the individual is produced. That[17] evolution, so long as it goes on prosperously, is well living, and it results in the self-realization of the individual, for we may think of each one as capable of fulfilling some career and attaining to some character and state of power by the developing of predispositions which he possesses. It would be an error, however, to suppose that all nature is a chaos of warfare and competition. Combination and coöperation are so fundamentally necessary that even very low life forms are found in symbiosis for mutual dependence and assistance. A combination can exist where each of its members would perish. Competition and combination are two forms of life association which alternate through the whole organic and superorganic domains. The neglect of this fact leads to many socialistic fallacies. Combination is of the essence of organization, and organization is the great device for increased power by a number of unequal and dissimilar units brought into association for a common purpose. McGee30 says of the desert of Papagueria, in southwestern Arizona, that "a large part of the plants and animals of the desert dwell together in harmony and mutual helpfulness [which he shows in detail]; for their energies are directed not so much against one another as against the rigorous environmental conditions growing out of dearth of water. This communality does not involve loss of individuality, ... indeed the plants and animals are characterized by an individuality greater than that displayed in regions in which perpetuity of the species depends less closely on the persistence of individuals." Hence he speaks of the "solidarity of life" in the desert. "The saguaro is a monstrosity in fact as well as in appearance,—a product of miscegenation between plant and animal, probably depending for its form of life history, if not for its very existence, on its commensals."31 The Seri protect pelicans from themselves by a partial taboo, which is not understood. It seems that they could not respect a breeding time, or establish a closed season, yet they have such an appetite for the birds and their eggs that they would speedily exterminate them if there were no restraint. This combination has been well called antagonistic coöperation. [18] It consists in the combination of two persons or groups to satisfy a great common interest while minor antagonisms of interest which exist between them are suppressed. The plants and animals of the desert are rivals for what water there is, but they combine as if with an intelligent purpose to attain to a maximum of life under the conditions. There are many cases of animals who coöperate in the same way. Our farmers put crows and robins under a protective taboo because the birds destroy insects. The birds also destroy grain and fruits, but this is tolerated on account of their services. Madame Pommerol says of the inhabitants of Sahara that the people of the towns and the nomads are enemies by caste and race, but allies in interest. The nomads need refuge and shelter. The townspeople need messengers and transportation. Hence ties of contract, quarrels, fights, raids, vengeances, and reconciliations for the sake of common enterprises of plunder.32 Antagonistic coöperation is the most productive form of combination in high civilization. It is a high action of the reason to overlook lesser antagonisms in order to work together for great interests. Political parties are constantly forced to do it. In the art of the statesman it is a constant policy. The difference between great parties and factions in any parliamentary system is of the first importance; that difference consists in the fact that parties can suppress minor differences, and combine for what they think most essential to public welfare, while factions divide and subdivide on petty differences. Inasmuch as the suppression of minor differences means a suppression of the emotional element, while the other policy encourages the narrow issues in regard to which feeling is always most intense, the former policy allows far less play to feeling and passion.

22. Hunger, love, vanity, and fear. There are four great motives of human action which come into play when some number of human beings are in juxtaposition under the same life conditions. These are hunger, sex passion, vanity, and fear (of ghosts and spirits). Under each of these motives there are interests. Life consists in satisfying interests, for "life," in a society, is a career of action and effort expended on both the [19] material and social environment. However great the errors and misconceptions may be which are included in the efforts, the purpose always is advantage and expediency. The efforts fall into parallel lines, because the conditions and the interests are the same. It is now the accepted opinion, and it may be correct, that men inherited from their beast ancestors psychophysical traits, instincts, and dexterities, or at least predispositions, which give them aid in solving the problems of food supply, sex, commerce, and vanity. The result is mass phenomena; currents of similarity, concurrence, and mutual contribution; and these produce folkways. The folkways are unconscious, spontaneous, uncoördinated. It is never known who led in devising them, although we must believe that talent exerted its leadership at all times. Folkways come into existence now all the time. There were folkways in stage coach times, which were fitted to that mode of travel. Street cars have produced ways which are suited to that mode of transportation in cities. The telephone has produced ways which have not been invented and imposed by anybody, but which are devised to satisfy conveniently the interests which are at stake in the use of that instrument.

23. Process of making folkways. Although we may see the process of making folkways going on all the time, the analysis of the process is very difficult. It appears as if there was a "mind" in the crowd which was different from the minds of the individuals which compose it. Indeed some have adopted such a doctrine. By autosuggestion the stronger minds produce ideas which when set afloat pass by suggestion from mind to mind. Acts which are consonant with the ideas are imitated. There is a give and take between man and man. This process is one of development. New suggestions come in at point after point. They are carried out. They combine with what existed already. Every new step increases the number of points upon which other minds may seize. It seems to be by this process that great inventions are produced. Knowledge has been won and extended by it. It seems as if the crowd had a mystic power in it greater than the sum of the powers of its members. It is sufficient, however, to explain this, to notice that there is a coöperation and constant [20] suggestion which is highly productive when it operates in a crowd, because it draws out latent power, concentrates what would otherwise be scattered, verifies and corrects what has been taken up, eliminates error, and constructs by combination. Hence the gain from the collective operation is fully accounted for, and the theories of Völkerpsychologie are to be rejected as superfluous. Out of the process which has been described have come the folkways during the whole history of civilization.

The phenomena of suggestion and suggestibility demand some attention because the members of a group are continually affecting each other by them, and great mass phenomena very often are to be explained by them.

24. Suggestion; suggestibility. What has been called the psychology of crowds consists of certain phenomena of suggestion. A number of persons assembled together, especially if they are enthused by the same sentiment or stimulated by the same interest, transmit impulses to each other with the result that all the impulses are increased in a very high ratio. In other words, it is an undisputed fact that all mental states and emotions are greatly increased in force by transmission from man to man, especially if they are attended by a sense of the concurrence and coöperation of a great number who have a common sentiment or interest. "The element of psychic coercion to which our thought process is subject is the characteristic of the operations which we call suggestive."33 What we have done or heard occupies our minds so that we cannot turn from it to something else. The consensus of a number promises triumph for the impulse, whatever it is. Ça ira. There is a thrill of enthusiasm in the sense of moving with a great number. There is no deliberation or reason. Therefore a crowd may do things which are either better or worse than what individuals in it would do. Cases of lynching show how a crowd can do things which it is extremely improbable that the individuals would do or consent to, if they were taken separately. The crowd has no greater guarantee of wisdom and virtue than an individual would have. In fact, the participants in a crowd almost always throw away [21] all the powers of wise judgment which have been acquired by education, and submit to the control of enthusiasm, passion, animal impulse, or brute appetite. A crowd always has a common stock of elementary faiths, prejudices, loves and hates, and pet notions. The common stock is acted on by the same stimuli, in all the persons, at the same time. The response, as an aggregate, is a great storm of feeling, and a great impulse to the will. Hence the great influence of omens and of all popular superstitions on a crowd. Omens are a case of "egoistic reference."34 An army desists from a battle on account of an eclipse. A man starting out on the food quest returns home because a lizard crosses his path. In each case an incident in nature is interpreted as a warning or direction to the army or the man. Thus momentous results for men and nations may be produced without cause. The power of watchwords consists in the cluster of suggestions which has become fastened upon them. In the Middle Ages the word "heretic" won a frightful suggestion of base wickedness. In the seventeenth century the same suggestions were connected with the words "witch" and "traitor." "Nature" acquired great suggestion of purity and correctness in the eighteenth century, which it has not yet lost. "Progress" now bears amongst us a very undue weight of suggestion. Suggestibility is the quality of liability to suggestive influence.35 "Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to admit any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and inhibitions."36 It differs greatly in degree, and is present in different grades in different crowds. Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and imitation.37 In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to do, one, by acting, may lead them all [22] through imitative suggestibility. People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which preclude criticism or reflection. Any one who acquires skill in the primary processes of association, analogy, reiteration, and continuity, can play tricks on others by stimulating these processes and then giving them selected data to work upon. A directive idea may be suggested by a series of ideas which lead the recipient of them to expect that the series will be continued. Then he will not perceive if the series is broken. In the Renaissance period no degree of illumination sufficed to resist the delusion of astrology, because it was supported by a passionate fantasy and a vehement desire to know the future, and because it was confirmed by antiquity, the authority of whose opinions was overwhelmingly suggested by all the faiths and prejudices of the time.38

25. Suggestion in education. Manias. Parents and teachers use suggestion in rearing children. Persons who enjoy social preëminence operate suggestion all the time, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Whatever they do is imitated. Folkways operate on individuals by suggestion; when they are elevated to mores they do so still more, for then they carry the suggestion of societal welfare. Ways and notions may be rejected by an individual at first upon his judgment of their merits, but repeated suggestion produces familiarity and dulls the effect upon him of the features which at first repelled him. Familiar cases of this are furnished by fashions of dress and by slang. A new fashion of dress seems at first to be absurd, ungraceful, or indecent. After a time this first impression of it is so dulled that all conform to the fashion. New slang seems vulgar. It makes its way into use. In India the lingam symbol is so common that no one pays any heed to its sense.39 This power of familiarity to reduce the suggestion to zero furnishes a negative proof of the power of the suggestion. Conventionalization also reduces suggestion, perhaps to zero. It is a mischievous thing to read descriptions of crime, vice, horrors, excessive adventures, etc., because familiarity lessens the abhorrent suggestions which those things ought to produce. Swindlers and all others who have an interest to lead the minds of their fellow-men in a certain direction employ suggestion. They often develop great practical skill in the operation, although they do not understand the science of it. It is one of the arts of the demagogue and stump orator. A man who wanted to be nominated for an office went before the convention to make a speech. A great and difficult question agitated the party. He began by saying that he would state his position [23] on that question frankly and fully. "But first," said he, "let me say that I am a Democrat." This brought out a storm of applause. Then he went on to boast of his services to the party, and then he stopped without having said a word on the great question. He was easily nominated. The witch persecutions rested on suggestion. "Everybody knew" that there were witches. If not, what were the people who were burned? Philip IV of France wanted to make the people believe that the templars were heretics. The people were not ready to believe this. The king caused the corpse of a templar to be dug up and burned, as the corpses of heretics were burned. This convinced the people by suggestion.40 What "they say," what "everybody does," and what "everybody knows" are controlling suggestions. Religious revivals are carried on by suggestion. Mediæval flagellations and dances were cases of suggestion. In fact, all popular manias are to be explained by it. Religious bodies practice suggestion on themselves, especially on their children or less enthusiastic members, by symbols, pictures, images, processions, dramatic representations, festivals, relics, legends of their heroes. In the Middle Ages the crucifix was an instrument of religious suggestion to produce vivid apprehension of the death of Jesus. In very many well-known cases the passions of the crowd were raised to the point of very violent action. The symbols and images also, by suggestion, stimulate religious fervor. If numbers act together, as in convents, mass phenomena are produced, and such results follow as the hysterical epidemics in convents and the extravagances of communistic sects.41 Learned societies and numbers of persons who are interested in the same subject, by meeting and imparting suggestions, make all the ideas of each the common stock of all. Hyperboreans have a mental disease which renders them liable to suggestion. The women are afflicted by hysteria before puberty. Later they show the phenomena of "possession,"—dancing and singing,—and still later catalepsy.42

26. Suggestion in politics. The great field for the use of the devices and apparatus of suggestion at the present time is politics. Within fifty years all states have become largely popular. Suggestion is easy when it falls in with popular ideas, the pet notions of groups of people, the popular common-places, and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers, popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech over the body of Cæsar is a classical example of it. In politics, especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion is employed again,—flags, symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations. Patriotism is systematically cultivated by anniversaries, pilgrimages, symbols, songs, recitations, etc. [24] Another very remarkable case of suggestion is furnished by modern advertisements. They are adroitly planned to touch the mind of the reader in a way to get the reaction which the advertiser wants. The advertising pages of our popular magazines furnish evidence of the faiths and ideas which prevail in the masses.

27. Suggestion and criticism. Suggestion is a legitimate device, if it is honestly used, for inculcating knowledge or principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion, especially if the crime was a heinous one which has strongly excited their emotions against the unknown somebody who perpetrated it. It requires criticism to resist this suggestion. Our judicial institutions are devised to hold this suggestion aloof until the evidence is examined. An educated man ought to be beyond the reach of suggestions from advertisements, newspapers, speeches, and stories. If he is wise, just when a crowd is filled with enthusiasm and emotion, he will leave it and will go off by himself to form his judgment. In short, individuality and personality of character are the opposites of suggestibility. Autosuggestion properly includes all the cases in which a man is "struck by an idea," or "takes a notion," but it is more strictly applied to fixed ideas and habits of thought. An irritation suggests parasites, and parasites suggest an irritation. The fear of stammering causes stammering. A sleeping man drives away a fly without waking. If we are in a pose or rôle, we act as we have heard that people act in that pose or rôle.43 A highly trained judgment is required to correct or select one's own ideas and to resist fixed ideas. The supreme criticism is criticism of one's self.

28. Folkways due to false inference. Furthermore, folkways have been formed by accident, that is, by irrational and incongruous action, based on pseudo-knowledge. In Molembo a pestilence broke out soon after a Portuguese had died there. After that the natives took all possible measures not to allow any white man to die in their country.44 On the Nicobar islands some natives who had just begun to make pottery died. The art was given up and never again attempted.45 White men gave to one Bushman in a kraal a stick ornamented with buttons as a symbol of authority. The recipient died leaving the stick to [25] his son. The son soon died. Then the Bushmen brought back the stick lest all should die.46 Until recently no building of incombustible materials could be built in any big town of the central province of Madagascar, on account of some ancient prejudice.47 A party of Eskimos met with no game. One of them returned to their sledges and got the ham of a dog to eat. As he returned with the ham bone in his hand he met and killed a seal. Ever afterwards he carried a ham bone in his hand when hunting.48 The Belenda women (peninsula of Malacca) stay as near to the house as possible during the period. Many keep the door closed. They know no reason for this custom. "It must be due to some now forgotten superstition."49 Soon after the Yakuts saw a camel for the first time smallpox broke out amongst them. They thought the camel to be the agent of the disease.50 A woman amongst the same people contracted an endogamous marriage. She soon afterwards became blind. This was thought to be on account of the violation of ancient customs.51 A very great number of such cases could be collected. In fact they represent the current mode of reasoning of nature people. It is their custom to reason that, if one thing follows another, it is due to it. A great number of customs are traceable to the notion of the evil eye, many more to ritual notions of uncleanness.52 No scientific investigation could discover the origin of the folkways mentioned, if the origin had not chanced to become known to civilized men. We must believe that the known cases illustrate the irrational and incongruous origin of many folkways. In civilized history also we know that customs have owed their origin to "historical accident,"—the vanity of a princess, the deformity of a king, the whim of a democracy, the love intrigue of a statesman or prelate. By the institutions of another age it may be provided that no one of these things can affect decisions, acts, or interests, but then the power to decide the ways may have passed to clubs, [26] trades unions, trusts, commercial rivals, wire-pullers, politicians, and political fanatics. In these cases also the causes and origins may escape investigation.

29. Harmful folkways. There are folkways which are positively harmful. Very often these are just the ones for which a definite reason can be given. The destruction of a man's goods at his death is a direct deduction from other-worldliness; the dead man is supposed to want in the other world just what he wanted here. The destruction of a man's goods at his death was a great waste of capital, and it must have had a disastrous effect on the interests of the living, and must have very seriously hindered the development of civilization. With this custom we must class all the expenditure of labor and capital on graves, temples, pyramids, rites, sacrifices, and support of priests, so far as these were supposed to benefit the dead. The faith in goblinism produced other-worldly interests which overruled ordinary worldly interests. Foods have often been forbidden which were plentiful, the prohibition of which injuriously lessened the food supply. There is a tribe of Bushmen who will eat no goat's flesh, although goats are the most numerous domestic animals in the district.53 Where totemism exists it is regularly accompanied by a taboo on eating the totem animal. Whatever may be the real principle in totemism, it overrules the interest in an abundant food supply. "The origin of the sacred regard paid to the cow must be sought in the primitive nomadic life of the Indo-European race," because it is common to Iranians and Indians of Hindostan.54 The Libyans ate oxen but not cows.55 The same was true of the Phœnicians and Egyptians.56 In some cases the sense of a food taboo is not to be learned. It may have been entirely capricious. Mohammed would not eat lizards, because he thought them the offspring of a metamorphosed clan of Israelites.57 On the other hand, the protective taboo which forbade killing crocodiles, pythons, cobras, and other animals enemies of man was harmful [27] to his interests, whatever the motive. "It seems to be a fixed article of belief throughout southern India, that all who have willfully or accidentally killed a snake, especially a cobra, will certainly be punished, either in this life or the next, in one of three ways: either by childlessness, or by leprosy, or by ophthalmia."58 Where this faith exists man has a greater interest to spare a cobra than to kill it. India furnishes a great number of cases of harmful mores. "In India every tendency of humanity seems intensified and exaggerated. No country in the world is so conservative in its traditions, yet no country has undergone so many religious changes and vicissitudes."59 "Every year thousands perish of disease that might recover if they would take proper nourishment, and drink the medicine that science prescribes, but which they imagine that their religion forbids them to touch." "Men who can scarcely count beyond twenty, and know not the letters of the alphabet, would rather die than eat food which had been prepared by men of lower caste, unless it had been sanctified by being offered to an idol; and would kill their daughters rather than endure the disgrace of having unmarried girls at home beyond twelve or thirteen years of age."60 In the last case the rule of obligation and duty is set by the mores. The interest comes under vanity. The sanction of the caste rules is in a boycott by all members of the caste. The rules are often very harmful. "The authority of caste rests partly on written laws, partly on legendary fables or narratives, partly on the injunctions of instructors and priests, partly on custom and usage, and partly on the caprice and convenience of its votaries."61 The harm of caste rules is so great that of late they have been broken in some cases, especially in regard to travel over sea, which is a great advantage to Hindoos.62 The Hindoo folkways in regard to widows and child marriages must also be recognized as socially harmful.

30. How "true" and "right" are found. If a savage puts his hand too near the fire, he suffers pain and draws it back. He [28] knows nothing of the laws of the radiation of heat, but his instinctive action conforms to that law as if he did know it. If he wants to catch an animal for food, he must study its habits and prepare a device adjusted to those habits. If it fails, he must try again, until his observation is "true" and his device is "right." All the practical and direct element in the folkways seems to be due to common sense, natural reason, intuition, or some other original mental endowment. It seems rational (or rationalistic) and utilitarian. Often in the mythologies this ultimate rational element was ascribed to the teaching of a god or a culture hero. In modern mythology it is accounted for as "natural."

Although the ways adopted must always be really "true" and "right" in relation to facts, for otherwise they could not answer their purpose, such is not the primitive notion of true and right.

31. The folkways are "right." Rights. Morals. The folkways are the "right" ways to satisfy all interests, because they are traditional, and exist in fact. They extend over the whole of life. There is a right way to catch game, to win a wife, to make one's self appear, to cure disease, to honor ghosts, to treat comrades or strangers, to behave when a child is born, on the warpath, in council, and so on in all cases which can arise. The ways are defined on the negative side, that is, by taboos. The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. The notion of right and ought is the same in regard to all the folkways, but the degree of it varies with the importance of the interest at stake. The obligation of conformable and coöperative action is far greater under ghost fear and war than in other matters, and the social sanctions are severer, because group interests are supposed to be at stake. Some usages contain only a slight element of right and ought. It may well be believed that notions[29] of right and duty, and of social welfare, were first developed in connection with ghost fear and other-worldliness, and therefore that, in that field also, folkways were first raised to mores. "Rights" are the rules of mutual give and take in the competition of life which are imposed on comrades in the in-group, in order that the peace may prevail there which is essential to the group strength. Therefore rights can never be "natural" or "God-given," or absolute in any sense. The morality of a group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the folkways by which right conduct is defined. Therefore morals can never be intuitive. They are historical, institutional, and empirical.

World philosophy, life policy, right, rights, and morality are all products of the folkways. They are reflections on, and generalizations from, the experience of pleasure and pain which is won in efforts to carry on the struggle for existence under actual life conditions. The generalizations are very crude and vague in their germinal forms. They are all embodied in folklore, and all our philosophy and science have been developed out of them.

32. The folkways are "true." The folkways are necessarily "true" with respect to some world philosophy. Pain forced men to think. The ills of life imposed reflection and taught forethought. Mental processes were irksome and were not undertaken until painful experience made them unavoidable.63 With great unanimity all over the globe primitive men followed the same line of thought. The dead were believed to live on as ghosts in another world just like this one. The ghosts had just the same needs, tastes, passions, etc., as the living men had had. These transcendental notions were the beginning of the mental outfit of mankind. They are articles of faith, not rational convictions. The living had duties to the ghosts, and the ghosts had rights; they also had power to enforce their rights. It behooved the living therefore to learn how to deal with ghosts. Here we have a complete world philosophy and a life policy deduced from it. When pain, loss, and ill were experienced and the question was provoked, Who did this to us? the world philosophy furnished the answer. When the painful experience forced the question, [ 30] Why are the ghosts angry and what must we do to appease them? the "right" answer was the one which fitted into the philosophy of ghost fear. All acts were therefore constrained and trained into the forms of the world philosophy by ghost fear, ancestral authority, taboos, and habit. The habits and customs created a practical philosophy of welfare, and they confirmed and developed the religious theories of goblinism.

33. Relation of world philosophy and folkways. It is quite impossible for us to disentangle the elements of philosophy and custom, so as to determine priority and the causative position of either. Our best judgment is that the mystic philosophy is regulative, not creative, in its relation to the folkways. They reacted upon each other. The faith in the world philosophy drew lines outside of which the folkways must not go. Crude and vague notions of societal welfare were formed from the notion of pleasing the ghosts, and from such notions of expediency as the opinion that, if there were not children enough, there would not be warriors enough, or that, if there were too many children, the food supply would not be adequate. The notion of welfare was an inference and resultant from these mystic and utilitarian generalizations.

34. Definition of the mores. When the elements of truth and right are developed into doctrines of welfare, the folkways are raised to another plane. They then become capable of producing inferences, developing into new forms, and extending their constructive influence over men and society. Then we call them the mores. The mores are the folkways, including the philosophical and ethical generalizations as to societal welfare which are suggested by them, and inherent in them, as they grow.

35. Taboos. The mores necessarily consist, in a large part, of taboos, which indicate the things which must not be done. In part these are dictated by mystic dread of ghosts who might be offended by certain acts, but they also include such acts as have been found by experience to produce unwelcome results, especially in the food quest, in war, in health, or in increase or decrease of population. These taboos always contain a greater element of philosophy than the positive rules, because the taboos[31] contain reference to a reason, as, for instance, that the act would displease the ghosts. The primitive taboos correspond to the fact that the life of man is environed by perils. His food quest must be limited by shunning poisonous plants. His appetite must be restrained from excess. His physical strength and health must be guarded from dangers. The taboos carry on the accumulated wisdom of generations, which has almost always been purchased by pain, loss, disease, and death. Other taboos contain inhibitions of what will be injurious to the group. The laws about the sexes, about property, about war, and about ghosts, have this character. They always include some social philosophy. They are both mystic and utilitarian, or compounded of the two.

Taboos may be divided into two classes, (1) protective and (2) destructive. Some of them aim to protect and secure, while others aim to repress or exterminate. Women are subject to some taboos which are directed against them as sources of possible harm or danger to men, and they are subject to other taboos which put them outside of the duties or risks of men. On account of this difference in taboos, taboos act selectively, and thus affect the course of civilization. They contain judgments as to societal welfare.

36. No primitive philosophizing; myths; fables; notion of societal welfare. It is not to be understood that primitive men philosophize about their experience of life. That is our way; it was not theirs. They did not formulate any propositions about the causes, significance, or ultimate relations of things. They made myths, however, in which they often presented conceptions which are deeply philosophical, but they represented them in concrete, personal, dramatic and graphic ways. They feared pain and ill, and they produced folkways by their devices for warding off pain and ill. Those devices were acts of ritual which were planned upon their vague and crude faiths about ghosts and the other world. We develop the connection between the devices and the faiths, and we reduce it to propositions of a philosophic form, but the primitive men never did that. Their myths, fables, proverbs, and maxims show that the subtler relations of things did not escape them, and that reflection was not wanting, but [32] the method of it was very different from ours. The notion of societal welfare was not wanting, although it was never consciously put before themselves as their purpose. It was pestilence, as a visitation of the wrath of ghosts on all, or war, which first taught this idea, because war was connected with victory over a neighboring group. The Bataks have a legend that men once married their fathers' sisters' daughters, but calamities followed and so those marriages were tabooed.64 This inference and the cases mentioned in sec. 28 show a conception of societal welfare and of its relation to states and acts as conditions.

37. The imaginative element. The correct apprehension of facts and events by the mind, and the correct inferences as to the relations between them, constitute knowledge, and it is chiefly by knowledge that men have become better able to live well on earth. Therefore the alternation between experience or observation and the intellectual processes by which the sense, sequence, interdependence, and rational consequences of facts are ascertained, is undoubtedly the most important process for winning increased power to live well. Yet we find that this process has been liable to most pernicious errors. The imagination has interfered with the reason and furnished objects of pursuit to men, which have wasted and dissipated their energies. Especially the alternations of observation and deduction have been traversed by vanity and superstition which have introduced delusions. As a consequence, men have turned their backs on welfare and reality, in order to pursue beauty, glory, poetry, and dithyrambic rhetoric, pleasure, fame, adventure, and phantasms. Every group, in every age, has had its "ideals" for which it has striven, as if men had blown bubbles into the air, and then, entranced by their beautiful colors, had leaped to catch them. In the very processes of analysis and deduction the most pernicious errors find entrance. We note our experience in every action or event. We study the significance from experience. We deduce a conviction as to what we may best do when the case arises again. Undoubtedly this is just what we ought to do in order to live well. The process presents us a constant reiteration [33] of the sequence,—act, thought, act. The error is made if we allow suggestions of vanity, superstition, speculation, or imagination to become confused with the second stage and to enter into our conviction of what it is best to do in such a case. This is what was done when goblinism was taken as the explanation of experience and the rule of right living, and it is what has been done over and over again ever since. Speculative and transcendental notions have furnished the world philosophy, and the rules of life policy and duty have been deduced from this and introduced at the second stage of the process,—act, thought, act. All the errors and fallacies of the mental processes enter into the mores of the age. The logic of one age is not that of another. It is one of the chief useful purposes of a study of the mores to learn to discern in them the operation of traditional error, prevailing dogmas, logical fallacy, delusion, and current false estimates of goods worth striving for.

38. The ethical policy of the schools and the success policy. Although speculative assumptions and dogmatic deductions have produced the mischief here described, our present world philosophy has come out of them by rude methods of correction and purification, and "great principles" have been deduced which now control our life philosophy; also ethical principles have been determined which no civilized man would now repudiate (truthfulness, love, honor, altruism). The traditional doctrines of philosophy and ethics are not by any means adjusted smoothly to each other or to modern notions. We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies: the ethical policy taught in the books and the schools, and the success policy. The same man acts at one time by the school ethics, disregarding consequences, at another time by the success policy, in which the consequences dictate the conduct; or we talk the former and act by the latter.65

39. Recapitulation. We may sum up this preliminary analysis as follows: men in groups are under life conditions; they have needs which are similar under the state of the life conditions; the relations of the needs to the conditions are interests under the heads of hunger, love, vanity, and fear; efforts of numbers [34] at the same time to satisfy interests produce mass phenomena which are folkways by virtue of uniformity, repetition, and wide concurrence. The folkways are attended by pleasure or pain according as they are well fitted for the purpose. Pain forces reflection and observation of some relation between acts and welfare. At this point the prevailing world philosophy (beginning with goblinism) suggests explanations and inferences, which become entangled with judgments of expediency. However, the folkways take on a philosophy of right living and a life policy for welfare. Then they become mores, and they may be developed by inferences from the philosophy or the rules in the endeavor to satisfy needs without pain. Hence they undergo improvement and are made consistent with each other.

40. The scope and method of the mores. In the present work the proposition to be maintained is that the folkways are the widest, most fundamental, and most important operation by which the interests of men in groups are served, and that the process by which folkways are made is the chief one to which elementary societal or group phenomena are due. The life of society consists in making folkways and applying them. The science of society might be construed as the study of them. The relations of men to each other, when they are carrying on the struggle for existence near each other, consist in mutual reactions (antagonisms, rivalries, alliances, coercions, and coöperations), from which result societal concatenations and concretions, that is, more or less fixed positions of individuals and subgroups towards each other, and more or less established sequences and methods of interaction between them, by which the interests of all members of the group are served. The same might be said of all animals. The social insects especially show us highly developed results of the adjustment of adjacent interests and life acts into concatenations and concretions. The societal concretions are due to the folkways in this way,—that the men, each struggling to carry on existence, unconsciously coöperate to build up associations, organization, customs, and institutions which, after a time, appear full grown and actual, although no one intended, or planned, or understood them in advance. They [35] stand there as produced by "ancestors." These concretions of relation and act in war, labor, religion, amusement, family life, and civil institutions are attended by faiths, doctrines of philosophy (myths, folklore), and by precepts of right conduct and duty (taboos). The making of folkways is not trivial, although the acts are minute. Every act of each man fixes an atom in a structure, both fulfilling a duty derived from what preceded and conditioning what is to come afterwards by the authority of traditional custom. The structure thus built up is not physical, but societal and institutional, that is to say, it belongs to a category which must be defined and studied by itself. It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence, and consistency, so that the word "structure" may properly be applied to the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which societal functions are permanently connected. The process of making folkways is never superseded or changed. It goes on now just as it did at the beginning of civilization. "Use and wont" exert their force on all men always. They produce familiarity, and mass acts become unconscious. The same effect is produced by customary acts repeated at all recurring occasions. The range of societal activity may be greatly enlarged, interests may be extended and multiplied, the materials by which needs can be supplied may become far more numerous, the processes of societal coöperation may become more complicated, and contract or artifice may take the place of custom for many interests; but, if the case is one which touches the ways or interests of the masses, folkways will develop on and around it by the same process as that which has been described as taking place from the beginning of civilization. The ways of carrying on war have changed with all new inventions of weapons or armor, and have grown into folkways of commanding range and importance. The factory system of handicrafts has produced a body of folkways in which artisans live, and which distinguish factory towns from commercial cities or agricultural villages. The use of cotton instead of linen has greatly affected modern folkways. The applications of power and machinery have changed the standards of comfort of all classes. The folkways, however, have kept their character[36] and authority through all the changes of form which they have undergone.

41. Integration of the mores of a group or age. In further development of the same interpretation of the phenomena we find that changes in history are primarily due to changes in life conditions. Then the folkways change. Then new philosophies and ethical rules are invented to try to justify the new ways. The whole vast body of modern mores has thus been developed out of the philosophy and ethics of the Middle Ages. So the mores which have been developed to suit the system of great secular states, world commerce, credit institutions, contract wages and rent, emigration to outlying continents, etc., have become the norm for the whole body of usages, manners, ideas, faiths, customs, and institutions which embrace the whole life of a society and characterize an historical epoch. Thus India, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, Modern Times, are cases in which the integration of the mores upon different life conditions produced societal states of complete and distinct individuality (ethos). Within any such societal status the great reason for any phenomenon is that it conforms to the mores of the time and place. Historians have always recognized incidentally the operation of such a determining force. What is now maintained is that it is not incidental or subordinate. It is supreme and controlling. Therefore the scientific discussion of a usage, custom, or institution consists in tracing its relation to the mores, and the discussion of societal crises and changes consists in showing their connection with changes in the life conditions, or with the readjustment of the mores to changes in those conditions.

42. Purpose of the present work. "Ethology" would be a convenient term for the study of manners, customs, usages, and mores, including the study of the way in which they are formed, how they grow or decay, and how they affect the interests which it is their purpose to serve. The Greeks applied the term "ethos" to the sum of the characteristic usages, ideas, standards, and codes by which a group was differentiated and individualized in character from other groups. "Ethics" were things which pertained to the ethos and therefore the things which were the[37] standard of right. The Romans used "mores" for customs in the broadest and richest sense of the word, including the notion that customs served welfare, and had traditional and mystic sanction, so that they were properly authoritative and sacred. It is a very surprising fact that modern nations should have lost these words and the significant suggestions which inhere in them. The English language has no derivative noun from "mores," and no equivalent for it. The French mœurs is trivial compared with "mores." The German Sitte renders "mores" but very imperfectly. The modern peoples have made morals and morality a separate domain, by the side of religion, philosophy, and politics. In that sense, morals is an impossible and unreal category. It has no existence, and can have none. The word "moral" means what belongs or appertains to the mores. Therefore the category of morals can never be defined without reference to something outside of itself. Ethics, having lost connection with the ethos of a people, is an attempt to systematize the current notions of right and wrong upon some basic principle, generally with the purpose of establishing morals on an absolute doctrine, so that it shall be universal, absolute, and everlasting. In a general way also, whenever a thing can be called moral, or connected with some ethical generality, it is thought to be "raised," and disputants whose method is to employ ethical generalities assume especial authority for themselves and their views. These methods of discussion are most employed in treating of social topics, and they are disastrous to sound study of facts. They help to hold the social sciences under the dominion of metaphysics. The abuse has been most developed in connection with political economy, which has been almost robbed of the character of a serious discipline by converting its discussions into ethical disquisitions.

43. Why use the word mores. "Ethica," in the Greek sense, or "ethology," as above defined, would be good names for our present work. We aim to study the ethos of groups, in order to see how it arises, its power and influence, the modes of its operation on members of the group, and the various attributes of it (ethica). "Ethology" is a very unfamiliar word. It has been used for the mode of setting forth manners, customs, and mores[38] in satirical comedy. The Latin word "mores" seems to be, on the whole, more practically convenient and available than any other for our purpose, as a name for the folkways with the connotations of right and truth in respect to welfare, embodied in them. The analysis and definition above given show that in the mores we must recognize a dominating force in history, constituting a condition as to what can be done, and as to the methods which can be employed.

44. Mores are a directive force. Of course the view which has been stated is antagonistic to the view that philosophy and ethics furnish creative and determining forces in society and history. That view comes down to us from the Greek philosophy and it has now prevailed so long that all current discussion conforms to it. Philosophy and ethics are pursued as independent disciplines, and the results are brought to the science of society and to statesmanship and legislation as authoritative dicta. We also have Völkerpsychologie, Sozialpolitik, and other intermediate forms which show the struggle of metaphysics to retain control of the science of society. The "historic sense," the Zeitgeist, and other terms of similar import are partial recognitions of the mores and their importance in the science of society. It can be seen also that philosophy and ethics are products of the folkways. They are taken out of the mores, but are never original and creative; they are secondary and derived. They often interfere in the second stage of the sequence,—act, thought, act. Then they produce harm, but some ground is furnished for the claim that they are creative or at least regulative. In fact, the real process in great bodies of men is not one of deduction from any great principle of philosophy or ethics. It is one of minute efforts to live well under existing conditions, which efforts are repeated indefinitely by great numbers, getting strength from habit and from the fellowship of united action. The resultant folkways become coercive. All are forced to conform, and the folkways dominate the societal life. Then they seem true and right, and arise into mores as the norm of welfare. Thence are produced faiths, ideas, doctrines, religions, and philosophies, according to the stage of civilization and the fashions of reflection and generalization.

[39] 45. Consistency in the mores. The tendency of the mores of a period to consistency has been noticed (sec. 5). No doubt this tendency is greatly strengthened when people are able to generalize "principles" from acts. This explains the modern belief that principles are causative. The passion for equality, the universal use of contract, and the sentiments of humanitarianism are informing elements in modern society. Whence did they come? Undoubtedly they came out of the mores into which they return again as a principle of consistency. Respect for human life, horror at cruelty and bloodshed, sympathy with pain, suffering, and poverty (humanitarianism), have acted as "causes" in connection with the abolition of slavery, the reform of the criminal law and of prisons, and sympathy with the oppressed, but humanitarianism was a generalization from remoter mores which were due to changes in life conditions. The ultimate explanation of the rise of humanitarianism is the increased power of man over nature by the acquisition of new land, and by advance in the arts. When men ceased to crowd on each other, they were all willing to adopt ideas and institutions which made the competition of life easy and kindly.

46. The mores of subgroups. Each class or group in a society has its own mores. This is true of ranks, professions, industrial classes, religious and philosophical sects, and all other subdivisions of society. Individuals are in two or more of these groups at the same time, so that there is compromise and neutralization. Other mores are common to the whole society. Mores are also transmitted from one class to another. It is necessary to give precision to the notion of classes.

47. What are classes? Galton66 made a classification of society by a standard which he did not strictly define. He called it "their natural gifts." It might be understood to be mental power, reputation, social success, income from societal work, or societal value. Ammon took up the idea and developed it, making a diagrammatic representation of it, which is reproduced on the following page.67

[40]

48. If we measure and classify a number of persons by any physical characteristic (stature, weight) we find that the results always fall under a curve of probable error. That they should do so is, in fact, a truism. If a number of persons with different degrees of power and resistance are acted on by the same influences, it is most probable that the greatest number of them will reach the same and a mean degree of self-realization, and others in proportion to their power and resistance. The fact has been statistically verified so often, and for such a great variety of physical traits, that we may infer its truth for all traits of mind and character for which we have no units, and which we cannot therefore measure or statistically classify.

49. Classes rated by societal value. If we take societal value as the criterion of the classification of society, it has the advantage of being germane to the interests which are most important [41] in connection with classification, but it is complex. There is no unit of it. Therefore we could never verify it statistically. It conforms, in the main, to mental power, but it must contain also a large element of practical sense, health, and opportunity (luck). On the simplest analysis, there are four elements,—intellectual, moral, economic, and physical; but each of these is composite. If one of them is present in a high degree, and the others in a low degree, the whole is inharmonic, and not highly advantageous. The highest societal value seems to go with a harmonious combination, although it may be of lower grades. A man of talent, practical sense, industry, perseverance, and moral principle is worth more to society than a genius, who is not morally responsible, or not industrious. Societal value also conforms, in a general way, to worldly success and to income from work contributed to the industrial organization, for genius which was not effective would have no societal value. On the other hand, however, so long as scientific work and books of the highest value to science and art pay the authors nothing, the returns of the market, and income, only imperfectly measure societal value. All these limitations being allowed for, nevertheless societal value is a concrete idea, especially on its negative side (paupers, tramps, social failures, and incompetents). The defective, dependent, and delinquent classes are already fully differentiated, and are made objects of statistical enumeration. The rest only differ in degree. If, therefore, all were rated and scaled by this value, the results would fall under a curve of probable error. In the diagram the axis Xx is set perpendicular and the ordinates are divided equally upon it in order to make the divisions correspond to "up" and "down" as we use those words in social discussion. Then MN is the line of the greatest number. From O upwards we may cut off equal sections, OA, AB, etc., to indicate grades of societal value above that of the greatest number, and from O downwards we may cut off equal sections of the same magnitude to indicate grades of societal value less than that of the greatest number. At the top we have a small number of men of genius. Below these we may cut off another section which includes the men of talent. [42] At the bottom we find the dependent, defective, and delinquent classes which are a burden on society. Above them is another stratum, the proletariat, which serves society only by its children. Persons of this class have no regular mode of earning a living, but are not, at the moment at which the classification is made, dependent. These are the only ones to whom the term "proletarian" could with any propriety be applied. Next above these is another well-defined stratum,—the self-supporting, but unskilled and illiterate. Then all who fall between PQ and RS are characterized by mediocrity, and they constitute "the masses." In all new countries, and as it would seem at the present time also in central Europe, there is a very strong current upwards from the lower to the upper strata of PQRS. Universal education tends to produce such a current. Talented men of the period are very often born in humble circumstances, but succeed in taking their true place in the societal scale. It is true, of course, that there is a counter-current of degenerate sons and grandsons. The present diagram is made unsymmetrical with respect to MN to express the opinion that the upper strata of PQRS (the lower professional and the semiprofessional classes) are now, in any civilized society, larger in proportion than symmetry would indicate.68 The line MN is therefore a mode, and the class upon it is the modal class of the society, by means of which one society might be compared with another.

50. Galton estimated the number of men of genius in all history at four hundred. An important fraction of these were related by blood. The "men of the time" he rates at four hundred and fifty in a million, and the more distinguished of them at two hundred and fifty in a million. These latter he defines by saying that a man, to be included amongst them, "should have distinguished himself pretty frequently, either by purely original work, or as a leader of opinion." He finds that illustrious men are only one in a million. On the other hand, idiots and imbeciles in England and Wales are one in four hundred, of whom thirty per cent can be educated so as to be equal to one [43] third of a normal man each; forty per cent can be made worth two thirds of a man; twenty-five or thirty per cent pass muster in a crowd. Above these are silly persons whose relatives shield them from public knowledge. Then above these come the Dundreary type.69

51. Class; race; group solidarity. If the group which is classified is a large one, and especially if it is a genetic unit (race, tribe, or nation), there are no gaps in the series. Each individual falls into his place by virtue of his characteristic differences. Just as no two are anthropologically alike, so we may believe that no two are alike or equal in societal value. That all men should be alike or equal, by any standard whatever, is contrary to all the facts of human nature and all the conditions of human life. Any group falls into subdivisions, the members of each of which are approximately equal, when measured by any standard, because the classification is imperfect. If we make it more refined, the subdivisions must be subdivided again. We are in a dilemma: we cannot describe mankind at all without categories, and if we go on to make our categories more and more exact, each one of them would at last contain only one person. Two things result which are practically important, and which furnish us with scientific concepts which we can employ in further study: (1) The classification gives us the notion of the relative position of one, or a subdivision, in the entire group. This is the sense of "class."70 (2) The characteristic differences furnish the notion of individuality and personality. The concept of a race, as the term is now used, is that of a group clustered around a mean with respect to some characteristic, and great confusion in the use of the word "race" arises from the attempt to define races by their boundaries, when we really think of them by the mean or mode, e.g. as to skin color. The [ 44] coherence, unity, and solidarity of a genetic group is a very striking fact. It seems to conceal a play of mystic forces. It is, in fact, no more mysterious than the run of dice. The propositions about it would all become, in the last analysis, identical propositions; e.g. it is most probable that we shall meet with the thing which is present in the greatest number; or, it is most probable that the most probable thing will happen. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when attention was first called to the solidarity and internal correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four sixes is just the same as that of throwing four ones. The mean of the sums of the dots which may fall uppermost is fourteen, which can be produced by one hundred and forty-six throws. Suppose that the components of social value are four,—intellectual, moral, physical, economic,—represented by the four dice, and that the degrees are represented by the dots. We should get four sixes once in twelve hundred and ninety-six throws. Of the one hundred and forty-six throws which give the mean fourteen, seventy-two show one six up. That might be a Hercules fit only for a dime museum. Seventy-eight of the combinations are inharmonious, but have one strong element.71 In societal matters it is by no means indifferent whether the equal sums of societal value are made up of very unequal, or of harmonious, components. So in a group of a million persons the chance of a great genius, who would stand alone towards X is just the same as that of an utter idiot who would stand alone towards x, and the reason why the number at the mode is so great is that the societal value is the sum of components, of which many sums may be equal, although the components are very unequal. Two strata at equal distances above and below O are equal in number, so far as their useful powers and resistances go, but education introduces a new component which destroys their equality and forces a redistribution. [45] Galton72 suggests that, if people who would when adults fall in classes V, W, or X in our diagram could be recognized in infancy, and could be bought for money, it would be a great bargain for a nation, England for instance, to buy them for much money and rear them as Englishmen. Farr estimated the baby of an agricultural laborer as worth £5, capital value. A baby who could be reared to take a place in the class X would have a capital value of thousands of pounds. The capital value would be like that of land of different degrees of natural advantage, but none of it yet exploited.

52. The masses and the mores. In connection with the mores the masses are of very great importance. The historical or selected classes are those which, in history, have controlled the activities and policy of generations. They have been differentiated at one time by one standard, at another time by another. The position which they held by inheritance from early society has given them prestige and authority. Merit and societal value, according to the standards of their time, have entered into their status only slightly and incidentally. Those classes have had their own mores. They had the power to regulate their lives to some extent according to their own choice, a power which modern civilized men eagerly desire and strive for primarily by the acquisition of wealth. The historical classes have, therefore, selected purposes, and have invented ways of fulfilling them. Their ways have been imitated by the masses. The classes have led the way in luxury, frivolity, and vice, and also in refinement, culture, and the art of living. They have introduced variation. The masses are not large classes at the base of a social pyramid; they are the core of the society. They are conservative. They accept life as they find it, and live on by tradition and habit. In other words, the great mass of any society lives a purely instinctive life just like animals. We must not be misled by the conservatism of castes and aristocracies, who resist change of customs and institutions by virtue of which they hold social power. The conservatism of the masses is of a different kind. It is not produced by interests, but it is instinctive. It is due [46] to inertia. Change would make new effort necessary to win routine and habit. It is therefore irksome. The masses, moreover, have not the power to reach out after "improvements," or to plan steps of change by which needs might be better satisfied. The mores of any society, at a period, may be characterized by the promptness or reluctance of the masses to imitate the ways of the classes. It is a question of the first importance for the historian whether the mores of the historical classes of which he finds evidence in documentary remains penetrated the masses or not. The masses are the real bearers of the mores of the society. They carry tradition. The folkways are their ways. They accept influence or leadership, and they imitate, but they do so as they see fit, being controlled by their notions and tastes previously acquired. They may accept standards of character and action from the classes, or from foreigners, or from literature, or from a new religion, but whatever they take up they assimilate and make it a part of their own mores, which they then transmit by tradition, defend in its integrity, and refuse to discard again. Consequently the writings of the literary class may not represent the faiths, notions, tastes, standards, etc., of the masses at all. The literature of the first Christian centuries shows us scarcely anything of the mores of the time, as they existed in the faith and practice of the masses. Every group takes out of a new religion which is offered to it just what it can assimilate with its own traditional mores. Christianity was a very different thing amongst Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, Germans, and Slavs. It would be a great mistake to suppose that any people ever accepted and held philosophical or religious teaching as it was offered to them, and as we find it recorded in the books of the teachers. The mores of the masses admit of no such sudden and massive modification by doctrinal teaching. The process of assimilation is slow, and it is attended by modifying influences at every stage. What the classes adopt, be it good or ill, may be found pervading the mass after generations, but it will appear as a resultant of all the vicissitudes of the folkways in the interval. "It was the most frightful feature of the corruption of ancient Rome, that it extended through every class [47] in the community."73 "As in the Renaissance, so now [in the Catholic reaction] vice trickled downward from above, infiltrating the mass of the people with its virus."74 It is the classes who produce variation; it is the masses who carry forward the traditional mores.

53. Fallacies about the masses and classes. It is a fallacy to infer that the masses have some occult wisdom or inspiration by virtue of which they select what is wise, right, and good from what the classes offer. There is, also, no device by which it is possible to obtain from the masses, in advance or on demand, a judgment on any proposed changes or innovations. The masses are not an oracle. If any answers can be obtained on the problems of life, such answers will come rather from the classes. The two sections of society are such that they may coöperate with advantage to the good of all. Neither one has a right or a better claim to rule the society.

54. Action of the masses on thoughts. Fifty years ago Darwin put some knowledge into the common stock. The peasants and artisans of his time did nothing of the kind. What the masses do with thoughts is that they rub them down into counters just as they take coins from the mint and smooth them down by wear until they are only disks of metal. The masses understand, for instance, that Darwin said that "men are descended from monkeys." Only summary and glib propositions of that kind can ever get currency. The learned men are all the time trying to recoin them and give them at least partial reality. Ruskin set afloat some notions of art criticism, which have penetrated all our cultivated classes. They are not lost, but see what has become of them in fifty years by popularization. A little later a new gospel of furniture and house decoration was published. The masses have absorbed it. See what they have made of it. Eastlake wanted no machine work, but machinery was not to be defeated. It can make lopsided things if those are the fashion, and it can make all the construction show if Eastlake has got the notion into the crowd that the pegs ought to be on the outside. Thinking and understanding are too hard work. If any one [48] wants to blame the masses let him turn to his own case. He will find that he thinks about and understands only his own intellectual pursuit. He could not give the effort to every other department of knowledge. In other matters he is one of the masses and does as they do. He uses routine, set formulæ, current phrases, caught up from magazines and newspapers of the better class.

55. Organization of the masses. Masses of men who are on a substantial equality with each other never can be anything but hopeless savages. The eighteenth-century notion that men in a state of nature were all equal is wrong-side up. Men who were equal would be in a state of nature such as was imagined. They could not form a society. They would be forced to scatter and wander, at most two or three together. They never could advance in the arts of civilization. The popular belief that out of some such horde there has come by the spontaneous development of innate forces all the civilization which we possess is entirely unfounded. Masses of men who are approximately equal are in time exterminated or enslaved. Only when enslaved or subjugated are some of them carried up with their conquerors by organization and discipline (negroes and Indians amongst us). A horde in which the only differences are those of age and sex is not capable of maintaining existence. It fights because only by conquering or being conquered can it endure. When it is subjugated and disciplined it consists of workers to belabor the ground for others, or tax payers to fill a treasury from which others may spend, or food for gunpowder, or voting material for demagogues. It is an object of exploitation. At one moment, in spite of its aggregate muscle, it is helpless and imbecile; the next moment it is swept away into folly and mischief by a suggestion or an impulse. Organization, leadership, and discipline are indispensable to any beneficial action by masses of men. If we ignore this fact, we see the machine and the boss evolved out of the situation which we create.

56. Institutions of civil liberty. Institutions also must be produced which will hold the activities of society in channels of order, deliberation, peace, regulated antagonism of interests, and [49] justice, according to the mores of the time. These institutions put an end to exploitation and bring interests into harmony under civil liberty. But where do the institutions come from? The masses have never made them. They are produced out of the mores by the selection of the leading men and classes who get control of the collective power of the society and direct it to the activities which will (as they think) serve the interests which they regard as most important. If changes in life conditions occur, the interests to be served change. Great inventions and discoveries, the opening of new continents, new methods of agriculture and commerce, the introduction of money and financial devices, improved state organization, increase the economic power of the society and the force at the disposal of the state. Industrial interests displace military and monarchical interests as the ones which the state chiefly aims to serve, not because of any tide of "progress," but because industrialism gives greater and more varied satisfactions to the rulers. The increase of power is the primary condition. The classes strive with each other for the new power. Peace is necessary, for without peace none of them can enjoy power. Compromise, adjustment of interests, antagonistic coöperation (sec. 21), harmony, are produced, and institutions are the regulative processes and apparatus by which warfare is replaced by system. The historical process has been full of error, folly, selfishness, violence, and craft. It is so still. The point which is now important for us is that the masses have never carried on the struggles and processes by which civilized society has been made into an arena, within which exploitation of man by man is to some extent repressed, and where individual self-realization has a large scope, under the institutions of civil liberty. It is the historical and selected classes which have done this, often enough without intending or foreseeing the results of actions which they inaugurated with quite other, perhaps selfish, class purposes in view. A society is a whole made up of parts. All the parts have a legitimate share in the acts and sufferings of the society. All the parts contribute to the life and work of the society. We inherit all the consequences of all their acts. Some of the consequences are good and some are bad. [50] It is utterly impossible to name the classes which have done useful work and made beneficial sacrifices only, and the other classes which have been idle burdens and mischief makers only. All that has been done has been done by all. It is evident that no other view than this can be rational and true, for one reason because the will and intention of the men of to-day in what they do has so little to do with the consequences to-morrow of what they do. The notion that religion, or marriage, or property, or monarchy, as we have inherited them, can be proved evil, or worthy of condemnation and contempt on account of the selfishness and violence interwoven with their history, is one of the idlest of all the vagaries of the social philosophers.

57. The common man. Every civilized society has to carry below the lowest sections of the masses a dead weight of ignorance, poverty, crime, and disease. Every such society has, in the great central section of the masses, a great body which is neutral in all the policy of society. It lives by routine and tradition. It is not brutal, but it is shallow, narrow-minded, and prejudiced. Nevertheless it is harmless. It lacks initiative and cannot give an impulse for good or bad. It produces few criminals. It can sometimes be moved by appeals to its fixed ideas and prejudices. It is affected in its mores by contagion from the classes above it. The work of "popularization" consists in bringing about this contagion. The middle section is formed around the mathematical mean of the society, or around the mathematical mode, if the distribution of the subdivisions is not symmetrical. The man on the mode is the "common man," the "average man," or the "man in the street." Between him and the democratic political institutions—the pulpit, the newspapers, and the public library—there is a constant reaction by which mores are modified and preserved. The aim of all the institutions and literature in a modern state is to please him. His aim is to get out of them what suits him. The yellow newspapers thrive and displace all the others because he likes them. The trashy novels pay well because his wife and daughters like them. The advertisements in the popular magazines are addressed to him. They show what he wants. The "funny items" [51] are adjusted to his sense of humor. Hence all these things are symptoms. They show what he "believes in," and they strengthen his prejudices. If all art, literature, legislation, and political power are to be cast at his feet, it makes some difference who and what he is. His section of society determines the mores of the whole.

58. "The people." Popular impulses. In a democratic state the great middle section would rule if it was organized independently of the rest. It is that section which constitutes "the people" in the special technical sense in which that expression is current in political use. It is to it that the Jeffersonian doctrines about the "wisdom" of the people would apply. That section, however, is never organized independently; that is to say, "the people" never exist as a body exercising political power. The middle section of a group may be enthused by an impulse which is adapted to its ways and notions. It clings to persons, loves anecdotes, is fond of light emotions, and prides itself on its morality. If a man wins popularity in that section, the impulse which his name can give to it may be irresistible (Jefferson, Jackson). The middle section is greatly affected by symbolism. "The flag" can be developed into a fetich. A cult can be nourished around it. Group vanity is very strong in it. Patriotic emotions and faiths are its favorite psychological exercises, if the conjuncture is favorable and the material well-being is high. When the middle section is stirred by any spontaneous and consentaneous impulses which arise from its nature and ways, it may produce incredible results with only a minimum of organization. "A little prosperity and some ideas, as Aristotle saw, are the ferment which sets the masses in ebullition. This offers an opportunity. A beginning is made. The further development is unavoidable."75

59. Agitation. Every impulse given to the masses is, in its nature, spasmodic and transitory. No systematic enterprise to enlighten the masses ever can be carried out. Campaigns of education contain a fallacy. Education takes time. It cannot be treated as subsidiary for a lifetime and then be made the [ 52] chief business for six months with the desired result. A campaign of education is undemocratic. It implies that some one is teacher and somebody else pupil. It can only result in the elucidation of popular interests and the firmer establishment of popular prejudice. On the other hand, an agitation which appeals skillfully to pet notions and to latent fanaticism may stampede the masses. The Middle Ages furnished a number of cases. The Mahdis who have arisen in Mohammedan Africa, and other Moslem prophets, have produced wonderful phenomena of this kind. The silver agitation was begun, in 1878, by a systematic effort of three or four newspapers in the middle West, addressed to currency notions which the greenback proposition had popularized. What is the limit to the possibilities of fanaticism and frenzy which might be produced in any society by agitation skillfully addressed to the fallacies and passions of the masses? The answer lies in the mores, which determine the degree of reserved common sense, and the habit of observing measure and method, to which the masses have been accustomed. It follows that popular agitation is a desperate and doubtful method. The masses, as the great popular jury which, at last, by adoption or rejection, decides the fate of all proposed changes in the mores, needs stability and moderation. Popular agitation introduces into the masses initiative and creative functions which destroy its judgment and call for quite other qualities.

60. The ruling element in the masses. The masses are liable to controlling influences from elements which they contain. When crises arise in a democratic state attention is concentrated on the most numerous strata nearest to MN (see the diagram, p. 40), but they rarely possess self-determination unless the question at issue appeals directly to popular interest or popular vanity. Moreover, those strata cannot rule unless they combine with those next above and below. So the critical question always is, in regard to the masses PQRS, which parts of it will move the whole of it. Generally the question is, more specifically, What is the character of the strata above a line through A or B, and what is their relation to the rest of PQRS? If the upper part of the section PQRS consists of employers and the lower part [53] of employés, and if they hate and fight each other, coherence and sympathy in the society will cease, the mores will be characterized by discord, passion, and quarrelsomeness, and political crises will arise which may reach any degree of severity, for the political parties will soon coincide with the class sections. The upper part of PQRS is made up of the strata which possess comfort without luxury, but also culture, intelligence, and the best family mores. They are generally disciplined classes, with strong moral sense, public spirit, and sense of responsibility. If we are not in error as to the movement in civilized states of the present time from the lower into the upper strata of PQRS, by virtue of ambition and education, then it follows that the upper strata are being constantly reënforced by all the elements in the society which have societal value, after those elements have been developed and disciplined by labor and self-denial. The share which the upper strata of the masses have in determining the policy of the masses is therefore often decisive of public welfare. On the other hand, it is when the masses are controlled by the strata next above RS that there is most violent impulsiveness in societal movements. The movements and policies which are characterized as revolutionary have their rise in these classes, although, in other cases, these classes also adhere most stubbornly to popular traditions in spite of reason and fact. Trade unionism is, at the present time, a social philosophy and a programme of policy which has its origin in the sections of the masses next above RS.

The French Revolution began with the highest strata of the masses, and the control of it passed on down from one to another of the lower strata, until it reached the lowest,—the mob gathered in the slums of a great city.

61. The mores and institutions. Institutions and laws are produced out of mores. An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to coöperate in prescribed ways at a certain conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in a[54] way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions are either crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape in the mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and specific. Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary institutions. They began in folkways. They became customs. They developed into mores by the addition of some philosophy of welfare, however crude. Then they were made more definite and specific as regards the rules, the prescribed acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This produced a structure and the institution was complete. Enacted institutions are products of rational invention and intention. They belong to high civilization. Banks are institutions of credit founded on usages which can be traced back to barbarism. There came a time when, guided by rational reflection on experience, men systematized and regulated the usages which had become current, and thus created positive institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the constitution of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from what the inventors planned. All institutions have come out of mores, although the rational element in them is sometimes so large that their origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by an historical investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint stock companies, the stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are still almost entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might capture and hold a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior force which was its own supreme justification. But his act brought his group and her group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They forbade capture, or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the individual might still use force, but his comrades were no longer responsible. The glory to him, if he succeeded, might be all the greater. His control over his captive was absolute. [55] Within the prescribed conditions, "capture" became technical and institutional, and rights grew out of it. The woman had a status which was defined by custom, and was very different from the status of a real captive. Marriage was the institutional relation, in the society and under its sanction, of a woman to a man, where the woman had been obtained in the prescribed way. She was then a "wife." What her rights and duties were was defined by the mores, as they are to-day in all civilized society.

62. Laws. Acts of legislation come out of the mores. In low civilization all societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin of which is unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of verification, reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is reached there is only customary law, or common law. The customary law may be codified and systematized with respect to some philosophical principles, and yet remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian are examples. Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors has been so much weakened that it is no longer thought wrong to interfere with traditional customs by positive enactment. Even then there is reluctance to make enactments, and there is a stage of transition during which traditional customs are extended by interpretation to cover new cases and to prevent evils. Legislation, however, has to seek standing ground on the existing mores, and it soon becomes apparent that legislation, to be strong, must be consistent with the mores.76 Things which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. It is sometimes said that "public opinion" must ratify and approve police regulations, but this statement rests on an imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict. The mores of our urban and rural populations are not the same; consequently legislation about intoxicants which is made by one of these sections of the population does not succeed when applied to the other. The regulation of drinking places, gambling places, [56] and disorderly houses has passed through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a question of expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to make a police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law. Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which to realize such purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the place of taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are characterized by greater or less readiness and confidence in regard to the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes.

63. How laws and institutions differ from mores. When folkways have become institutions or laws they have changed their character and are to be distinguished from the mores. The element of sentiment and faith inheres in the mores. Laws and institutions have a rational and practical character, and are more mechanical and utilitarian. The great difference is that institutions and laws have a positive character, while mores are unformulated and undefined. There is a philosophy implicit in the folkways; when it is made explicit it becomes technical philosophy. Objectively regarded, the mores are the customs which actually conduce to welfare under existing life conditions. Acts under the laws and institutions are conscious and voluntary; under the folkways they are always unconscious and involuntary, so that they have the character of natural necessity. Educated reflection and skepticism can disturb this spontaneous relation. The laws, being positive prescriptions, supersede the mores so far as they are adopted. It follows that the mores come into operation where laws and tribunals fail. The mores cover the great field of common life where there are no laws or police regulations. They cover an immense and undefined domain, and [57] they break the way in new domains, not yet controlled at all. The mores, therefore, build up new laws and police regulations in time.

64. Difference between mores and some cognate things. Products of intentional investigation or of rational and conscious reflection, projects formally adopted by voluntary associations, rational methods consciously selected, injunctions and prohibitions by authority, and all specific conventional arrangements are not in the mores. They are differentiated by the rational and conscious element in them. We may also make a distinction between usages and mores. Usages are folkways which contain no principle of welfare, but serve convenience so long as all know what they are expected to do. For instance, Orientals, to show respect, cover the head and uncover the feet; Occidentals do the opposite. There is no inherent and necessary connection between respect and either usage, but it is an advantage that there should be a usage and that all should know and observe it. One way is as good as another, if it is understood and established. The folkways as to public decency belong to the mores, because they have real connection with welfare which determines the only tenor which they can have. The folkways about propriety and modesty are sometimes purely conventional and sometimes inherently real. Fashions, fads, affectations, poses, ideals, manias, popular delusions, follies, and vices must be included in the mores. They have characteral qualities and characteral effect. However frivolous or foolish they may appear to people of another age, they have the form of attempts to live well, to satisfy some interest, or to win some good. The ways of advertisers who exaggerate, use tricks to win attention, and appeal to popular weakness and folly; the ways of journalism; electioneering devices; oratorical and dithyrambic extravagances in politics; current methods of humbug and sensationalism,—are not properly part of the mores but symptoms of them. They are not products of the concurrent and coöperative effort of all members of the society to live well. They are devices made with conscious ingenuity to exert suggestion on the minds of others. The mores are rather the underlying facts in regard to the faiths, notions, [58] tastes, desires, etc., of that society at that time, to which all these modes of action appeal and of whose existence they are evidence.

65. What is goodness or badness of the mores. It is most important to notice that, for the people of a time and place, their own mores are always good, or rather that for them there can be no question of the goodness or badness of their mores. The reason is because the standards of good and right are in the mores. If the life conditions change, the traditional folkways may produce pain and loss, or fail to produce the same good as formerly. Then the loss of comfort and ease brings doubt into the judgment of welfare (causing doubt of the pleasure of the gods, or of war power, or of health), and thus disturbs the unconscious philosophy of the mores. Then a later time will pass judgment on the mores. Another society may also pass judgment on the mores. In our literary and historical study of the mores we want to get from them their educational value, which consists in the stimulus or warning as to what is, in its effects, societally good or bad. This may lead us to reject or neglect a phenomenon like infanticide, slavery, or witchcraft, as an old "abuse" and "evil," or to pass by the crusades as a folly which cannot recur. Such a course would be a great error. Everything in the mores of a time and place must be regarded as justified with regard to that time and place. "Good" mores are those which are well adapted to the situation. "Bad" mores are those which are not so adapted. The mores are not so stereotyped and changeless as might appear, because they are forever moving towards more complete adaptation to conditions and interests, and also towards more complete adjustment to each other. People in mass have never made or kept up a custom in order to hurt their own interests. They have made innumerable errors as to what their interests were and how to satisfy them, but they have always aimed to serve their interests as well as they could. This gives the standpoint for the student of the mores. All things in them come before him on the same plane. They all bring instruction and warning. They all have the same relation to power and welfare. The mistakes in them are component parts of them. We do not study them in order to approve [59] some of them and condemn others. They are all equally worthy of attention from the fact that they existed and were used. The chief object of study in them is their adjustment to interests, their relation to welfare, and their coördination in a harmonious system of life policy. For the men of the time there are no "bad" mores. What is traditional and current is the standard of what ought to be. The masses never raise any question about such things. If a few raise doubts and questions, this proves that the folkways have already begun to lose firmness and the regulative element in the mores has begun to lose authority. This indicates that the folkways are on their way to a new adjustment. The extreme of folly, wickedness, and absurdity in the mores is witch persecutions, but the best men of the seventeenth century had no doubt that witches existed, and that they ought to be burned. The religion, statecraft, jurisprudence, philosophy, and social system of that age all contributed to maintain that belief. It was rather a culmination than a contradiction of the current faiths and convictions, just as the dogma that all men are equal and that one ought to have as much political power in the state as another was the culmination of the political dogmatism and social philosophy of the nineteenth century. Hence our judgments of the good or evil consequences of folkways are to be kept separate from our study of the historical phenomena of them, and of their strength and the reasons for it. The judgments have their place in plans and doctrines for the future, not in a retrospect.

66. More exact definition of the mores. We may now formulate a more complete definition of the mores. They are the ways of doing things which are current in a society to satisfy human needs and desires, together with the faiths, notions, codes, and standards of well living which inhere in those ways, having a genetic connection with them. By virtue of the latter element the mores are traits in the specific character (ethos) of a society or a period. They pervade and control the ways of thinking in all the exigencies of life, returning from the world of abstractions to the world of action, to give guidance and to win revivification. "The mores [Sitten] are, before any beginning[60] of reflection, the regulators of the political, social, and religious behavior of the individual. Conscious reflection is the worst enemy of the mores, because mores begin unconsciously and pursue unconscious purposes, which are recognized by reflection often only after long and circuitous processes, and because their expediency often depends on the assumption that they will have general acceptance and currency, uninterfered with by reflection."77 "The mores are usage in any group, in so far as it, on the one hand, is not the expression or fulfillment of an absolute natural necessity [e.g. eating or sleeping], and, on the other hand, is independent of the arbitrary will of the individual, and is generally accepted as good and proper, appropriate and worthy."78

67. Ritual. The process by which mores are developed and established is ritual. Ritual is so foreign to our mores that we do not recognize its power. In primitive society it is the prevailing method of activity, and primitive religion is entirely a matter of ritual. Ritual is the perfect form of drill and of the regulated habit which comes from drill. Acts which are ordained by authority and are repeated mechanically without intelligence run into ritual. If infants and children are subjected to ritual they never escape from its effects through life. Galton79 says that he was, in early youth, in contact with the Mohammedan ritual idea that the left hand is less worthy than the right, and that he never overcame it. We see the effect of ritual in breeding, courtesy, politeness, and all forms of prescribed behavior. Etiquette is social ritual. Ritual is not easy compliance with usage; it is strict compliance with detailed and punctilious rule. It admits of no exception or deviation. The stricter the discipline, the greater the power of ritual over action and character. In the training of animals and the education of children it is the perfection, inevitableness, invariableness, and relentlessness of routine which tells. They should never experience any exception or irregularity. Ritual is connected with words, gestures, symbols, and signs. Associations result, and, upon a repetition [61] of the signal, the act is repeated, whether the will assents or not. Association and habit account for the phenomena. Ritual gains further strength when it is rhythmical, and is connected with music, verse, or other rhythmical arts. Acts are ritually repeated at the recurrence of the rhythmical points. The alternation of night and day produces rhythms of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, for great numbers at the same time, in their struggle for existence. The seasons also produce rhythms in work. Ritual may embody an idea of utility, expediency, or welfare, but it always tends to become perfunctory, and the idea is only subconscious. There is ritual in primitive therapeutics, and it was not eliminated until very recent times. The patient was directed, not only to apply remedies, but also to perform rites. The rites introduced mystic elements. This illustrates the connection of ritual with notions of magical effects produced by rites. All ritual is ceremonious and solemn. It tends to become sacred, or to make sacred the subject-matter with which it is connected. Therefore, in primitive society, it is by ritual that sentiments of awe, deference to authority, submission to tradition, and disciplinary coöperation are inculcated. Ritual operates a constant suggestion, and the suggestion is at once put in operation in acts. Ritual, therefore, suggests sentiments, but it never inculcates doctrines. Ritual is strongest when it is most perfunctory and excites no thought. By familiarity with ritual any doctrinal reference which it once had is lost by familiarity, but the habits persist. Primitive religion is ritualistic, not because religion makes ritual, but because ritual makes religion. Ritual is something to be done, not something to be thought or felt. Men can always perform the prescribed act, although they cannot always think or feel prescribed thoughts or emotions. The acts may bring up again, by association, states of the mind and sentiments which have been connected with them, especially in childhood, when the fantasy was easily affected by rites, music, singing, dramas, etc. No creed, no moral code, and no scientific demonstration can ever win the same hold upon men and women as habits of action, with associated sentiments and states of mind, drilled in from childhood. Mohammedanism [62] shows the power of ritual. Any occupation is interrupted for the prayers and prescribed genuflections. The Brahmins also observe an elaborate daily ritual. They devote to it two hours in the morning, two in the evening, and one at midday.80 Monks and nuns have won the extreme satisfaction of religious sentiment from the unbroken habit of repeated ritual, with undisturbed opportunity to develop the emotional effects of it.

68. The ritual of the mores. The mores are social ritual in which we all participate unconsciously. The current habits as to hours of labor, meal hours, family life, the social intercourse of the sexes, propriety, amusements, travel, holidays, education, the use of periodicals and libraries, and innumerable other details of life fall under this ritual. Each does as everybody does. For the great mass of mankind as to all things, and for all of us for a great many things, the rule to do as all do suffices. We are led by suggestion and association to believe that there must be wisdom and utility in what all do. The great mass of the folkways give us discipline and the support of routine and habit. If we had to form judgments as to all these cases before we could act in them, and were forced always to act rationally, the burden would be unendurable. Beneficent use and wont save us this trouble.

69. Group interests and policy. Groups select, consciously and unconsciously, standards of group well living. They plan group careers, and adopt purposes through which they hope to attain to group self-realization. The historical classes adopt the decisions which constitute these group plans and acts, and they impose them on the group. The Greeks were enthused at one time by a national purpose to destroy Troy, at another time by a national necessity to ward off Persian conquest. The Romans conceived of their rivalry with Carthage as a struggle from which only one state could survive. Spain, through an effort to overthrow the political power of the Moors in the peninsula and to make it all Christian, was educated up to a national purpose to make Spain a pure "Christian" state, in the dogmatic and ecclesiastical sense of the word. Moors and Jews were expelled at [63] great cost and loss. Germany and Italy cherished for generations a national hope and desire to become unified states. Some attempts to formulate or interpret the Monroe doctrine would make it a national policy and programme for the United States. In lower civilization group interests and purposes are less definite. We must believe that barbarous tribes often form notions of their group interests, and adopt group policies, especially in their relations with neighboring groups. The Iroquois, after forming their confederation, made war on neighboring tribes in order either to subjugate them or to force them to come into the peace pact. Pontiac and Tecumseh united the red men in a race effort to drive the whites out of North America.

70. Group interests and folkways. Whenever a group has a group purpose that purpose produces group interests, and those interests overrule individual interests in the development of folkways. A group might adopt a pacific and industrial purpose, but historical cases of this kind are very few. It used to be asserted that the United States had as its great social purpose to create a social environment which should favor that development of the illiterate and unskilled classes into an independent status for which the economic conditions of a new country give opportunity, and it was asserted that nothing could cause a variation from this policy, which was said to be secured in the political institutions and political ideas of the people. Within a few years the United States has been affected by an ambition to be a world power. (A world power is a state which expects to have a share in the settlement of every clash of interests and collision of state policies which occurs anywhere on the globe.) There is no reason to wonder at this action of a democracy, for a democracy is sure to resent any suggestion that it is limited in its functions, as compared with other political forms. At the same time that the United States has moved towards the character of a world power it has become militant. Other states in the past which have had group purposes have been militant. Even when they arrived at commerce and industry they have pursued policies which involved them in war (Venice, Hansa, Holland). Since the group interests override the individual interests, the [64] selection and determination of group purposes is a function of the greatest importance and an act of the greatest effect on individual welfare. The interests of the society or nation furnish an easy phrase, but such phrases are to be regarded with suspicion. Such interests are apt to be the interests of a ruling clique which the rest are to be compelled to serve. On the other hand, a really great and intelligent group purpose, founded on correct knowledge and really sound judgment, can infuse into the mores a vigor and consistent character which will reach every individual with educative effect. The essential condition is that the group purpose shall be "founded on correct knowledge and really sound judgment." The interests must be real, and they must be interests of the whole, and the judgment as to means of satisfying them must be correct.

71. Force in the folkways. Here we notice also the intervention of force. There is always a large element of force in the folkways. It constitutes another modification of the theory of the folkways as expedient devices, developed in experience, to meet the exigencies of life. The organization of society under chiefs and medicine men greatly increased the power of the society to serve its own interests. The same is true of higher political organizations. If Gian Galeazzo Visconti or Cesare Borgia could have united Italy into a despotic state, it is an admissible opinion that the history of the peninsula in the following four or five hundred years would have been happy and prosperous, and that, at the present time, it would have had the same political system which it has now. However, chiefs, kings, priests, warriors, statesmen, and other functionaries have put their own interests in the place of group interests, and have used the authority they possessed to force the societal organization to work and fight for their interests. The force is that of the society itself. It is directed by the ruling class or persons. The force enters into the mores and becomes a component in them. Despotism is in the mores of negro tribes, and of all Mohammedan peoples. There is an element of force in all forms of property, marriage, and religion. Slavery, however, is the grandest case of force in the mores, employed to make some [65] serve the interests of others, in the societal organization. The historical classes, having selected the group purposes and decided the group policy, use the force of the society itself to coerce all to acquiesce and to work and fight in the determined way without regard to their individual interests. This they do by means of discipline and ritual. In different kinds of mores the force is screened by different devices. It is always present, and brutal, cruel force has entered largely into the development of all our mores, even those which we think most noble and excellent.

72. Might and right. Modern civilized states of the best form are often called jural states because the concept of rights enters so largely into all their constitutions and regulations. Our political philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our mores and those of earlier generations. In fact, it is a characteristic of our mores that the form of our thinking about all points of political philosophy is set for us by the concept of rights. Nothing but might has ever made right, and if we include in might (as we ought to) elections and the decisions of courts, nothing but might makes right now. We must distinguish between the anterior and the posterior view of the matter in question. If we are about to take some action, and are debating the right of it, the might which can be brought to support one view of it has nothing to do with the right of it. If a thing has been done and is established by force (that is, no force can reverse it), it is right in the only sense we know, and rights will follow from it which are not vitiated at all by the force in it. There would be no security at all for rights if this were not so. We find men and parties protesting, declaiming, complaining of what is done, and which they say is not "right," but only force. An election decides that those shall have power who will execute an act of policy. The defeated party denounces the wrong and wickedness of the act. It is done. It may be a [66] war, a conquest, a spoliation; every one must help to do it by paying taxes and doing military service or other duty which may be demanded of him. The decision of a lawsuit leaves one party protesting and complaining. He always speaks of "right" and "rights." He is forced to acquiesce. The result is right in the only sense which is real and true. It is more to the purpose to note that an indefinite series of consequences follow, and that they create or condition rights which are real and just. Many persons now argue against property that it began in force and therefore has no existence in right and justice. They might say the same of marriage or religion. Some do say the same of the state. The war of the United States with Mexico in 1845 is now generally regarded as unjustified. That cannot affect the rights of all kinds which have been contracted in the territory then ceded by Mexico or under the status created on the land obtained by the treaty of peace with that country. The whole history of mankind is a series of acts which are open to doubt, dispute, and criticism, as to their right and justice, but all subsequent history has been forced to take up the consequences of those acts and go on. The disputants about "rights" often lose sight of the fact that the world has to go on day by day and dispute must end. It always ends in force. The end always leaves some complaining in terms of right and rights. They are overborne by force of some kind. Therefore might has made all the right which ever has existed or exists now. If it is proposed to reverse, reform, or change anything which ever was done because we now think that it was wrong, that is a new question and a new case, in which the anterior view alone is in place. It is for the new and future cases that we study historical cases and form judgments on them which will enable us to act more wisely. If we recognize the great extent to which force now enters into all which happens in society, we shall cease to be shocked to learn the extent to which it has been active in the entire history of civilization. The habit of using jural concepts, which is now so characteristic of our mores, leads us into vague and impossible dreams of social affairs, in which metaphysical concepts are supposed to realize themselves, or are assumed to be real.

[67] 73. Status in the folkways. If now we form a conception of the folkways as a great mass of usages, of all degrees of importance, covering all the interests of life, constituting an outfit of instruction for the young, embodying a life policy, forming character, containing a world philosophy, albeit most vague and unformulated, and sanctioned by ghost fear so that variation is impossible, we see with what coercive and inhibitive force the folkways have always grasped the members of a society. The folkways create status. Membership in the group, kin, family, neighborhood, rank, or class are cases of status. The rights and duties of every man and woman were defined by status. No one could choose whether he would enter into the status or not. For instance, at puberty every one was married. What marriage meant, and what a husband or wife was (the rights and duties of each), were fixed by status. No one could alter the customary relations. Status, as distinguished from institutions and contract, is a direct product of the mores. Each case of status is a nucleus of leading interest with the folkways which cluster around it. Status is determined by birth. Therefore it is a help and a hindrance, but it is not liberty. In modern times status has become unpopular and our mores have grown into the forms of contract under liberty. The conception of status has been lost by the masses in modern civilized states. Nevertheless we live under status which has been defined and guaranteed by law and institutions, and it would be a great gain to recognize and appreciate the element of status which historically underlies the positive institutions and which is still subject to the action of the mores. Marriage (matrimony or wedlock) is a status. It is really controlled by the mores. The law defines it and gives sanctions to it, but the law always expresses the mores. A man and a woman make a contract to enter into it. The mode of entering into it (wedding) is fixed by custom. The law only ratifies it. No man and woman can by contract make wedlock different for themselves from the status defined by law, so far as social rights and duties are concerned. The same conception of marriage as a status in the mores is injured by the intervention of the ecclesiastical and civil formalities connected with it. An individual is born into a [68] kin group, a tribe, a nation, or a state, and he has a status accordingly which determines rights and duties for him. Civil liberty must be defined in accordance with this fact; not outside of it, or according to vague metaphysical abstractions above it. The body of the folkways constitutes a societal environment. Every one born into it must enter into relations of give and take with it. He is subjected to influences from it, and it is one of the life conditions under which he must work out his career of self-realization. Whatever liberty may be taken to mean, it is certain that liberty never can mean emancipation from the influence of the societal environment, or of the mores into which one was born.

74. Conventionalization. If traditional folkways are subjected to rational or ethical examination they are no longer naïve and unconscious. It may then be found that they are gross, absurd, or inexpedient. They may still be preserved by conventionalization. Conventionalization creates a set of conditions under which a thing may be tolerated which would otherwise be disapproved and tabooed. The special conditions may be created in fact, or they may be only a fiction which all agree to respect and to treat as true. When children, in play, "make believe" that something exists, or exists in a certain way, they employ conventionalization. Special conditions are created in fact when some fact is regarded as making the usual taboo inoperative. Such is the case with all archaic usages which are perpetuated on account of their antiquity, although they are not accordant with modern standards. The language of Shakespeare and the Bible contains words which are now tabooed. In this case, as in very many others, the conventionalization consists in ignoring the violation of current standards of propriety. Natural functions and toilet operations are put under conventionalization, even in low civilization. The conventionalization consists in ignoring breaches of the ordinary taboo. On account of accidents which may occur, wellbred people are always ready to apply conventionalization to mishaps of speech, dress, manner, etc. In fairy stories, fables, romances, and dramas all are expected to comply with certain conventional understandings without which the entertainment is[69] impossible; for instance, when beasts are supposed to speak. In the mythologies this kind of conventionalization was essential. One of us, in studying mythologies, has to acquire a knowledge of the conventional assumptions with which the people who believed in them approached them. Modern Hindoos conventionalize the stories of their mythology.81 What the gods are said to have done is put under other standards than those now applied to men. Everything in the mythology is on a plane by itself. It follows that none of the rational or ethical judgments are formed about the acts of the gods which would be formed about similar acts of men, and the corruption of morals which would be expected as a consequence of the stories and dramas is prevented by the conventionalization. There is no deduction from what gods do to what men may do. The Greeks of the fifth century B.C. rationalized on their mythology and thereby destroyed it. The mediæval church claimed to be under a conventionalization which would prevent judgment on the church and ecclesiastics according to current standards. Very many people heeded this conventionalization, so that they were not scandalized by vice and crime in the church. This intervention of conventionalization to remove cases from the usual domain of the mores into a special field, where they can be protected and tolerated by codes and standards modified in their favor, is of very great importance. It accounts for many inconsistencies in the mores. In this way there may be nakedness without indecency, and tales of adultery without lewdness. We observe a conventionalization in regard to the Bible, especially in regard to some of the Old Testament stories. The theater presents numerous cases of conventionalization. The asides, entrances and exits, and stage artifices, require that the spectators shall concede their assent to conventionalities. The dresses of the stage would not be tolerated elsewhere. It is by conventionalization that the literature and pictorial representations of science avoid collision with the mores of propriety, decency, etc. In all artistic work there is more or less conventionalization. Uncivilized people, and to some extent uneducated people amongst ourselves, cannot tell what a picture represents or [70] means because they are not used to the conventionalities of pictorial art. The ancient Saturnalia and the carnival have been special times of license at which the ordinary social restrictions have been relaxed for a time by conventionalization. Our own Fourth of July is a day of noise, risk, and annoyance, on which things are allowed which would not be allowed at any other time. We consent to it because "it is Fourth of July." The history of wedding ceremonies presents very many instances of conventionalization. Jests and buffoonery have been tolerated for the occasion. They became such an annoyance that people revolted against them, and invented means to escape them. Dress used in bathing, sport, the drama, or work is protected by conventionalization. The occasion calls for a variation from current usage, and the conventionalization, while granting toleration, defines it also, and makes a new law for the exceptional case. It is like taboo, and is, in fact, the form of taboo in high civilization. Like taboo, it has two aspects,—it is either destructive or protective. The conventionalization bars out what might be offensive (i.e. when a thing may be done only under the conditions set by conventionalization), or it secures toleration for what would otherwise be forbidden. Respect, reverence, sacredness, and holiness, which are taboos in low civilization, become conventionalities in high civilization.

75. Conventions indispensable. Conventionality is often denounced as untrue and hypocritical. It is said that we ought to be natural. Respectability is often sneered at because it is a sum of conventionalities. The conventionalizations which persist are the resultant of experiments and experience as to the devices by which to soften and smoothen the details of life. They are indispensable. We might as well renounce clothes as to try to abolish them.

76. The ethos or group character. All that has been said in this chapter about the folkways and the mores leads up to the idea of the group character which the Greeks called the ethos, that is, the totality of characteristic traits by which a group is individualized and differentiated from others. The great nations of southeastern Asia were long removed from familiar contact[71] with the rest of mankind and isolated from each other, while they were each subjected to the discipline and invariable rule of traditional folkways which covered all social interests except the interferences of a central political authority, which perpetrated tyranny in its own interest. The consequence has been that Japan, China, and India have each been molded into a firm, stable, and well-defined unit group, having a character strongly marked both actively and passively. The governing classes of Japan have, within fifty years, voluntarily abandoned their traditional mores, and have adopted those of the Occident, while it does not appear that they have lost their inherited ethos. The case stands alone in history and is a cause of amazement. In the war with Russia, in 1904, this people showed what a group is capable of when it has a strong ethos. They understand each other; they act as one man; they are capable of discipline to the death. Our western tacticians have had rules for the percentage of loss which troops would endure, standing under fire, before breaking and running. The rule failed for the Japanese. They stood to the last man. Their prowess at Port Arthur against the strongest fortifications, and on the battlefields of Manchuria, surpassed all record. They showed what can be done in the way of concealing military and naval movements when every soul in the population is in a voluntary conspiracy not to reveal anything. These traits belong to a people which has been trained by generations of invariable mores. It is apparently what the mediæval church wanted to introduce in Europe, but the Japanese have got it without selfish tyranny of the ruling persons and classes. Of course, it admits of no personal liberty, and the consequences of introducing occidental notions of liberty into it have yet to be seen. "The blacksmith squats at his anvil wielding a hammer such as no western smith could use without long practice. The carpenter pulls instead of pushing his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong. Keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are accustomed to think the wrong direction." "The swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him.[72] He uses it indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw."82 In family manners the Japanese are gentle. Cruelty even to animals appears to be unknown. "One sees farmers coming to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."83 Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.84 "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."85 "Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless grades, varying according to sex as well as class, but even in regard to facial expression, the manner of smiling, the conduct of the breath, the way of sitting, standing, walking, rising."86 "With the same merciless exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life, all utterance was regulated both positively and negatively, but positively much more than negatively.... Education cultivated a system of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is justified, less by their general character than by their implacable minuteness,—their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of the world. Everybody's house must be open to visitors; to close its gates by day would be regarded as an insult to the community, sickness affording no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right of making themselves inaccessible.... By a single serious mistake a man may find himself suddenly placed in solitary opposition to the common will,—isolated, and most effectively ostracized." "The events of the [modern] reconstruction strangely illustrate [73] the action of such instinct [of adaptation] in the face of peril,—the readjustment of internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political system powerless before the new conditions, and it transformed that system. It had found its military organization incapable of defending it, and it reconstructed that organization. It had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen necessities, and it had replaced that system, simultaneously crippling the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious opposition to the new developments required."87 To this it must be added that people who have had commercial and financial dealings with Japanese report that they are untruthful and tricky in transactions of that kind. If they cannot "reform" these traits there will be important consequences of them in the developments of the near future.

77. Chinese ethos. It is evident that we have in the Japanese a case of an ethos, from the habits of artisans to the manners of nobles and the military system, which is complete, consistent, authoritative, and very different from our own. A similar picture of the Chinese might be drawn, from which it would appear that they also have a complete and firm ethos, which resembles in general the Japanese, but has its individual traits and characteristic differences.88 The ethos of the Japanese, from the most ancient times, has been fundamentally militant. That of the Chinese is industrial and materialistic.

78. Hindoo ethos. The Hindoos, again, have a strongly marked ethos. They have a name for it—kharma, which Nivedita says might be translated "national righteousness." It "applies to that whole system of complex action and interaction on planes moral, intellectual, economic, industrial, political, and domestic, which we know as India, or the national habit.... By their attitude to it, Pathan, Mogul, and Englishman are judged, each in his turn, by the Indian peasantry."89 The ethos of one group always furnishes the standpoint from which it criticises the ways of any other group.

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79. European ethos. We are familiar with the notion of "national character" as applied to the nations of Europe, but these nations do not have each an ethos. There is a European ethos, for the nations have so influenced each other for the last two thousand years that there is a mixed ethos which includes local variations. The European kharma is currently called Christian. In the ancient world Egypt and Sparta were the two cases of groups with the firmest and best-defined ethos. In modern European history the most marked case is that of Venice. In no one of these cases did the elements of moral strength and societal health preponderate, but the history of each showed the great stability produced by a strong ethos. Russia has a more complete and defined ethos than any other state in Europe, although the efforts which have been made since Peter the Great to break down the traditions and limitations of the national ethos, and to adopt the ethos of western Europe, have produced weakness and confusion. It is clear what is the great power of a strong ethos. The ethos of any group deserves close study and criticism. It is an overruling power for good or ill. Modern scholars have made the mistake of attributing to race much which belongs to the ethos, with a resulting controversy as to the relative importance of nature and nurture. Others have sought a "soul of the people" and have tried to construct a "collective psychology," repeating for groups processes which are now abandoned for individuals. Historians, groping for the ethos, have tried to write the history of "the people" of such and such a state. The ethos individualizes groups and keeps them apart. Its opposite is cosmopolitanism. It degenerates into patriotic vanity and chauvinism. Industrialism weakens it, by extending relations of commerce with outside groups. It coincides better with militancy. It has held the Japanese people like a single mailed fist for war. What religion they have has lost all character except that of a cohesive agent to hold the whole close organization tight together.

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CHAPTER II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MORES↩

Introduction.—The mores have the authority of facts.—Whites and blacks in southern society.—The mores are unrecorded.—Inertia and rigidity of the mores.—Persistency of the mores.—Persistency against new religion.—Roman law.—Effects of Roman law on later mores.—Variability of the mores.—The mores of New England.—Revolution.—The possibility of modifying the mores.—Russia.—Emancipation in Russia and in the United States.—Arbitrary change in the mores.—The case of Japan.—The case of India.—The reforms of Joseph II.—Adoption of the mores of another age.—What changes are possible.—Dissent from the mores. Group orthodoxy.—Retreat and isolation to start new mores.—Social policy.—Degenerate and evil mores.—The correction of aberrations in the mores.—The mores of advance and decline; cases.—The Greek temper in prosperity.—Greek pessimism.—Greek degeneracy.—Sparta.—The optimism of advance and prosperity.—Antagonism between an individual and the mores of the group.—Antagonism of earlier and later mores.—Antagonism between groups in respect to mores.—Missions and mores.—Missions and antagonistic mores.—Modification of the mores by agitation.—Capricious interest of the masses.—How the group becomes homogeneous.—Syncretism.—The art of administering society.

In this chapter we have to study the persistency of the mores with their inertia and rigidity, even against a new religion or a new "law," i.e. a new social system (secs. 80-87); then their variability under changed life conditions or under revolution (secs. 88-90); then the possibility of making them change by intelligent effort, considering the cases of Japan, India, and the reforms of Joseph II (secs. 91-97); or the possibility of changing one's self to adopt the mores of another group or another age (secs. 98-99). We shall then consider the dissent of an individual or a sect from the current mores, with judgment of disapproval on them (secs. 100-104), and the chance of correcting them (sec. 105). Next we shall consider the great movements [76] of the mores, optimism and pessimism, which correspond to a rising or falling economic conjuncture (secs. 106-111). Then come the antagonisms between an individual and the mores, between the mores of an earlier and a later time, and between the groups in respect to mores, with a notice of the problem of missions (secs. 112-118). Finally, we come to consider agitation to produce changes in the mores, and we endeavor to study the ways in which the changes in the mores do come about, especially syncretism (secs. 119-121).

80. The mores have the authority of facts. The mores come down to us from the past. Each individual is born into them as he is born into the atmosphere, and he does not reflect on them, or criticise them any more than a baby analyzes the atmosphere before he begins to breathe it. Each one is subjected to the influence of the mores, and formed by them, before he is capable of reasoning about them. It may be objected that nowadays, at least, we criticise all traditions, and accept none just because they are handed down to us. If we take up cases of things which are still entirely or almost entirely in the mores, we shall see that this is not so. There are sects of free-lovers amongst us who want to discuss pair marriage (sec. 374). They are not simply people of evil life. They invite us to discuss rationally our inherited customs and ideas as to marriage, which, they say, are by no means so excellent and elevated as we believe. They have never won any serious attention. Some others want to argue in favor of polygamy on grounds of expediency. They fail to obtain a hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of some literary activity on their part, no discussion of property, bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and marriage are in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but the unconscious and imperceptible movement of the mores. Religion was originally a matter of the mores. It became a societal institution and a function of the state. It has now to a great extent been put back into the mores. Since laws with penalties to enforce religious creeds or practices have gone out of use any one may think and act as he pleases about religion. Therefore it is not now "good form" to attack [ 77] religion. Infidel publications are now tabooed by the mores, and are more effectually repressed than ever before. They produce no controversy. Democracy is in our American mores. It is a product of our physical and economic conditions. It is impossible to discuss or criticise it. It is glorified for popularity, and is a subject of dithyrambic rhetoric. No one treats it with complete candor and sincerity. No one dares to analyze it as he would aristocracy or autocracy. He would get no hearing and would only incur abuse. The thing to be noticed in all these cases is that the masses oppose a deaf ear to every argument against the mores. It is only in so far as things have been transferred from the mores into laws and positive institutions that there is discussion about them or rationalizing upon them. The mores contain the norm by which, if we should discuss the mores, we should have to judge the mores. We learn the mores as unconsciously as we learn to walk and eat and breathe. The masses never learn how we walk, and eat, and breathe, and they never know any reason why the mores are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. They are in the present tense. They have nothing to do with what ought to be, will be, may be, or once was, if it is not now.

81. Blacks and whites in southern society. In our southern states, before the civil war, whites and blacks had formed habits of action and feeling towards each other. They lived in peace and concord, and each one grew up in the ways which were traditional and customary. The civil war abolished legal rights and left the two races to learn how to live together under other relations than before. The whites have never been converted from the old mores. Those who still survive look back with regret and affection to the old social usages and customary sentiments and feelings. The two races have not yet made new mores. Vain attempts have been made to control the new order by legislation. The only result is the proof that legislation cannot make mores. We see also that mores do not form under [78] social convulsion and discord. It is only just now that the new society seems to be taking shape. There is a trend in the mores now as they begin to form under the new state of things. It is not at all what the humanitarians hoped and expected. The two races are separating more than ever before. The strongest point in the new code seems to be that any white man is boycotted and despised if he "associates with negroes" (sec. 114, at the end). Some are anxious to interfere and try to control. They take their stand on ethical views of what is going on. It is evidently impossible for any one to interfere. We are like spectators at a great natural convulsion. The results will be such as the facts and forces call for. We cannot foresee them. They do not depend on ethical views any more than the volcanic eruption on Martinique contained an ethical element. All the faiths, hopes, energies, and sacrifices of both whites and blacks are components in the new construction of folkways by which the two races will learn how to live together. As we go along with the constructive process it is very plain that what once was, or what any one thinks ought to be, but slightly affects what, at any moment, is. The mores which once were are a memory. Those which any one thinks ought to be are a dream. The only thing with which we can deal are those which are.

82. The mores are unrecorded. A society is never conscious of its mores until it comes in contact with some other society which has different mores, or until, in higher civilization, it gets information by literature. The latter operation, however, affects only the literary classes, not the masses, and society never consciously sets about the task of making mores. In the early stages mores are elastic and plastic; later they become rigid and fixed. They seem to grow up, gain strength, become corrupt, decline, and die, as if they were organisms. The phases seem to follow each other by an inherent necessity, and as if independent of the reason and will of the men affected, but the changes are always produced by a strain towards better adjustment of the mores to conditions and interests of the society, or of the controlling elements in it. A society does not record its mores in its annals, because they are to it unnoticed and unconsciou[79] s. When we try to learn the mores of any age or people we have to seek our information in incidental references, allusions, observations of travelers, etc. Generally works of fiction, drama, etc., give us more information about the mores than historical records. It is very difficult to construct from the Old Testament a description of the mores of the Jews before the captivity. It is also very difficult to make a complete and accurate picture of the mores of the English colonies in North America in the seventeenth century. The mores are not recorded for the same reason that meals, going to bed, sunrise, etc., are not recorded, unless the regular course of things is broken.

83. Inertia and rigidity of the mores. We see that we must conceive of the mores as a vast system of usages, covering the whole of life, and serving all its interests; also containing in themselves their own justification by tradition and use and wont, and approved by mystic sanctions until, by rational reflection, they develop their own philosophical and ethical generalizations, which are elevated into "principles" of truth and right. They coerce and restrict the newborn generation. They do not stimulate to thought, but the contrary. The thinking is already done and is embodied in the mores. They never contain any provision for their own amendment. They are not questions, but answers, to the problem of life. They present themselves as final and unchangeable, because they present answers which are offered as "the truth." No world philosophy, until the modern scientific world philosophy, and that only within a generation or two, has ever presented itself as perhaps transitory, certainly incomplete, and liable to be set aside to-morrow by more knowledge. No popular world philosophy or life policy ever can present itself in that light. It would cost too great a mental strain. All the groups whose mores we consider far inferior to our own are quite as well satisfied with theirs as we are with ours. The goodness or badness of mores consists entirely in their adjustment to the life conditions and the interests of the time and place (sec. 65). Therefore it is a sign of ease and welfare when no thought is given to the mores, but all coöperate in them instinctively. The nations of southeastern Asia show us th [80] e persistency of the mores, when the element of stability and rigidity in them becomes predominant. Ghost fear and ancestor worship tend to establish the persistency of the mores by dogmatic authority, strict taboo, and weighty sanctions. The mores then lose their naturalness and vitality. They are stereotyped. They lose all relation to expediency. They become an end in themselves. They are imposed by imperative authority without regard to interests or conditions (caste, child marriage, widows). When any society falls under the dominion of this disease in the mores it must disintegrate before it can live again. In that diseased state of the mores all learning consists in committing to memory the words of the sages of the past who established the formulæ of the mores. Such words are "sacred writings," a sentence of which is a rule of conduct to be obeyed quite independently of present interests, or of any rational considerations.

84. Persistency. Asiatic fixity of the mores is extreme, but the element of persistency in the mores is always characteristic of them. They are elastic and tough, but when once established in familiar and continued use they resist change. They give stability to the social order when they are well understood, regular, and undisputed. In a new colony, with a sparse population, the mores are never fixed and stringent. There is great "liberty." As the colony always has traditions of the mores of the mother country, which are cherished with respect but are never applicable to the conditions of a colony, the mores of a colony are heterogeneous and are always in flux. That is because the colonists are all the time learning to live in a new country and have no traditions to guide them, the traditions of the old country being a hindrance. Any one bred in a new country, if he goes to an old country, feels the "conservatism" in its mores. He thinks the people stiff, set in their ways, stupid, and unwilling to learn. They think him raw, brusque, and uncultivated. He does not know the ritual, which can be written in no books, but knowledge of which, acquired by long experience, is the mark of fit membership in the society.

85. Persistency in spite of change of religion. Matthews saw votive effigies in Mandan villages just like those which Catlin had seen and put into his pictures seventy years [ 81] before.90 In the meantime the Mandans had been nearly exterminated by war and disease, and the remnant of them had been civilized and Christianized. The mores of the Central American Indians inculcate moderation and restraint. Their ancient religion contained prescriptions of that character, and those prescriptions are still followed after centuries of life under Christianity.91 In the Bible we may see the strife between old mores and a new religious system two or three times repeated. The so-called Mosaic system superseded an older system of mores common, as it appears, to all the Semites of western Asia. The prophets preached a reform of the Jahveh religion and we find them at war with the inherited mores.92 The most striking feature of the story of the prophets is their antagonism to the mores which the people would not give up. Monotheism was not established until after the captivity.93 The recurrence, vitality, popularity, and pervasiveness of traditional mores are well shown in the Bible story. The result was a combination of ritual monotheism with survivals of ancient mores and a popular religion in which demonism was one of the predominant elements. The New Testament represents a new revival and reform of the religion. The Jews to this day show the persistency of ancient mores. Christianity was a new adjustment of both heathen and Jewish mores to a new religious system. The popular religion once more turned out to be a grand revival of demonism. The masses retained their mores with little change. The mores overruled the religion. Therefore Jewish Christians and heathen Christians remained distinguishable for centuries. The Romans never could stamp out the child sacrifices of the Carthaginians.94 The Roman law was an embodiment of all the art of living and the mores of the Roman people. It differed from the mores of the German peoples, and when by the religion the Roman system was brought to German people conflict was produced. In fact, it may be said that the process of remolding German mores by the Roman law never was completed,95 and that now the German [82] mores have risen against the Roman law and have accepted out of it only what has been freely and rationally selected. Marriage amongst the German nations was a domestic and family function. Even after the hierocratic system was firmly established, it was centuries before the ecclesiastics could make marriage a clerical function.96 In the usages of German peasants to-day may be found numerous survivals of heathen notions and customs.97 In England the German mores accepted only a limited influence from the Roman law. The English have adopted the policy of the Romans in dealing with subject peoples. They do not meddle with local customs if they can avoid it. This is wise, since nothing nurses discontent like interference with folkways. The persistency of the mores is often shown in survivals,—senseless ceremonies whose meaning is forgotten, jests, play, parody, and caricature, or stereotyped words and phrases, or even in cakes of a prescribed form or prescribed foods at certain festivals.

86. Roman law. In the Roman law everything proceeds from the emperor. He is the possessor of all authority, the fountain of honor, the author of all legislation, and the referee in all disputes. Lawyers trained by the study of this code learned to conceive of all the functions of the state as acts, powers, and rights of a monarchical sovereign. They stood beside the kings and princes of the later Middle Ages ready to construe the institutions of suzerainty into this monarchical form. They broke down feudalism and helped to build the absolutist dynastic state, wherever the Roman law was in force, and wherever it had greatly influenced the legal system. The church also had great interest to employ the Roman law, because it included the ecclesiastical legislation of the Christian emperors of the fourth and fifth centuries, and because the canon law was imitated from it in spirit and form. In all matters of private rights the provisions of the Justinian code were good and beneficial, so that those provisions won their own way by their own merit.98 In the Sachsenspiegel there was no distinction of property [83] between man and wife, but this meant that all which both had was a joint capital for use in their domestic economy. When the marriage was dissolved the property returned to the side from which it came. Later, in many districts, this arrangement developed into a real community of goods under various forms. "It was in regard to these adjustments of property rights that the jurists of the Middle Ages did most harm by introducing the Roman law, for it was especially in regard to this matter that the Roman law stood in strongest contrast to the German notions, and the resistance of the German people is to be seen in the numerous local systems of law, which remained in use in most of Germany; unfortunately not everywhere, nor uniformly."99

87. The Roman law: its effect on later mores. Throughout the north of Europe, upon conversion to Christianity, tithes were the stumbling-block between the old mores and the new system.100 The authority for the tithe system came from the Roman system. It was included in the Roman jurisprudence which the church adopted and carried wherever it extended. After the civil code was revived it helped powerfully to make states. This was a work, however, which was hostile to the church. The royal lawyers found in the civil code a system which referred everything in society to the emperor as the origin of power, rights, and honor. They adopted this standpoint for the kings of the new dynastic states and, in the might of the Roman law, they established royal absolutism, which was unfavorable to the church and the feudal nobles. They found their allies in the cities which loved written law, institutions, and defined powers. Stubbs101 regards the form of the Statute of Westminster (1275) as a proof that the lawyers, who "were at this time getting a firm grasp on the law of England," were introducing the principle that the king could enact by his own authority. The spirit of the Roman law was pitiless to peasants and artisans, that is, to all who were, or were to be made, unfree. The Norman laws depressed the Saxon ceorl to a slave.102 In similar manner they came into war with all Teutonic mores which contained popular rights and primary freedom. Stammler103 denies that the Roman law, in spite of lawyers and ecclesiastics, ever entered into the flesh and blood of the German people. That is to say, it never displaced completely their national mores. The case of the [84] property of married persons is offered as a case in which the German mores were never overcome.104 A compromise was struck between the ancient mores and the new ways, which the Roman Catholic religion approved.

88. Variability. No less remarkable than the persistency of the mores is their changeableness and variation. There is here an interesting parallel to heredity and variation in the organic world, even though the parallel has no significance. Variation in the mores is due to the fact that children do not perpetuate the mores just as they received them. The father dies, and the son whom he has educated, even if he continues the ritual and repeats the formulæ, does not think and feel the same ideas and sentiments as his father. The observance of Sunday; the mode of treating parents, children, servants, and wives or husbands; holidays; amusements; arts of luxury; marriage and divorce; wine drinking,—are matters in regard to which it is easy to note changes in the mores from generation to generation, in our own times. Even in Asia, when a long period of time is taken into account, changes in the mores are perceptible. The mores change because conditions and interests change. It is found that dogmas and maxims which have been current do not verify; that established taboos are useless or mischievous restraints; that usages which are suitable for a village or a colony are not suitable for a great city or state; that many things are fitting when the community is rich which were not so when it was poor; that new inventions have made new ways of living more economical and healthful. It is necessary to prosperity that the mores should have a due degree of firmness, but also that they should be sufficiently elastic and flexible to conform to changes in interests and life conditions. A herding or an agricultural people, if it moves into a new country, rich in game, may revert to a hunting life. The Tunguses and Yakuts did so as they moved northwards.105 In the early days of the settlement of North America many whites "Indianized"; they took to the mode of life of Indians. The Iranians separated from the Indians of Hindostan and became agriculturists. They adopted a new [85] religion and new mores. Men who were afraid of powerful enemies have taken to living in trees, lake dwellings, caves, and joint houses. Mediæval serfdom was due to the need of force to keep the peasant on his holding, when the holding was really a burden to him in view of the dues which he must pay. He would have run away if he had not been kept by force. In the later Middle Ages the villain had a valuable right and property in his holding. Then he wanted security of tenure so that he could not be driven away from it. In the early period it was the duty of the lord to kill the game and protect the peasant's crops. In the later period it became the monopoly right of the lord to kill game. Thus the life conditions vary. The economic conjuncture varies. The competition of life varies. The interests vary with them. The mores all conform, unless they have been fixed by dogma with mystic sanctions so that they are ritual obligations, as is, in general, the case now in southeastern Asia. The rights of the parties, and the right and wrong of conduct, after the mores have conformed to new life conditions, are new deductions. The philosophers follow with their systems by which they try to construe the whole new order of acts and thoughts with reference to some thought fabric which they put before the mores, although it was found out after the mores had established the relations. In the case in which the fixed mores do not conform to new interests and needs crises arise. Moses, Zoroaster, Manu, Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa are either mythical or historical culture heroes, who are said to have solved such crises by new "laws," and set the society in motion again. The fiction of the intervention of a god or a hero is necessary to account for a reconstruction of the mores of the ancestors without crime.

89. Mores of New England. The Puritan code of early New England has been almost entirely abandoned, so far as its positive details are concerned, while at the same time some new restrictions on conduct have been introduced, especially as to[86] the use of spirituous liquors, so that not all the changes have been in the way of relaxation. The mores of New England, however, still show deep traces of the Puritan temper and world philosophy. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can so strong an illustration be seen both of the persistency of the spirit of the mores and of their variability and adaptability. The mores of New England have extended to a large immigrant population and have won large control over them. They have also been carried to the new states by immigrants, and their perpetuation there is an often-noticed phenomenon. The extravagances in doctrine and behavior of the seventeenth-century Puritans have been thrown off and their code of morals has been shorn of its angularity, but their life policy and standards have become to a very large extent those of the civilized world.

90. Revolution. In higher civilization crises produced by the persistency of old mores after conditions have changed are solved by revolution or reform. In revolutions the mores are broken up. Such was the case in the sixteenth century, in the French Revolution of 1789, and in minor revolutions. A period follows the outburst of a revolution in which there are no mores. The old are broken up; the new are not formed. The social ritual is interrupted. The old taboos are suspended. New taboos cannot be enacted or promulgated. They require time to become established and known. The masses in a revolution are uncertain what they ought to do. In France, under the old régime, the social ritual was very complete and thoroughly established. In the revolution, the destruction of this ritual produced social anarchy. In the best case every revolution must be attended by this temporary chaos of the mores. It was produced in the American colonies. Revolutionary leaders expect to carry the people over to new mores by the might of two or three dogmas of political or social philosophy. The history of every such attempt shows that dogmas do not make mores. Every revolution suffers a collapse at the point where reconstruction should begin. Then the old ruling classes resume control, and by the use of force set the society in its old grooves again. The ecclesiastical revolution of the sixteenth century resulted in a [87] wreck whose discordant fragments we have inherited. It left us a Christendom, half of which is obscurantist and half scientific; half is ruled by the Jesuits and half is split up into wrangling sects. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century was reversed when it undertook to reconstruct the mores of the English people. The French revolutionists tried to abolish all the old mores and to replace them by products of speculative philosophy. The revolution was, in fact, due to a great change in conditions, which called for new mores, and so far as the innovations met this demand they became permanent and helped to create a conviction of the beneficence of revolution. Napoleon abolished many innovations and put many things in the old train again. Many other things have changed name and face, but not character. Many innovations have been half assimilated. Some interests have never yet been provided for (see sec. 165).

91. Possibility of modifying mores. The combination in the mores of persistency and variability determines the extent to which it is possible to modify them by arbitrary action. It is not possible to change them, by any artifice or device, to a great extent, or suddenly, or in any essential element; it is possible to modify them by slow and long-continued effort if the ritual is changed by minute variations. The German emperor Frederick II was the most enlightened ruler of the Middle Ages. He was a modern man in temper and ideas. He was a statesman and he wanted to make the empire into a real state of the absolutist type. All the mores of his time were ecclesiastical and hierocratic. He dashed himself to pieces against them. Those whom he wanted to serve took the side of the papacy against him. He became the author of the laws by which the civil institutions of the time were made to serve ecclesiastical domination. He carried the purpose of the crusades to a higher degree of fulfillment than they ever reached otherwise, but this brought him no credit or peace. The same drift in the mores of the time bore down the Albigenses when they denounced the church corporation, the hierarchy, and the papacy. The pope easily stirred up all Europe against them. The current opinion was that every state must be a Christian state according to the mores of the time. [88] The people could not conceive of a state which could answer its purpose if it was not such. But a "Christian state" meant one which was in harmony with the pope and the ecclesiastical organization. This demand was not affected by the faults of the organization, or the corruption and venality of the hierarchy. The popes of the thirteenth century rode upon this tide, overwhelming opposition and consolidating their power. In our time the state is charged with the service of a great number of interests which were then intrusted to the church. It is against our mores that ecclesiastics should interfere with those interests. There is no war on religion. Religion is recognized as an interest by itself, and is treated with more universal respect than ever before, but it is regarded as occupying a field of its own, and if there should be an attempt in its name to encroach on any other domain, it would fail, because it would be against the mores of our time.

92. Russia. When Napoleon said: "If you scratch a Russian you find a Tartar," what he had perceived was that, although the Russian court and the capital city have been westernized by the will of the tsars, nevertheless the people still cling to the strongly marked national mores of their ancestors. The tsars, since Peter the Great, have, by their policing and dragooning, spoilt one thing without making another, and socially Russia is in the agonies of the resulting confusion. Russia ought to be a democracy by virtue of its sparse population and wide area of unoccupied land in Siberia. In fact all the indigenous and most ancient usages of the villages are democratic. The autocracy is exotic and military. It is, however, the only institution which holds Russia together as a unit. On account of this political interest the small intelligent class acquiesce in the autocracy. The autocracy imposes force on the people to crush out their inherited mores, and to force on them western institutions. The policy is, moreover, vacillating. At one time the party which favored westernizing has prevailed at court; at another time the old Russian or pan-Slavic party. There is internal discord and repression. The ultimate result of such an attempt to control mores by force is an interesting question of [89] the future. It also is a question which affects most seriously the interests of western civilization. The motive for the westernizing policy is to get influence in European politics. All the interference of Russia in European politics is harmful, menacing, and unjustifiable. She is not, in character, a European power, and she brings no contribution to European civilization, but the contrary. She has neither the capital nor the character to enable her to execute the share in the world's affairs which she is assuming. Her territorial extensions for two hundred years have been made at the cost of her internal strength. The latter has never been at all proportioned to the former. Consequently the debt and taxes due to her policy of expansion and territorial greatness have crushed her peasant class, and by their effect on agriculture have choked the sources of national strength. The people are peaceful and industrious, and their traditional mores are such that they would develop great productive power and in time rise to a strong civilization of a truly indigenous type, if they were free to use their powers in their own way to satisfy their interests as they experience them from the life conditions which they have to meet.

93. Emancipation in Russia and the United States. In the time of Peter the Great the ancient national mores of Russia were very strong and firmly established. They remain to this day, in the mass of the population, unchanged in their essential integrity. There is, amongst the upper classes, an imitation of French ways, but it is unimportant for the nation. The autocracy is what makes "Russia," as a political unit. The autocracy is the apex of a military system, by which a great territory has been gathered under one control. That operation has not affected the old mores of the people. The tsar Alexander II was convinced by reading the writings of the great literary coterie of the middle of the nineteenth century that serfdom ought to be abolished, and he determined that it should be done.106 It is not in the system of autocracy that the autocrat shall have original opinions and adopt an independent initiative. The men whom he ordered to abolish serfdom had to devise a method, and they devised one which was to appear satisfactory to the tsar, but was to protect the interests which they cared for. One is reminded of the devices of American politicians to satisfy the clamor of the moment,[90] but to change nothing. The reform had but slight root in public opinion, and no sanction in the interests of the influential classes; quite the contrary. The consequence is that the abolition of serfdom has thrown Russian society into chaos, and as yet reconstruction upon the new system has made little growth. In the United States the abolition of slavery was accomplished by the North, which had no slaves and enforced emancipation by war on the South, which had them. The mores of the South were those of slavery in full and satisfactory operation, including social, religious, and philosophical notions adapted to slavery. The abolition of slavery in the northern states had been brought about by changes in conditions and interests. Emancipation in the South was produced by outside force against the mores of the whites there. The consequence has been forty years of economic, social, and political discord. In this case free institutions and mores in which free individual initiative is a leading element allow efforts towards social readjustment out of which a solution of the difficulties will come. New mores will be developed which will cover the situation with customs, habits, mutual concessions, and coöperation of interests, and these will produce a social philosophy consistent with the facts. The process is long, painful, and discouraging, but it contains its own guarantees.

94. Arbitrary change. We often meet with references to Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II as political heroes who set free millions of slaves or serfs "by a stroke of the pen." Such references are only flights of rhetoric. They entirely miss the apprehension of what it is to set men free, or to tear out of a society mores of long growth and wide reach. Circumstances may be such that a change which is imperative can be accomplished in no other way, but then the period of disorder and confusion is unavoidable. The stroke of the pen never does anything but order that this period shall begin.

95. Case of Japan. Japan offers a case of the voluntary resolution of the ruling class of a nation to abandon their mores and adopt those of other nations. The case is unique in history. Humbert says that the Japanese were in the first [91] throes of internal revolution when foreigners intervened.107 Schallmeyer infers that the "adaptability of an intelligent and disciplined people is far greater than we, judging from other cases, have been wont to believe."108 Le Bon absolutely denies that culture can be transmitted from people to people. He says that the ruin of Japan is yet to come, from the attempt to adopt foreign ways.109 The best information is that the mores of the Japanese masses have not been touched. The changes are all superficial with respect to the life of the people and their character.110 "Iyéyasu was careful to qualify the meaning of 'rude.' He said that the Japanese term for a rude fellow signified 'an other-than-expected person'—so that to commit an offense worthy of death it was only necessary to act in an 'unexpected manner,' that is to say, contrary to prescribed etiquette."111 "Even now the only safe rule of conduct in a Japanese settlement is to act in all things according to local custom; for the slightest divergence from rule will be observed with disfavor. Privacy does not exist; nothing can be hidden; everybody's vices or virtues are known to everybody else. Unusual behavior is judged as a departure from the traditional standard of conduct; all oddities are condemned as departures from custom, and tradition and custom still have the force of religious obligations. Indeed, they really are religious and obligatory, not only by reason of their origin, but by reason of their relation also to the public cult, which signifies the worship of the past. The ethics of Shinto were all included in conformity to custom. The traditional rules of the commune—these were the morals of Shinto: to obey them was religion; to disobey them impiety."112 Evidently this is a description of a society in which tradition and current usage exert complete control. It is idle to imagine that the masses of an oriental society of that kind could, in a thousand years, assimilate the mores of the Occident.

96. Case of the Hindoos. Nivedita113 thinks that the Hindoos have adopted foreign culture easily. "One of the most striking features of Hindoo society during the past fifty years has been the readiness of the people to adopt a foreign form of culture, [92] and to compete with those who are native to that culture on equal terms." Monier-Williams tells us, however, that each Hindoo "finds himself cribbed and confined in all his movements, bound and fettered in all he does by minute traditional regulations. He sleeps and wakes, dresses and undresses, sits down and stands up, goes out and comes in, eats and drinks, speaks and is silent, acts and refrains from acting, according to ancient rule."114 As yet, therefore, this people assumes competition with the English without giving up its ancient burdensome social ritual. It accepts the handicap.

97. Reforms of Joseph II. The most remarkable case of reform attempted by authority, and arbitrary in its method, is that of the reforms attempted by Joseph II, emperor of Germany. His kingdoms were suffering from the persistence of old institutions and mores. They needed modernizing. This he knew and, as an absolute monarch, he ordained changes, nearly all of which were either the abolition of abuses or the introduction of real improvements. He put an end to survivals of mediæval clericalism, established freedom of worship, made marriage a civil contract, abolished class privilege, made taxation uniform, and replaced serfdom in Bohemia by the form of villanage which existed in Austria. In Hungary he ordered the use of the German language instead of Latin, as the civil language. Interferences with language act as counter suggestion. Common sense and expediency were in favor of the use of the German language, but the order to use it provoked a great outburst of national enthusiasm which sought demonstration in dress, ceremonies, and old usages. Many of the other changes made by the emperor antagonized vested interests of nobles and ecclesiastics, and he was forced to revoke them. He promulgated orders which affected the mores, and the mental or moral discipline of his subjects. If a man came to enroll himself as a deist a second time, he was to receive twenty-four blows with the rod, not because he was a deist, but because he called himself something about which he could not know what it is. No coffins were to be used, corps [93] es were to be put in sacks and buried in quicklime. Probably this law was wise from a purely rational point of view, but it touched upon a matter in regard to which popular sentiment is very tender even when the usage is most irrational. "Many a usage and superstition was so closely interwoven with the life of the people that it could not be torn away by regulation, but only by education." Non-Catholics were given full civil rights. None were to be excluded from the cemeteries. The unilluminated Jews would have preferred that there should be no change in the laws. Frederick of Prussia said that Joseph always took the second step without having taken the first. In the end the emperor revoked all his changes and innovations except the abolition of serfdom and religious toleration.115 Some of his measures were gradually realized through the nineteenth century. Others are now an object of political effort.

98. Adoption of mores of another age. The Renaissance was a period in which an attempt was made by one age to adopt the mores of another, as the latter were known through literature and art. The knowledge was very imperfect and mistaken, as indeed it necessarily must be, and the conceptions which were formed of the model were almost as fantastic as if they had been pure creations of the imagination. The learning of the Renaissance was necessarily restricted to the selected classes, and the masses either remained untouched by the faiths and fads of the learned, or accepted the same in grotesquely distorted forms. A phrase of a classical writer, or a fanciful conception of some hero of Plutarch, sufficed to enthuse a criminal, or to upset the mental equilibrium of a political speculator. The jumble of heterogeneous mores, and of ideas conformable to different mores, caused numbers to lose their mental equilibrium and to become victims either of enthusiasm or of melancholy.116 The phenomena of suggestion were astounding and incalculable.117 The period was marked by the dominion of dogmatic ideas, accepted as regulative principles for the mores. The result was the dominion of the phrase and the prevalence of hollow affectation. The men who were most thoroughly interested in the new learning, and had [94] lost faith in the church and the religion of the Middle Ages, kept up the ritual of the traditional system. The Renaissance never made any new ritual. That is why it had no strong root and passed away as a temporary fashion. Hearn118 is led from his study of Japan to say that "We could no more mingle with the old Greek life, if it were resurrected for us, no more become a part of it, than we could change our mental identities." The modern classicists have tried to resuscitate Greek standards, faiths, and ways. Individuals have met with a measure of success in themselves, and university graduates have to some extent reached common views of life and well living, but they have necessarily selected what features they would imitate, and so they have arbitrarily overruled their chosen authority. They have never won wide respect for it in modern society. The New England Puritans, in the seventeenth century, tried to build a society on the Bible, especially the books of Moses. The attempt was in every way a failure. It may well be doubted if any society ever existed of which the books referred to were a description, and the prescriptions were found ill adapted to seventeenth-century facts. The mores made by any age for itself are good and right for that age, but it follows that they can suit another age only to a very limited extent.

99. What changes are possible. All these cases go to show that changes which run with the mores are easily brought about, but that changes which are opposed to the mores require long and patient effort, if they are possible at all. The ruling clique can use force to warp the mores towards some result which they have selected, especially if they bring their effort to bear on the ritual, not on the dogmas, and if they are contented to go slowly. The church has won great results in this way, and by so doing has created a belief that religion, or ideas, or institutions, make mores. The leading classes, no matter by what standard they are selected, can lead by example, which always affects ritual. An aristocracy acts in this way. It suggests standards of elegance, refinement, and nobility, and t [95] he usages of good manners, from generation to generation, are such as have spread from the aristocracy to other classes. Such influences are unspoken, unconscious, unintentional. If we admit that it is possible and right for some to undertake to mold the mores of others, of set purpose, we see that the limits within which any such effort can succeed are very narrow, and the methods by which it can operate are strictly defined. The favorite methods of our time are legislation and preaching. These methods fail because they do not affect ritual, and because they always aim at great results in a short time. Above all, we can judge of the amount of serious attention which is due to plans for "reorganizing society," to get rid of alleged errors and inconveniences in it. We might as well plan to reorganize our globe by redistributing the elements in it.

100. Dissent from the mores; group orthodoxy. Since it appears that the old mores are mischievous if they last beyond the duration of the conditions and needs to which they were adapted, and that constant, gradual, smooth, and easy readjustment is the course of things which is conducive to healthful life, it follows that free and rational criticism of traditional mores is essential to societal welfare. We have seen that the inherited mores exert a coercion on every one born in the group. It follows that only the greatest and best can react against the mores so as to modify them. It is by no means to be inferred that every one who sets himself at war with the traditional mores is a hero of social correction and amelioration. The trained reason and conscience never have heavier tasks laid upon them than where questions of conformity to, or dissent from, the mores are raised. It is by the dissent and free judgment of the best reason and conscience that the mores win flexibility and automatic readjustment. Dissent is always unpopular in the group. Groups form standards of orthodoxy as to the "principles" which each member must profess and the ritual which each must practice. Dissent seems to imply a claim of superiority. It evokes hatred and persecution. Dissenters are rebels, traitors, and heretics. We see this in all kinds of subgroups. Noble and patrician classe [96] s, merchants, artisans, religious and philosophical sects, political parties, academies and learned societies, punish by social penalties dissent from, or disobedience to, their code of group conduct. The modern trades union, in its treatment of a "scab," only presents another example. The group also, by a majority, adopts a programme of policy and then demands of each member that he shall work and make sacrifices for what has been resolved upon for the group interest. He who refuses is a renegade or apostate with respect to the group doctrines and interests. He who adopts the mores of another group is a still more heinous criminal. The mediæval definition of a heretic was one who varied in life and conversation, dress, speech, or manner (that is, the social ritual) from the ordinary members of the Christian community. The first meaning of "Catholic" in the fourth century was a summary of the features which were common to all Christians in social and ecclesiastical behavior; those were Catholic who conformed to the mores which were characteristic of Christians.119 If a heretic was better than the Catholics, they hated him more. That never excused him before the church authorities. They wanted loyalty to the ecclesiastical corporation. Persecution of a dissenter is always popular in the group which he has abandoned. Toleration of dissent is no sentiment of the masses.

101. Retreat and isolation to make new mores. Quakers. In the stage of half-civilization and above there have been many cases of sects which have "withdrawn from the world" and lived an isolated life. They were dissenters from the world philosophy or the life policy current in the society to which they belonged. The real issue was that they were at war with its mores. In that war they could not prevail so as to change the mores. They could not even realize their own plan of life in the midst of uncongenial mores. The English Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to transform the mores of their age. Many of them emigrated to uninhabited territory in order to make a society in which their ideal mores should be realized. Very many sects and parties emigrated to North America in the seventeenth century with the same purpose. The Quakers went to the greatest extreme in adopting dress, language, manners, etc., which should be different from the current usages. [97] In all this they were multiplying ritual means of isolation and of cultivation of their chosen ways of life. They were not strenuous about theological dogmas. Their leading notions were really about the mores and bore on social policy. In the Netherlands, in 1657, they appeared as a militant sect of revolutionary communists and levelers.120 In New England they courted persecution. They wanted to cultivate states of mind and traits of social character which they had selected as good, and their ritual was devised to that end (humility, simplicity, peacefulness, friendliness, truth). They are now being overpowered and absorbed by the mores of the society which surrounds them. The same is true of Shakers, Moravians, and other sects of dissenters from the mores of the time and place.

102. Social policy. In Germany an attempt has been made to develop social policy into an art (Socialpolitik). Systematic attempts are made to study demographical facts in order to deduce from them conclusions as to the things which need to be done to make society better. The scheme is captivating. It is one of the greatest needs of modern states, which have gone so far in the way of experimental devices for social amelioration and rectification, at the expense of tax payers, that those devices should be tested and that the notions on which they are based should be verified. So far as demographical information furnishes these tests it is of the highest value. When, however, the statesmen and social philosophers stand ready to undertake any manipulation of institutions and mores, and proceed on the assumption that they can obtain data upon which to proceed with confidence in that undertaking, as an architect or engineer would obtain data and apply his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. The mores are [98] a societal equation. When the mores are the thing studied in one's own society, there is an operation like begging the question. Moreover, the convictions which are in the mores are "faiths." They are not affected by scientific facts or demonstration. We "believe in" democracy, as we have been brought up in it, or we do not. If we do, we accept its mythology. The reason is because we have grown up in it, are familiar with it, and like it. Argument would not touch this faith. In like manner the people of one state believe in "the state," or in militarism, or in commercialism, or in individualism. Those of another state are sentimental, nervous, fond of rhetorical phrases, full of group vanity. It is vain to imagine that any man can lift himself out of these characteristic features in the mores of the group to which he belongs, especially when he is dealing with the nearest and most familiar phenomena of everyday life. It is vain to imagine that a "scientific man" can divest himself of prejudice or previous opinion, and put himself in an attitude of neutral independence towards the mores. He might as well try to get out of gravity or the pressure of the atmosphere. The most learned scholar reveals all the philistinism and prejudice of the man-on-the-curbstone when mores are in discussion. The most elaborate discussion only consists in revolving on one's own axis. One only finds again the prepossessions which he brought to the consideration of the subject, returned to him with a little more intense faith. The philosophical drift in the mores of our time is towards state regulation, militarism, imperialism, towards petting and flattering the poor and laboring classes, and in favor of whatever is altruistic and humanitarian. What man of us ever gets out of his adopted attitude, for or against these now ruling tendencies, so that he forms judgments, not by his ruling interest or conviction, but by the supposed impact of demographic data on an empty brain. We have no grounds for confidence in these ruling tendencies of our time. They are only the present phases in the endless shifting of our philosophical generalizations, and it is only proposed, by the application [99] of social policy, to subject society to another set of arbitrary interferences, dictated by a new set of dogmatic prepossessions that would only be a continuation of old methods and errors.

103. Degenerate and evil mores. Mores of advance and decline. The case is somewhat different when attempts are made by positive efforts to prevent the operation of bad mores, or to abolish them. The historians have familiarized us with the notion of corrupt or degenerate mores. Such periods as the later Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Merovingian kingdom, and the Renaissance offer us examples of evil mores. We need to give more exactitude to this idea. Bad mores are those which are not well fitted to the conditions and needs of the society at the time. But, as we have seen, the mores produce a philosophy of welfare, more or less complete, and they produce taboos which are concentrated inhibitions directed against conduct which the philosophy regards as harmful, or positive injunctions to do what is judged expedient and beneficial. The taboos constitute morality or a moral system which, in higher civilization, restrains passion and appetite, and curbs the will. Various conjunctures arise in which the taboos are weakened or the sanctions on them are withdrawn. Faith in the current religion may be lost. Then its mystic sanctions cease to operate. The political institutions may be weak or unfit, and the civil sanctions may fail. There may not be the necessary harmony between economic conditions and political institutions, or the classes which hold the social forces in their hands may misuse them for their selfish interest at the expense of others. The philosophical and ethical generalizations which are produced by the mores rise into a realm of intellect and reason which is proud, noble, and grand. The power of the intelligence is a human prerogative. If the power is correctly used the scope of achievement in the satisfaction of needs is enormously extended. The penalty of error in that domain is correspondingly great. When the mores go wrong it is, above all, on account of error in the attempt to employ the philosophical and ethical generalizations in order to impose upon mores and institutions a movement towards selected and "ideal" results which the ruling powers of the society have determined to aim [100] at. Then the energy of the society may be diverted from its interests. Such a drift of the mores is exactly analogous to a vice of an individual, i.e. energy is expended on acts which are contrary to welfare. The result is a confusion of all the functions of the society, and a falseness in all its mores. Any of the aberrations which have been mentioned will produce evil mores, that is, mores which are not adapted to welfare, so that a group may fall into vicious mores just as an individual falls into vicious habits.

104. Illustrations. This was well illustrated at Byzantium. The development of courtesans and prostitutes into a great and flourishing institution; the political rule, by palace intrigues, of favorites, women, and eunuchs; the decisive interference of royal guards; the vices of public amusements and baths; the miseries and calamities of talented men and the consequent elimination of that class from the society; the sycophancy of clients; the servitude of peasants and artisans, with economic exhaustion as a consequence; demonism, fanaticism, and superstition in religion, combined with extravagant controversies over pedantic trifles,—such are some of the phenomena of mores disordered by divorce from sober interests, and complicated by arbitrary dogmas of politics and religion, not forgetting the brutal and ignorant measures of selfish rulers. In the Merovingian kingdom barbaric and corrupt Roman mores were intermingled in a period of turmoil. In the Renaissance in Italy all the taboos were broken down, or had lost their sanctions, and vice and crime ran riot through social disorder. As to the degeneracy of mores, we meet with a current opinion that in time the mores tend to "run down," by the side of another current opinion that there is, in time, a tendency of the mores to become more refined and purer. If the life conditions do not change, there is no reason at all why the mores should change. Some barbarian peoples have brought their mores into true adjustment to their life conditions, and have gone on for centuries without change. What is true, however, is that there are periods of social advance and periods of social decline, that is, advance or decline in economic power, material prosperity, and group strength for war. In either case all the mores fall into a character, temper, and spirit which conform to the situation. The early centuries [101] of the Christian era were a period of decline. Tertullian121 has a passage in which he describes in enthusiastic terms the prosperity and progress of his time (end of the second century). He did not perceive that society was in a conjuncture of decline. Many, however, from the time of Augustus saw evil coming. The splendors of the empire did not delude them. Tacitus feared evil from the Germans; others from the Parthians.122 The population of the Roman empire felt its inferiority to its ancestors. One thing after another gave way. Nothing could serve as a fulcrum for resisting decline, or producing recovery. In such a period despair wins control. The philosophy is pessimistic. The world is supposed to be coming to an end. Life is not valued. Ascetic practices fall in with the prevailing temper. Martyrdom has no great terrors; such as it has can be overcome by a little enthusiasm. Inroads of barbarians only add a little to the other woes, or hasten an end which is inevitable and is expected with resignation. At such a time a religion of demonism, other-worldliness, resignation, retirement from the world, and renunciation appeals both to those who want a dream of escape and to those who despair. Our own time, on the other hand, is one of advance on account of great unoccupied territories now opened at little or no cost to those who have nothing. Such a period is one of hope, power, and gain for the masses. Optimism is the philosophy. All the mores get their spirit from it. "Progress" is an object of faith. A philosophy of resignation and renunciation is unpopular. There is nothing which we cannot do, and will not do, if we choose. No mistake will cost much. It can be easily rectified. In the Renaissance in Italy, besides the rejection of religion and the disorder of the state, there was a great movement of new power derived from the knowledge which was changing the life conditions. Great social forces were set loose. Men of heroic dimensions, both in good and ill, appeared in great numbers. They had astounding ability to accomplish achievements, and appeared to be possessed by devils, so superhuman was their energy in vice and crime as well as in war, art, discovery, and literature. No doubt this phenomenon of heroic men belongs to an [102] age of advance with a great upbursting of new power under more favorable conditions. It is to be noticed also that reproduction responds to conditions of advance or decline. In decline marriage and family become irksome. Celibacy arises in the mores. In times of advance sex vice and excess reach a degree, as in the Renaissance, which seems to constitute a social paroxysm. The sex passion rises to a frenzy to which everything else is sacrificed. The notion that mores grow either better or worse by virtue of some inherent tendency is to be rejected. Goodness or badness of the mores is always relative only. Their purpose is to serve needs, and their quality is to be defined by the degree to which they do it. We have noticed that there is in them a strain towards consistency, due to the fact that they are more efficient when consistent. They are consistent also in aberration and error when they fall under the dominion of any one of the false tendencies above described. Hence we may have the phenomena of degenerate mores characterizing a period; being a case of change in the mores not due to any external and determinable cause, and analogous either to vice or disease.

105. The correction of aberrations. It is possible to arrest or avert such an aberration in the mores at its beginning or in its early stages. It is, however, very difficult to do so, and it would be very difficult to find a case in which it has been done. Necessarily the effort to do it consists in a prophecy of consequences. Such prophecy does not appeal to any one who does not himself foresee error and harm. Prophets have always fared ill, because their predictions were unwelcome and they were unpopular. The pension system which has grown up in the United States since the civil war has often been criticised. It is an abuse of extreme peril in a democracy. Demagogues easily use it to corrupt the voters with their own money. It is believed that it will soon die out by its own limitations. There is, however, great doubt of this. It is more likely to cause other evil measures, in order that it may not die out. If we notice the way in which, in this case, people let a thing go on in order to avoid trouble, we may see how aberrant mores come in and grow strong.

106. Mores of advance or decline. Seeck thinks that a general weariness of life in the Greco-Roman world caused indifference [103] to procreation. It accounts for the readiness to commit suicide and for the indifference to martyrdom. Life was hardly worth having. He says that during the whole period of the empire there was no improvement in the useful arts, no new invention, and no new device to facilitate production. Neither was there any improvement in the art of war, in literature, or the fine arts. As to transportation and commerce there seems to have been gain in the first centuries of the Christian era.123 Such inventions as were made required a very long time to work their way into general use. This sluggishness is most apparent in mental labor. After the time of Hadrian science cannot be said to have existed. The learned only cited their predecessors. Philosophy consisted in interpreting old texts. The only gains were in religion, and those all were won by Semites or other peoples of western Asia.124 Both Greeks and Romans exterminated the élite of their societies, and pursued a policy which really was a selection of the less worthy.125 Men fled from the world. They wanted to get out of human society. They especially wanted to escape the state. The reason was that they suffered pain in society, especially from the political institutions. The Christian church gave to this renunciation of social rights and duties the character of a religious virtue. "Pessimism took possession of the old peoples at the beginning of the Christian era. This world is regarded as delivered over to destruction. Men long for a better life and the immortality of the gods, outside of this transitory existence. To this sentiment corresponds the division of the universe into a world of light above, the realm of the good, and a world of darkness below, where the evil powers dwell. Men live in a middle space. Myths explained how our world arose as a mixture of good and evil, between the two realms of good and evil. Man belongs to both; to the world of light by his soul, to the world of darkness by his body. Men struggle for redemption from this world and from carnality, and long to soar through the series of the heavens, so as to come before the face of the highest God, there [104] to live forever. This one can do after death, if he has during life undergone the necessary consecration, and has learned the words which can open heaven for him. In order to impart the consecration, and break the powers of darkness, one of the higher gods, the Redeemer-God, himself descended to earth. This religious theory is held by secret sects. The folk religions are dead. They can no longer satisfy the wants of men. Those of the same faiths and sentiments meet in secret brotherhood. The East must have been full of such secret sects, which corresponded to the petty states of the earlier period."126 There was a very widespread opinion that the world was old and used up so that it could produce no more, just as a woman beyond her prime could no longer bear children.127 "Whenever in any people, consciousness of its decline becomes vivid, a strange tendency to self-destruction arises in it. This is not to be explained scientifically, although it has been often observed." The best commit suicide first, for they do not fear death.128 Romans of wealth and rank committed suicide in the first and second century with astonishing levity; Christians, of the masses, went to martyrdom in the same way. Pliny expresses the feeling that life had little or no value.129

107. The Greek temper in prosperity. The Greeks, until the fourth century before Christ, were characterized by the joy of life. They lived in close touch with nature, and the human body was to them not a clog or a curse, but a model of beauty and a means of participating in the activities of nature. Their mores were full of youthful exuberance. Their life philosophy was egoistic and materialistic. They wanted to enjoy all which their powers could win, yet their notion of olbos was so elevated that our modern languages have no word for it. It meant opulence, with generous liberality of sentiment and public spirit. "I do not call him who lives in prosperity, and has great possessions, a man of olbos, but only a well-to-do treasure keeper."130 Such were the mores of the age of advance in wealth, population, military art, knowledge, mental achievement, and fine arts,—all of which evidently [105] were correlative and coherent parts of an expanding prosperity and group life.

108. Greek pessimism. It is true that this light-hearted, gay, and artistic temper was boyish. Behind it there always was a pessimistic world philosophy. The gods envied men any happiness and success, and would cast down any one who was successful. The joyous temper always was that of the man who has made up his mind to enjoy himself and forget, since to take thought and care would do no good. This philosophy embittered all prosperity. The epic heroes suffered painful ends, and when the tragedians took up the stories again they heaped up crime and woe.131 Pessimism was in the myths. While things went well the life policy of joyous carelessness overbore the pessimism, but when things began to go ill the conviction arose that life is not worth living. The abuses of democracy in the cities took away all the joy of success. It was wisdom just to take things as they came. Life was not worth having, for itself. If circumstances turned the balance of joy and pain so that the latter predominated a little, suicide was a rational relief. Religion did not cause this pessimism, but also it did not oppose it. Suicide was no offense to the gods, because they did not give life.132 The Greeks held their doctrine of pessimism, the envy of the gods, etc., to be a correct induction from observation of life. Herodotus brought back a conviction of it from his travels.133 Tradition ascribed to Solon the saying that "there is not a single happy mortal to be found amongst all the sun shines on."134

109. Greek degeneracy. The decline of the Greeks in the three centuries before our era is so great and sudden that it is very difficult to understand it. The best estimate of the population of the Peloponnesus in the second century B.C. puts it at one hundred and nine per square mile.135 Yet the population was emigrating, and population was restricted. A pair would have but one or two children. The cities were empty and the land was uncultivated.136 [106] There was neither war nor pestilence to account for this. It may be that the land was exhausted. There must have been a loss of economic power so that labor was unrewarded. The mores all sank together. There can be no achievement in the struggle for existence without an adequate force. Our civilization is built on steam. The Greek and Roman civilization was built on slavery, that is, on an aggregation of human power. The result produced was, at first, very great, but the exploitation of men entailed other consequences besides quantities of useful products. It was these consequences which issued in the mores, for, in a society built on slavery as the form of productive industry, all the mores, obeying the strain of consistency, must conform to that as the chief of the folkways. It was at the beginning of the empire that the Romans began to breed slaves because wars no longer brought in new supplies.137 Sex, vice, laziness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice, and contempt for labor were consequences of slavery, for the free.138 The system operated, in both the classical states, as a selection against the superior elements in the population. This effect was intensified by the political system. The city became an arena of political struggle for the goods of life which it was a shame to work for. Tyrannies and democracies alternated with each other, but both alike used massacre and proscription, and both thought it policy to get rid of troublesome persons, that is, of those who had convictions and had courage to avow them. Every able man became a victim of terrorism, exerted by idle market-place loafers. The abuse of democratic methods by those-who-had-not to plunder those-who-had must also have had much to do with the decline of economic power, and with the general decline of joy in life and creative energy. It would also make marriage and children a great and hopeless burden. Abortion and sex vice both directly and indirectly lessened population, by undermining the power of reproduction, while their effect to destroy all virile virtues could not fail to be exerted.139 It was another symptom of disease in the mores that the number [107] of males in the Roman empire greatly exceeded the number of females.140 The Roman system used up women.

110. Sparta. The case of Sparta is especially interesting because the Spartan mores were generally admired and envied in the fourth century B.C. They were very artificial and arbitrary. They developed into a catastrophe. The population declined to such a point that it was like group suicide. The nation incased itself in fossilized mores and extremest conservatism, by which its own energies were crushed. The institutions produced consequences which were grotesque compared with what had been expected from them.141

111. Optimism of prosperity. "I apprehend that the key to the joyful character of the antique religions known to us [in western Asia] lies in the fact that they took their shape in communities that were progressive and, on the whole, prosperous." Weak groups were exterminated. Those which survived "had all the self-confidence and elasticity that are engendered by success in the struggle of life." "The religious gladness of the Semites tended to assume an orgiastic character and become a sort of intoxication of the senses, in which anxiety and sorrow were drowned for the moment."142

112. Antagonism between an individual and the mores. The case of dissent from the mores, which was considered above (sec. 100), is the case in which the individual voluntarily sets himself in antagonism to the mores of the society. There are cases in which the individual finds himself in involuntary antagonism to the mores of the society, or of some subgroup to which he belongs. If a man passes from one class to another, his acts show the contrast between the mores in which he was bred and those in which he finds himself. The satirists have made fun of the parvenu for centuries. His mistakes and misfortunes reveal the nature of the mores, their power over the individual, their pertinacity against later influences, the confusion in character produced by changing them, and the grip of habit which appears [108] both in the persistence of old mores and the weakness of new ones. Every emigrant is forced to change his mores. He loses the sustaining help of use and wont. He has to acquire a new outfit of it. The traveler also experiences the change from life in one set of mores to life in another. The experience gives him the best power to criticise his native mores from a standpoint outside of them. In the North American colonies white children were often stolen by Indians and brought up by them in their ways. Whether they would later, if opportunity offered, return to white society and white mores, or would prefer to remain with the Indians, seems to have depended on the age at which they were captured. Missionaries have often taken men of low civilization out of the society in which they were born, have educated them, and taught them white men's mores. If a single clear and indisputable case could be adduced in which such a person was restored to his own people and did not revert to their mode of life, it would be a very important contribution to ethnology. We are forced to believe that, if a baby born in New England was taken to China and given to a Chinese family to rear and educate, he would become a Chinaman in all which belongs to the mores, that is to say, in his character, conduct, and code of life.

113. Antagonism of earlier and later mores. When, in the course of time, changes occur in the mores, the men of a later generation find themselves in antagonism to the mores of their ancestors. In the Homeric poems cases are to be found of disapproval by a later generation of the mores of a former one. The same is true of the tragedies of the fifth century in respect to the mythology and heroism in Homer. The punishment of Melantheus, the unfaithful goatherd, was savage in the extreme, but when Eurykleia exulted over the dead suitors, Ulysses told her that it was a cruel sin to rejoice over slain enemies.143 In the Iliad boastful shouts over the dead are frequent. In the Odyssey such shouts are forbidden.144 Homer thinks that it was unseemly for Achilles to drag the corpse of Hector behind his chariot.145 He says that the gods disapproved, which is the mystic [109] way of describing a change in the mores.146 He also disapproves of the sacrifice of Trojan youths on the pyre of Patroclus.147 It was proposed to Pausanias that he should repay on the corpse of Mardonius the insults which Xerxes had practiced on the corpse of Leonidas at Thermopylæ, but he indignantly refused.148 In the Eumenides of Æschylus the story of Orestes is represented as a struggle between the mores of the father family and those of the mother family. In the Herakleidæ there is a struggle between old and new mores as to the killing of captives. Many such contrasts are drawn between Greek and barbarian mores, the latter being old and abandoned customs which have become abominable to the Greeks (incest, murder of strangers). In the fourth century the Greeks were so humbled by their own base treatment of each other that this contrast ceased to be drawn.149 Similar contrasts between earlier and later mores appear in the Bible. Our own mores set us in antagonism to much which we find in the Bible (slavery, polygamy, extirpation of aborigines). The mores always bring down in tradition a code which is old. Infanticide, slavery, murder of the old, human sacrifices, etc., are in it. Later conditions force a new judgment, which is in revolt and antagonism to what always has been done and what everybody does. Slavery is an example of this in recent history.

114. Antagonism between groups in respect to mores. When different groups come in contact with each other their mores are brought into contrast and antagonism. Some Australian girls consider that their honor requires that they shall be knocked senseless and carried off by the men who thereby become their husbands. If they are the victims of violence, they need not be ashamed. Eskimo girls would be ashamed to go away with husbands without crying and lamenting, glad as they are to go. They are shocked to hear that European women publicly consent in church to be wives, and then go with their husbands without pretending to regret it. In Homer girls are proud to be bought and to bring to their fathers a bride price of many cows. In India gandharva marriage is one of the not-honorable [110] forms. It is love marriage. It rests on passion and is considered sensual; moreover, it is due to a transitory emotion. If property is involved in marriage the institution rests on a permanent interest and is guaranteed. Kaffirs also ridicule Christian love marriage. They say that it puts a woman on a level with a cat, the only animal which, amongst them, has no value.150 Where polygamy prevails women are ashamed to be wives of men who can afford only one each; under monogamy they think it a disgrace to be wives of men who have other wives. The Japanese think the tie to one's father the most sacred. A man who should leave father and mother and cleave to his wife would become an outcast. Therefore the Japanese think the Bible immoral and irreligious.151 Such a view in the mores of the masses will long outlast the "adoption of western civilization." The Egyptians thought the Greeks unclean. Herodotus says that the reason was because they ate cow's flesh.152 The Greeks, as wine drinkers, thought themselves superior to the Egyptians, who drank beer. A Greek people was considered inferior if it had no city life, no agora, no athletics, no share in the games, no group character, and if it kept on a robber life.153 The real reason for the hatred of Jews by Christians has always been the strange and foreign mores of the former. When Jews conform to the mores of the people amongst whom they live prejudice and hatred are greatly diminished, and in time will probably disappear. The dislike of the colored people in the old slave states of the United States and the hostility to whites who "associate with negroes " is to be attributed to the difference in the mores of whites and blacks. Under slavery the blacks were forced to conform to white ways, as indeed they are now if they are servants. In the North, also, where they are in a small minority, they conform to white ways. It is when they are free and form a large community that they live by their own mores. The civil war in the United States was due to a great divergence in the [111] mores of the North and the South, produced by the presence or absence of slavery. The passionate dislike and contempt of the people of one section for those of the other was due to the conception each had formed of the other's character and ways. Since the abolition of slavery the mores of the two sections have become similar and the sectional dislike has disappeared. The contrast between the mores of English America and Spanish America is very great. It would long outlast any political combination of parts of the two, if such should be brought about.

115. Missions and mores. The contrasts and antagonisms of the mores of different groups are the stumbling-blocks in the way of all missionary enterprise, and they explain many of the phenomena which missions present. We think that our "ways" are the best, and that their superiority is so obvious that all heathen, Mohammedans, Buddhists, etc., will, as soon as they learn what our ways are, eagerly embrace them. Nothing could be further from the truth. "It is difficult to an untraveled Englishman, who has not had an opportunity of throwing himself into the spirit of the East, to credit the disgust and detestation that numerous everyday acts, which appear perfectly harmless to his countrymen, excite in many Orientals."154 If our women are shocked at polygamy and the harem, Mohammedan women are equally shocked at the ball and dinner dresses of our ladies, at our dances, and at the manners of social intercourse between the sexes. Negroes in East Africa are as much disgusted to see white men eat fowl or eggs as we are at any of their messes. Missions always offer something from above downwards. They contain an assumption of superiority and beneficence. Half-civilized people never admit the assumption. They meet it just as we would meet a mission of Mohammedans or Buddhists to us. Savages and barbarians dismiss "white man's ways" with indifference. The virtues and arts of civilization are almost as disastrous to the uncivilized as its vices. It is really the great tragedy of civilization that the contact of lower and higher is disastrous to the former, no matter what may be the point of contact, or how little the civilized may desire to do harm.

[112] 116. Missions and antagonistic mores. Missionaries always have to try to act on the mores. The ritual and creed of a religion, and reading and writing, would not fulfill the purpose. The attempt is to teach the social ritual of civilized people. Missionaries almost always first insist on the use of clothing and monogamy. The first of these has, in a great number of cases, produced disease and hastened the extinction of the aborigines. The second very often causes a revolution in the societal organization, either in the family form, the productive industry, or the political discipline. The Hawaiians were a people of a very cheerful and playful disposition. The missionaries trained the children in the schools to serious manners and decorum. Such was the method in fashion in our own schools at the time. The missionary society refused the petition of the Hawaiians for teachers who would teach them the mechanic arts.155 This is like the refusal of the English missionary society to support Livingstone's policy in South Africa because it was not religious. Until very recent times no white men have understood the difference between the mother family and the father family. Missionaries have all grown up in the latter. Miss Kingsley describes the antagonism which arises in the mind of a West African negro, brought up in the mother family, against the teaching of the missionary. The negro husband and wife have separate property. Neither likes the white man's doctrine of the community of goods. The woman knows that that would mean that she would have none. The man would not take her goods if he must take her children too. "White culture expects a man to think more of his wife and children than he does of his mother and sisters, which to the uncultured African is absurd."156 Evidently it is these collisions and antagonisms of the mores which constitute the problems of missions. We can quote but a single bit of evidence that an aboriginal people has gained benefit from contact with the civilized. Of the Bantu negroes it is said that such contact has increased their vigor and vitality.157 The "missionary-made man" is not a good type, according to [113] the military, travelers, and ethnographers.158 Of the Basutos it is said that the converted ones are the worst. They are dishonest and dirty.159 In Central America it is said that the judgment is often expressed that "an Indian who can read and write is a good-for-nothing." The teachers in the schools teach the Indian children to despise the ways of their race. Then they lose the virtues of trustworthiness and honesty, for which the Indians were noteworthy.160 There is no such thing as "benevolent assimilation." To one who knows the facts such a phrase sounds like flippant ignorance or a cruel jest. Even if one group is reduced to a small remnant in the midst of a great nation, assimilation of the residue does not follow. Black and white, in the United States, are now tending to more strict segregation. The remnants of our Indians partly retain Indian mores, partly adopt white mores. They languish in moral isolation and homelessness. They have no adjustment to any social environment. Gypsies have never adopted the mores of civilized life. They are morally and physically afloat in the world. There are in India and in the Russian empire great numbers of remnants of aboriginal tribes, and there are, all over the world, groups of pariahs, or races maudites, which the great groups will not assimilate. The Jews, although more numerous, and economically far stronger, are in the same attitude to the peoples amongst which they live.

117. Modification of the mores by agitation. To this point all projects of missions and reform must come. It must be recognized that what is proposed is an arbitrary action on the mores. Therefore nothing sudden or big is possible. The enterprise is possible only if the mores are ready for it. The conditions of success lie in the mores. The methods must conform to the mores. That is why the agitator, reformer, prophet, reorganizer of society, who has found out "the truth" and wants to "get a law passed" to realize it right away, is only a mischief-maker. He has won considerable prestige in the last hundred years, but [ 114] if the cases are examined it will be found that when he had success it was because he took up something for which the mores were ready. Wilberforce did not overthrow slavery. Natural forces reduced to the service of man and the discovery of new land set men "free" from great labor, and new ways suggested new sentiments of humanity and ethics. The mores changed and all the wider deductions in them were repugnant to slavery. The free-trade agitators did not abolish the corn laws. The interests of the English population had undergone a new distribution. It was the redistribution of population and political power in the United States which made the civil war. Witchcraft and trial by torture were not abolished by argument. Critical knowledge and thirst for reality made them absurd. In Queen Anne's reign prisons in England were frightful sinks of vice, misery, disease, and cruel extortion. "So the prisons continued until the time of Howard,"161 seventy-five years later. The mores had then become humanitarian. Howard was able to get a response.

118. Capricious interest of the masses. Whether the masses will think certain things wrong, cruel, base, unjust, and disgusting; whether they will think certain pleas and demands reasonable; whether they will regard certain projects as sensible, ridiculous, or fantastic, and will give attention to certain topics, depends on the convictions and feelings which at the time are dominant in the mores. No one can predict with confidence what the response will be to any stimulus which may be applied. The fact that certain American products of protected industries are sold abroad cheaper than at home, so that the protective tariff taxes us to make presents to foreigners, has been published scores of times. It might be expected to produce a storm of popular indignation. It does not do so. The abuses of the pension system have been exposed again and again. There is no popular response in condemnation of the abuse, or demand for reform. The error and folly of protection have been very fully exposed, but the free-trade agitation has not won ground. In [115] truth, however, that agitation has never been carried on sincerely and persistently. Many of those who have taken part in it have not aimed to put an end to the steal, but to be taken into it. The notion of "making something out of the government" in one way or another has got into the mores. It is the vice of modern representative government. Civil-service reform has won but little popular support because the masses have learned that the successful party has a right to distribute the offices amongst its members. That has become accepted doctrine in the mores. A local boss said: "There is but one issue in the Fifth Maryland district. It is this, Can any man get more from Uncle Sam for the hard-working Republicans of the district than I can?"162 This sentiment wins wide sympathy. Prohibitory legislation accords with the mores of the rural, but not of the urban, population. It therefore produces in cities deceit and blackmail, and we meet with the strange phenomenon, in a constitutional state, that publicists argue that administrative officers in cities ought to ignore the law. Antipolygamy is in the mores; antidivorce is not. Any injustice or arbitrary action against polygamy is possible. Reform of divorce legislation is slow and difficult. We are told that "respect for law" is in our mores, but the frequency of lynching disproves it. Let those who believe in the psychology of crowds write for us a logic of crowds and tell how the corporate mind operates.

119. How the group becomes homogeneous. The only way in which, in the course of time, remnants of foreign groups are apparently absorbed and the group becomes homogeneous, is that the foreign element dies out. In like manner people who live by aberrant mores die. The aberrant forms then cease to be, and the mores become uniform. In the meantime, there is a selection which determines which mores shall survive and which perish. This is accomplished by syncretism.

120. Syncretism. Although folkways for the same purpose have a great similarity in all groups, yet they present variations and characteristic differences from group to group. These variations are sometimes due to differences in the l[116] ife conditions, but generally causes for them are unascertainable, or the variations appear capricious. Therefore each in-group forms its own ways, and looks with contempt and abhorrence upon the ways of any out-group (sec. 13). Dialectical differences in language or pronunciation are a sufficient instance. They cannot be accounted for, but they call out contempt and ridicule, and are taken to be signs of barbarism and inferiority. When groups are compounded by intermarriage, intercourse, conquest, immigration, or slavery, syncretism of the folkways takes place. One of the component groups takes precedence and sets the standards. The inferior groups or classes imitate the ways of the dominant group, and eradicate from their children the traditions of their own ancestors. Amongst Englishmen the correct or incorrect placing of the h is a mark of caste. It is a matter of education to put an end to the incorrect use. Contiguity, neighborhood, or even literature may suffice to bring about syncretism of the mores. One group learns that the people of another group regard some one of its ways or notions as base. This knowledge may produce shame and an effort to breed out the custom. Thus whenever two groups are brought into contact and contagion, there is, by syncretism, a selection of the folkways which is destructive to some of them. This is the process by which folkways are rendered obsolete. The notion of a gradual refinement of the mores in time, which is assumed to go on of itself, or by virtue of some inherent tendency in that direction, is entirely unfounded. Christian mores in the western empire were formed by syncretism of Jewish and pagan mores. Christian mores therefore contain war, slavery, concubinage, demonism, and base amusements, together with some abstract ascetic doctrines with which these things are inconsistent. The strain of the mores towards consistency produced elimination of some of these customs. The church embraced in its fold Latin, Teutonic, Greek, and Slavonic nations, and it produced a grand syncretism of their mores, while it favored those which were Latin. The Teutonic mores suffered elimination. Those which were Greek and[117] Slavonic were saved by the division of the church. Those which now pass for Christian in western Europe are the result of the syncretism of two thousand years. When now western Christians come in contact with heathen, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or alien forms of Christianity, they endeavor to put an end to polygamy, slavery, infanticide, idolatry, etc., which have been extruded from western Christian mores. In Egypt at the present time the political power and economic prosperity of the English causes the Mohammedans to envy, emulate, and imitate them in all those peculiarities which are supposed to be causes of their success. Hence we hear of movements to educate children, change the status of women, and otherwise modify traditional mores. It is another case of the operation by which inferior mores are rendered obsolete.

121. The art of societal administration. It is not to be inferred that reform and correction are hopeless. Inasmuch as the mores are a phenomenon of the society and not of the state, and inasmuch as the machinery of administration belongs to the state and not to the society, the administration of the mores presents peculiar difficulties. Strictly speaking, there is no administration of the mores, or it is left to voluntary organs acting by moral suasion. The state administration fails if it tries to deal with the mores, because it goes out of its province. The voluntary organs which try to administer the mores (literature, moral teachers, schools, churches, etc.) have no set method and no persistent effort. They very often make great errors in their methods. In regard to divorce, for instance, it is idle to set up stringent rules in an ecclesiastical body, and to try to establish them by extravagant and false interpretation of the Bible, hoping in that way to lead opinion; but the observation and consideration of cases which occur affect opinion and form convictions. The statesman and social philosopher can act with such influences, sum up the forces which make them, and greatly help the result. The inference is that intelligent art can be introduced here as elsewhere, but that it is necessary to understand the mores and to be able to discern the elements in them, just as it is always necessary for good art to understand [118] the facts of nature with which it will have to deal. It belongs to the work of publicists and statesmen to gauge the forces in the mores and to perceive their tendencies. The great men of a great epoch are those who have understood new currents in the mores. The great reformers of the sixteenth century, the great leaders of modern revolutions, were, as we can easily see, produced out of a protest or revulsion which had long been forming under and within the existing system. The leaders are such because they voice the convictions which have become established and because they propose measures which will realize interests of which the society has become conscious. A hero is not needed. Often a mediocre, commonplace man suffices to give the critical turn to thought or interest. "A Gian Angelo Medici, agreeable, diplomatic, benevolent, and pleasure-loving, sufficed to initiate a series of events which kept the occidental races in perturbation through two centuries."163 Great crises come when great new forces are at work changing fundamental conditions, while powerful institutions and traditions still hold old systems intact. The fifteenth century was such a period. It is in such crises that great men find their opportunity. The man and the age react on each other. The measures of policy which are adopted and upon which energy is expended become components in the evolution. The evolution, although it has the character of a nature process, always must issue by and through men whose passions, follies, and wills are a part of it but are also always dominated by it. The interaction defies our analysis, but it does not discourage our reason and conscience from their play on the situation, if we are content to know that their function must be humble. Stoll boldly declares that if one of us had been a judge in the times of the witch trials he would have reasoned as the witch judges did, and would have tortured like them.164 If that is so, then it behooves us by education and will, with intelligent purpose, to criticise and judge even the most established ways of our time, and to put courage and labor into resistance to the current mores where we judge them wrong. It would be a mighty achievement of the science of society if it could lead up to an art of societal administration which should be intelligent, effective, and scientific.

[119]

CHAPTER III. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE↩

Tools, Arts, Language, Money

Processes and artifacts of the food supply.—Fishing.—Methods of fishing.—The mystic element.—Religion and industry.—Artifacts and freaks of nature.—Forms of stone axes.—How stone implements are made.—How arrowheads are made.—How stone axes are used.—Acculturation or parallelism.—Fire-making tools.—Psychophysical traits of primitive man.—Language.—Language and magic.—Language is a case of folkways.—Primitive dialects.—Taking up and dropping language.—Pigeon dialects.—How languages grow.—Money.—Intergroup and intragroup money.—Predominant wares.—Intragroup money from property; intergroup money from trade.—Shell and bead money.—Token money.—Selection of a predominant ware.—Stone money in Melanesia.—Plutocratic effects of money.—Money on the northwest coast of North America.—Wampumpeag and roanoke.—Ring money. Use of metal.—The evolution of money.—The ethical functions of money.

122. Processes and artifacts of the food supply. The processes and the artifacts which are connected with food supply offer us the purest and simplest illustrations of the development of folkways. They are not free from the admixture of superstition and vanity, but the element of expediency predominates in them. It is reported of the natives of New South Wales that a man will lie on a rock with a piece of fish in his hand, feigning sleep. A hawk or crow darts at the fish, but is caught by the man. It is also reported of Australians that a man swims under water, breathing through a reed, approaches ducks, pulls one under water by the legs, wrings its neck, and so secures a number of them.165 If these stories can be accepted with confidence, they may well furnish us a starting point for a study of the art of catching animals. The man really has no tool, but must rely [120] entirely on his own quickness and dexterity. Birdlime is a device for which many plants furnish material,166 and which is available even against large game, which is fretted and worn out by it until it becomes the prey of man. A Botocudo hunter grates the eggs of an alligator together, when he finds them on the bank, and so entices the mother.167 The Yuroks of California sprinkled berries on the shallow bottom of a river and stretched a net a few inches below the surface of the water. Ducks diving for the berries were caught by the neck in the meshes and drowned. As they hung quiet they did not frighten away others.168 The Tarahumari catch birds by stringing corn kernels on a fiber which is buried underground. The bird swallows the corn and cannot eject it.169 Various animals were trained to help man in the food quest and were thus drawn into the industrial organization. The animals furnished materials (skin, bone, teeth, hair, horns) and also tools, so that the food quest broadened beyond the immediate supply of food into mechanical industrial forms. The Shingu Indians, although they lived on the product of the ground, were obliged to continue the chase because of the materials and implements which they got from the animals. They used the jaw of a fish, with the teeth in it, as a knife; the arm and leg bones of apes as arrow points; the tail spike of a skate for the same; the two front claws of the armadillo to dig the ground (a process which the animal taught them by the same use of his claws); the shell of a river mussel as a scraper to finish wooden tools. "These people were hunters without dogs, fishers without hooks, and tillers without plow or spade. They show how much development life was capable of in the time before metals."170 The palometa is a fish which weighs two or three pounds. It has fourteen teeth in each jaw so sharp that the Abipones shear sheep with the jaw.171 Such cases might be pursued into great detail. They show acute observation, great ingenuity, clever adaptation, and teachableness. The lasso, bola, boomerang, and throw knife, [121] as well as the throw stick, are products of persistent and open-minded experience. The selection and adaptation of things in nature to a special operation in the arts often show ingenuity as great as that manifested in any of our devices.172 This ingenuity is of the same kind as that shown by many animals. Intelligent experiment, however, is not wanting. It is reported of Eskimo that they invent imaginary hard cases, such as might occur to them, and, by way of sport, discuss the proper way to deal with the case.173 Operations similar to this in play show a mode in which ingenuity must have been developed and inventions produced. In the higher grades of the hunting stage, such as are presented by the North American Indians, buffalo hunting, for instance, calls for the highest organization and skill, and establishes inflexible discipline.174

123. Fishing. Fishing furnishes a parallel case. A Thlinkit fisherman puts on a cap which resembles the head of a seal, and hiding his body between the rocks makes a noise like a seal. This entices seals towards him and gives him opportunity to kill them.175 The Australians had a fish spear and a net made of fibers, which were chewed by the women to make them soft. They had no hooks until they got them from the whites.176 Weirs for fishing were built of stone. One is described which was a labyrinth of stone circles, of which some were connected with each other. The walls are three or four feet high. The fish get confused and are caught by hand.177 Remains of weirs, consisting of wattled work of reeds or saplings, are found in the rivers of northern Europe. The device of putting into the water some poisonous or narcotic substance in order to stupefy the fish is met with all over the globe. It was employed by the aborigines on Lanzarote (Canary Islands). There the fish were freshened in unpoisoned waters.178 It is quite impossible that this device should have spread only by contact. It must have been independently invented. It secured a large amount of fish with very little [122] trouble. The Ainos dam the stream, leaving only a few openings, opposite each of which, below, they build a platform. The fish jump at the opening, but some miss it and fall on the platform where they are caught.179 The Polynesians depend largely on fish for their food supply. They had nets a thousand ells long, which could be handled only by a hundred men. They made hooks of shell, bone, and hard wood.180 The first fishhooks of prehistoric men in Europe and North America were made of pieces of bone pointed at both ends, the cord being attached in the middle.181 The Shingu Indians fished with bow and arrow, nets, scoop baskets, and weirs. Bait was used to make the fish rise. Then they were shot with an arrow. The people had no hooks, but eagerly adopted them when they became acquainted with them.182 They and other Brazilians set a long cylindrical basket in a stream in such a way that when the fish enters it and seizes the bait, it tilts up into a perpendicular position. The fish cannot then get out.183

124. Methods of fishing. Nilsson remarks on the astonishing resemblance between all the fishing apparatus of Scandinavians, Eskimo, and North Americans.184 The problem is solved in the same way, but the materials within reach impose limiting conditions. The rod and hook yield to the net when the fish are plentiful. Then, however, the spear also is used. It is sometimes made so that the head will come off when the fish is struck. By its buoyancy the spearhead, sticking in the body of the fish, compels it to rise, when it is caught.185 A peculiar device is reported from Dobu, New Guinea. A string long enough to reach to the ground is fastened to a kite. At the end of the string is a tassel of spider's web. The kite is held at such a height that the tassel just skims the water. The fish catching at it entangles its teeth in the spider's-web tassel and is caught.186 The Chinese have trained cormorants to do their fishing for them.

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125. The mystic element. Although the food quest is the most utilitarian and matter-of-fact branch of the struggle for existence, the mystic element does not fail to present itself. No doubt it would be found interwoven with many of the cases mentioned above, if the question was raised and the investigation made. In the Caroline archipelago fishing is combined with various rites and religious notions. The chief medicine man owes the authority of his position, not to his knowledge of the art of fishing, but to his knowledge of the formulæ of incantation and exorcism employed in fishing. There must be abstinence from the sex relation before a fishing expedition. The men start in silence. Especially, the hoped-for success must not be mentioned. The boat must have a formula of luck pronounced over it. Sacrifices of taro are offered to win the favor of the god, lest the lines be broken by sharks or become entangled in rocks. If the expedition fails to get a good catch, the fault is laid to the men. Some one of them is thought to have done something amiss.187

126. Religion and industry. Here we meet with a familiar cycle of notions and usages. We must assume them in all cases, whether they are reported or not, for the element of supernatural intervention, or magic, seems never to be wanting. At higher stages it gives way to religious ritual or to priestly blessing. The Japanese sword maker formerly wore a priestly garb when making a sword, which was a sacred craft. He also practiced a purificatory ritual. The sacred rope of rice straw, the oldest symbol of Shinto, was suspended before the smithy. The workman's food was all cooked with holy fire, and none of his family might enter the workshop or speak to him while he was at work.188 There were also ascetic practices in the Shinto religion, which an elected representative of the community undertook each year for the prosperity of the whole.189 There is never a case of authority in human society which does not go back, for its origin and explanation, to the influence of the other world (ghosts, etc.) over this world.

127. Artifacts and freaks of nature. In the Oxford University museum may be seen a case full of natural stones, flints, [124] etc., so like the artifacts of the Chellean type that it would require a skilled observer to determine whether they are artificial or not. The collection includes apparent celts, rings, perforated stones, borers, scrapers, and flint flakes, so that the objects are by no means such as would lie at the beginning of the series of artifacts, in regard to which the doubt whether they were artificial would arise from their rudeness and consequent resemblance to stones broken by natural conjunctures. In the museum at Dresden may be seen a collection of stones, natural products, which might serve as models for artificial axes, celts, etc. One object shows the possibility of freaks of nature of this class. It is a water-worn stone which might be taken for a skull. In the Copenhagen museum is a great collection of stone tools arranged in sequence of perfection, beginning with the coarsest and rudest and advancing to the highest products of art of this kind. That collection is arranged solely with reference to the development of the flint and stone implements as tools for a certain use. The sequence is very convincing as to the interpretation put on the objects, and also as to the strain towards improvement. Time and place are disregarded in the arrangement. The earliest specimens in the series are very rude, and only expert opinion could justify their place amongst artifacts. It reminds us of what we are told about specimens of Australian "tomahawks." It is said of such a weapon from West Australia that if it was "found anywhere divested of the gum and handle, it is doubtful whether it could be recognized by any one as a work of art. It is ruder in its fashioning, owing principally to the material of which it is composed, than even the rude, unrubbed, chipped cutting-stones of the Tasmanians."190 With regard to these stone implements of the Tasmanians Tylor said that some of them are "ruder in make than those of the mammoth period, inasmuch as their edges are formed by chipping only one surface of the stone, instead of both, as in the European examples." The Tasmanians, when they needed a cutting implement, caught up a suitable flat stone, knocked off chips from one side, partly or all ar [125] ound the edge, and used it without more ado. This they did under the eyes of modern Europeans. Tylor showed, "from among flint instruments and flakes from the cave of le Moustier in Dordogne, specimens corresponding in make with such curious exactness to those of the Tasmanians that, were they not chipped from different stones, it would hardly be possible to distinguish those of recent savages from those of European cavemen. It is not strange that experienced archæologists should have been at first inclined to consider a large portion of the Tasmanian stone implements exhibited as wasters and flakes, or chips, struck off in shaping implements." These stones had no handle. They were grasped in the hand.191 In the Oxford museum may be seen side by side flint shapes from St. Acheul, Tasmania, India, and the Cape of Good Hope: All the paleolithic implements which we possess, even the oldest and rudest, belong far on in a series of which the antecedent members are wanting, for the art, if recognized, is seen to be advanced and artistic.192 The Seri of southern California use a natural cobblestone, which is shaped only by the wear of use, and is discarded when sharp edges are produced by use or fracture. They use their teeth and claws like beasts. They have not a knife-sense and need training before they can use a knife. The stone selected is of an ovoid form somewhat flattened. By use it is battered on the ends and ground on the sides so that it becomes personal property and acquires fetishistic import. It is buried with the corpse of the woman who owned and used it.193 Holmes, after experimenting with the manufacture of stone implements, declared that "every implement resembling the final forms and every blade-shaped projectile point made from a bowlder, or similar bit of rock, not already approximate in shape, must pass through the same or very nearly the same, stages of development, leaving the same wasters, whether shaped to-day, yesterday, or a million years ago; whether in the hands of the civilized, the barbarous, or the savage man."194 This conclusion is very important, for it [126] recognizes a certain constant determination of the art of stone-implement making by the qualities of the material and the muscular activities of man. It has been disputed whether the form called "turtle-backs" were one form in the series of artifacts, or a misform produced by errors in manufacture. "The American archæologists, who have labored long to repeat the processes of the aborigines in stone work, find themselves unavoidably making 'turtle-backs,' when they are really trying to make the leaf-shaped blade."195 The handicraftsmen of the Smithsonian Institute have not been able to make a leaf-shaped blade such as may be seen in the museums, and no Indian has been found who could make one. "This is one of the lost arts."196 Other pieces of rude form have been set aside as chips, or rejects, but such are found in use as scrapers, or in handles, and are to be recognized as products which belong to the series.197 Some rude implements found in the hill gravels of Berkshire, England, have been offered as anterior to the paleolithic implements as usually classified.198 Lubbock said that he could not find in the large Scandinavian collections "a single specimen of a true paleolithic type."199

128. Forms of stone axes. Stone axes are found all over the globe. Chipped, sharpened, polished, grooved, pierced, handled, are different kinds which may be set in a series of advancing improvement, and under each grade local varieties may be distinguished, but the art is essentially the same everywhere. "Probably no discovery is older than the fact that friction would wear away wood or bone, or even stone."200 It was also learned that rawhide and sinew shrank in drying, and this fact was very ingeniously used to attach handles, the sinew or membrane being put on while fresh and wet. American stone axes are grooved to receive a handle made by an ingenious adaptation of roots and branches with pitch or bitumen. "Bored stone axes are found in the tropical regions of America. Although they are very rare, they are well executed."201 The device of boring stone axes appears [127] at the end of the stone age in the lake dwellings of Switzerland. Perhaps they were only decorative.202 The Polynesians used stone axes which were polished but not bored or grooved, and the edge was not curved.203 The Pacific islanders clung to the type of the adze, so that even when they got iron and steel implements from the whites they preferred the knife of a plane to an ax, because the former could be used adze-fashion.204 In the stone graves of Tennessee have been found implements superior to all others found in the United States in size, variety, and workmanship. Amongst these are a flint sickle-shaped tool, axes a foot long or more, a flint sword twenty-two inches long, a flint needle eight inches long; also objects supposed to be for ceremonial or decorative use. Stone axes with handles all in one piece have been found in Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina.205

129. How stone implements are made. What was the process by which these stone implements were made? The artifacts bear witness directly to two or three different operations, separate or combined, and to a great development of the process. As above stated, Tasmanians, after they became known to Europeans, made stone implements as they needed them, giving to a stone a rude adaptation to the purpose by chipping off a few flakes. Short sharp blows were struck by one stone upon another. The blow must, however, fall upon just the right spot or it would not produce the desired result. Therefore the flakes were often thrown off by pressure. A stick or horn was set against the spot where the force should be applied, and braced against the breast of the operator, while he held the stone between his feet. This latter operation is described as used by the Mexicans to get flakes of obsidian.206 By carrying further the process of chipping or pressing the stone could be shaped more perfectly, and by rubbing it on another stone it could be given a cutting edge. [128] The rubbing process could also be applied to the surface to make it smooth instead of leaving it as it was after the flaking process. The processes of striking and pressing were also combined. The pebble was broken by blows and the pieces were further reduced to shape by the pressing process. Different devices were also invented for holding the stone securely and in the proper position. Skill and judgment in perceiving how and for what purpose each pebble could best be treated was developed by the workers, and division of labor arose amongst them as some acquired greater skill in one operation and others in another. The operations of pressing and striking were also made complex in order to accomplish what was desired. A sapling was cut off so that the stump of a limb was left at the bottom of it. It was set against the spot where the force was needed, and a blow struck in the crotch of the limb caused the chip to fly. This apparatus was improved and refined by putting a horn tip on the end point of contact. Another device was to cut a notch in a tree trunk, which could be used as a fulcrum. A long lever was used to apply the pressure to the stone laid at the root of the tree, or on the horizontal space at the bottom of the notch.207 These variations show persistent endeavor to get control of the necessary force and to apply it at the proper point with the least chance for error and loss. Buckley reported about the "tomahawks" of the aborigines of Victoria, that the stone was split into pieces, without regard to their shape, but of convenient thickness. A piece was rubbed on rough granite until "it is brought to a very fine thin edge, and so hard and sharp as to enable them to fell a very large tree with it." The handles are "thick pieces of wood, split and then doubled up, the stone being in the bend and fixed with gum, very carefully prepared for the purpose, so as to make it perfectly secure when bound round with sinews."208 The natives of the Admiralty Islands use obsidian which is dug from layers in the ground. Only a few know the art of making axes, and they prosecute it as a means of livelihood. Skill is required especially to judge of the way in which the stone will split. The only tool is a stone [129] with which light, sharp blows are struck.209 The axes of the Swiss lake dwellings were made from bowlders of any hard stone. By means of a saw of flint set in wood, with sand and water, a groove was cut on one side and then on the other. With a single blow from another stone the bowlder was made to fall in two. By means of a hard stone the piece was rudely shaped and then finished by friction. A modern student has made such an ax in this way in five hours. Sometimes the stone was set in a handle of wood or horn.210 It will be noticed that this process was not possible until an auxiliary tool, the flint saw, had already been made. The tools and processes were all rude and great skill and dexterity were required in the operator. "Lafitau says the polishing of a stone ax requires generations to complete. Mr. Joseph D. McGuire fabricates a grooved jade ax from an entirely rough spall in less than a hundred hours."211

130. How arrowheads are made. As to arrowheads, "there are a dozen or more authentic reports by eye-witnesses of the manufacture of arrowheads in as many different ways."212 The California Indians broke up a piece of flint or obsidian to the proper-sized pieces. A piece was held in the left hand, which was protected by a piece of buckskin. Pressure was put upon the edge by a piece of a deer's antler, four to six inches long, held in the right hand. In this way little pieces were chipped off until the arrowhead was formed. Only the most expert do this successfully.213 Sometimes the stone to be operated on is heated in the fire, and slowly cooled, which causes it to split in flakes. A flake is then shaped with buck-horn pincers, tied together at the point with a thong.214 In another report it is the stone with which the operation is performed which is said to be heated.215 In a pit several hundred flint implements were found stored away in regular layers with alternate layers of sand between. Perhaps the purpose was to render them more easy to work to the desired finish.216 Catlin describes another process of making [130] arrowheads which required two workmen. One held the stone in his left hand and placed a chisel-like instrument at the proper point. The second man struck the blow. Both sang during the operation. The blows were in the rhythm of the music, and a quick "rebounding" stroke was said to be essential to good success.217 A "lad" in Michigan made arrowheads in imitation of Indian work, from flint, glass, and obsidian, with a piece of oak stick five inches long as a tool.218 Sophus Müller219 says of modern attempts to imitate stone-implement making that an average workman can learn in fourteen days to make five hundred to eight hundred arrowheads per day, but that no one of the best workmen has been able to equal the fine chipping on the neolithic stone weapons, although many have made the small implements on the types of the old stone age.

131. How stone axes were used. After stone axes were made it required no little independent sense to use them for the desired result. A modern archæologist used a stone ax of gray flint, with an edge six and a half centimeters long, set in a handle after the prehistoric fashion, to cut sticks of green fir, in order to test the ax. He held the stick upright and chopped into it notchwise until he could break it in two. He cut in two a stick eighteen centimeters in diameter in eighteen minutes. He struck fifteen hundred and seventy-eight cuts. At the fourteen hundred and eighty-fifth cut a piece flew from his ax.220 A modern investigator made a polished ax in eleven hours and forty-five minutes. He cut down an oak tree 0.73 meter in circumference, with twenty-two hundred blows of the ax, in an hour and thirteen minutes.221 When primitive men desired to cut down a tree, fire was applied to it and the ax was used only to chop off the charred wood so that the fire would attack the wood again. Canoes were hollowed out of tree trunks by the same process. These processes are reported from different parts of the world remote from each other.222 Without these auxiliary devices the stone [131] ax can really be used only as a hammer, for, by means of it, the wood is beaten into a fibrous condition and is not properly cut.223 Nevertheless, the Shingu Indians cleared forests, built houses and canoes, and made furniture with the stone ax alone.224 The Indians of Guiana, with stone and bone implements, cut down big trees, cut out the core of them, and made weapons and tools of great perfection and beauty.225 The same may be said of very many other peoples. Some Australians value stone axes so much that they except them from the custom to bury all a man's property with him. Axes are inherited by the next of kin.226

132. Acculturation versus parallelism. The facts in regard to making and using stone implements bring up the question whether such arts have a single origin and are spread by contagion (acculturation), or are invented independently by many people who have the same tasks to perform, and the same or similar materials at hand (parallelism). Lippert227 says that "the different modes of fashioning flint arrowheads show us that we must not think of the earliest art as all tied to a single tradition, and carried away from this. On the contrary, human ingenuity has set about accomplishing the acts which are necessary for the struggle for existence in different places, with the elements there at hand." We have seen above that the materials may, from their character, so limit and condition the operations of manufacture as to set lines for the development of the art. If the processes of the men are also limited and conditioned by the nature of human nerves and muscles so that they must run on certain lines, it would follow that the human mind also, in face of a certain problem, will fall into conditioned modes of activity, and we should approach the doctrine that men must think the same thoughts by way of mental reaction on the same experiences and observations.

The facts, however, show that an art, beginning in the rudest way, is produced along lines of concurrent effort, and is the [ 132] common property of the group. All practice it as it is, and all are unconsciously coöperating to improve it. The processes are folkways. The artifacts are tools and weapons which, by their utility, modify the folkways and become components in them. The skill, dexterity, patience, ingenuity, and power of combination which result are wider and higher possessions which also modify the folkways at later stages of effort. The generalizations of truth and right widen at every stage, and produce a theory of welfare, which must be recognized as such, no matter how rude it may be. It consists in the application of the notions of goblinism as they are prevalent at the time in the group. The art itself is built up by folkways according to their character as everywhere exhibited, for arts are modes of providing for human necessities by processes and devices which can be universally taught, and can be handed down forever. The arts of an isolated group run against limits, even if the group has great ingenuity, as we see in the case of China. It is when arts are developed by give and take between groups that they reach their highest development. The wider the area over which the coöperation and combination are active, the higher will be the achievements. "Every art is born out of the intelligence of its age."228 It has been mentioned above that Polynesians cannot use an ax. They want to set the blade transverse to the handle. The negroes of the Niger Protectorate are very clumsy at going up or down stairs. It is a dexterity, not to say an art, which they have had no chance to acquire. They also find it very difficult to understand or interpret a picture, even of the least conventional kind.229 The Seri of Tiburon Island have not the knife habit. They draw a knife towards the body instead of pushing it away.230 Hence we see that the lack of a habit, or lack of opportunity to see a dexterity practiced, constitutes a narrowing of the mental horizon.

133. Fire-making tools. Another art which would offer us parallel phenomena to that of stone working is that of fire making. It must have had several independent centers of origin. It [ 133] existed all over the globe. Its ultimate origin is unknown to us. It may have originated in different ways at different centers. The simplest instruments for making fire can be classified according to the mode of movement employed in them as drilling, plowing, and sawing instruments. The fire drills have also undergone very important development and improvement, so that they have become very complicated machines. The ingenuity and inventive skill which were required to make a fire drill which was driven by a bow were as great as the same powers when manifested by an Edison or a Bessemer.

134. Psychophysical traits of primitive men. All the artifacts were made and all the arts were produced by the concurrent efforts of men to serve their interests. We find that primitive men put patient effort and astonishing ingenuity into their tools. They also attained to great skill in the use of clumsy tools. It is true, in general, of primitive men that they shirk all prolonged effort or patient application, but they do use great patience and perseverance when they expect to accomplish something of great importance to their interests. The same is true if they expect to gratify their vanity. In hair dressing or tattooing they submit to very irksome restraint prolonged through a long time. Also in feather work, partly useful and partly ornamental, they assorted feathers piece by piece, and enlaced the feathers in the meshes of their hats and caps, or fastened them into scepters with pitch. They could make houses, etc., with their axes only by long-continued industry.231 South American Indians made tools for printing tattoo patterns on the body. They were blocks, on each face of which a pattern was raised, perhaps a different one on each side.232 It should be noticed what prodigious power a large body of men can put forth when they all work at the same task and are greatly interested in it. They begin by the same process, but the process differentiates and improves in their hands. Each gains skill and dexterity. They learn from each other, and the product is multiplied.

135. Language. Language is a product of the folkways which illustrates their operation in a number of most important details. [134] Language is a product of the need of coöperative understanding in all the work, and in connection with all the interests, of life. It is a societal phenomenon. It was necessary in war, the chase, and industry so soon as these interests were pursued coöperatively. Each group produced its own language which held that group together and sundered it from others.233 All are now agreed that, whatever may have been the origin of language, it owes its form and development to usage. "Men's usage makes language." "The maxim that 'usage is the rule of speech' is of supreme and uncontrolled validity in every part and parcel of every human tongue."234 "Language is only the imperfect means of men to find their bearings in the world of their memories; to make use of their memory, that is, their own experience and that of their ancestors, with all probability that this world of memory will be like the world of reality."235 The origin of language is one of those origins which must ever remain enveloped in mystery. "How can a child understand the combinations of sound and sense when it must know language in order to learn them? It must learn to speak without previously knowing how to speak, without any previous suspicion that the words of its mother mean more than the buzzing of a fly. The child learns to speak from an absolute beginning, just as, not the original man, but the original beast, learned to speak before any creature could speak."236 The beasts evidently did not learn to speak. They only learned to use the beast cries, by which they transmitted warnings, sex invitations, calls to united struggles, etc. The cries answered the purpose and went no further. Men, by virtue of the expanding power in them which enthused their zeal and their play, broke through the limitations of beast language, and went on to use the sounds of the human speech instrument for ever richer communications. Poetic power in blossom guides the development of a child's language as it guided that of the men who made the first languages.237 "The original languages must [135] be, in comparison with our languages, like the wildest love-passion compared with marital custom."238 Every word has a history of accidents which have befallen it, the beginnings of which are lost in the abyss of time.239 In the Middle Ages the word "Word" came to mean the Word of God with such distinctness that the romance languages adopted parabola, or derivatives from it, for "word."240 The students of linguistics recognize metaphor as another great mode of modifying the signification of words. By metaphor they mean the assembling of like things, and the selection and extirpation of unlike things.

136. Language and magic. Preuss offers an explanation of the origin of language which is interesting on account of its connection with the vast operation of magic: "Language owes its origin to the magic of tones and words. The difficulty of winning any notion about the beginnings of human speech lies in the fact that we cannot think of any cause which should give occasion for speech utterances. Such occasions are products of education, after language already existed. They are effects of language, not causes of it.... Language belongs, like play, dances, and fine arts, to the things which do not come on a direct line of development out of the instinctive satisfaction of life-needs and the other activities which create things of positive value, but it is the result of belief in magic, which prompted men to imitate noises made in labor, and other natural sounds, through a wide range, in order thereby to produce operations."241

137. Language is a case of mores. Whitney said that language is an institution. He meant that it is in the folkways, or in the mores, since welfare is connected with the folkways of language, albeit by some superstition. He adds: "In whatever aspect the general facts of language are viewed, they exhibit the same absence of reflection and intention."242 "No one ever set himself deliberately at work to invent or improve language,—or did so, at least, with any valuable and abiding result. The work is all accomplished by a continual satisfaction of the needs of the moment, by ever yielding to an impulse and [136] grasping a possibility, which the already acquired treasure of words and forms, and the habit of their use, suggest and put within reach."243 "Every single item of alteration, of whatever kind, and of whatever degree of importance, goes back to some individual or individuals who set it in circulation, from whose example it gained a wider and wider currency, until it finally won that general assent, which is alone required in order to make anything in language proper and authoritative."244 These statements might be applied to any of the folkways. The statements on page 46 of Whitney's book would serve to describe and define the mores. This shows to what an extent language is a case of the operation by which mores are produced. They are always devices to meet a need, which are imperceptibly modified and unconsciously handed down through the generations. The ways, like the language, are incorporeal things. They are borne by everybody and nobody, and are developed by everybody and nobody. Everybody has his little peculiarities of language. Each one has his peculiarities of accent or pronunciation and his pet words or phrases. Each one is suggesting all the time the use of the tricks of language which he has adopted. "Nothing less than the combined effort of a whole community, with all its classes and orders, in all its variety of characters, circumstances, and necessities, is capable of keeping in life a whole language."245 "Every vocable was to us [children] an arbitrary and conventional sign; arbitrary, because any one of a thousand other vocables could have been just as easily learned by us and associated with the same idea; conventional, because the one we acquired had its sole ground and sanction in the consenting use of the community of which we formed a part."246 "We do not, as children, make our language for ourselves. We get it by tradition, all complete. We think in sentences. As our language forms sentences, that is, as our mother-tongue thinks, so we learn to think. Our brain, our entire thought-status, forms itself by the mother-tongue, and we transmit the same to our children."247 Nature men have only petty coins of speech. They [137] can express nothing great. They cannot compare, analyze, and combine. They are overwhelmed by a flood of details, in which they cannot discern the ruling idea. The material and sensual constitute their limits. If they move they have to get a new language. The American languages are a soft mass which changes easily if tribes separate, or as time goes on, or if they move their habitat.248 Sometimes measures are adopted in order to make the language unintelligible, as the Bushmen insert a syllable in a word to that end.249 "The language of nature peoples offers a faithful picture of their mental status. All is in flux. Nothing is fixed or crystallized. No fundamental thoughts, ideas, or ideals are present. There is no regularity, logic, principles, ethics, or moral character. Lack of logic in thinking, lack of purpose in willing or acting, put the mind of a nature man on a plane with that of our children. Lack of memory, antilogic, paradox, fantasy in mental action, correspond to capriciousness, levity, irresponsibility, and the rule of emotions and passions in practical action."250 "Man's language developed because he could make, not merely passive and mechanical associative and reproductive combinations of notions, like a beast, but because he had active, free, and productive apperceptions, which appear in creative fantasy and logical reflection."251 "Man does not speak because he thinks. He speaks because the mouth and larynx communicate with the third frontal convolution of the brain. This material connection is the immediate cause of articulate speech."252 This is true in the sense that speech is not possible until the vocal organs are present, and are duly connected with the brain. "The specific cry, somewhat modified by the vocal resources of man, may have been sufficient for the humble vocabulary of the earliest ages, and there exists no gulf, no impassable barrier, between the language of birds, dogs, anthropoid apes, and human speech."253 "The warning or summoning cry, the germ of the demonstrative roots, is the parent of the names of number, sex, and distance; the emotional cry of which [138] our interjections are but the relics, in combination with the demonstratives, prepares the outlines of the sentence, and already represents the verb and the names of states or actions. Imitation, direct or symbolical, and necessarily only approximative to the sounds of external nature, i. e. onomatopœia, furnished the elements of the attributive roots, from which arose the names of objects, special verbs, and their derivatives. Analogy and metaphor complete the vocabulary, applying to the objects, discerned by touch, sight, smell, and taste, qualifying adjectives derived from onomatopœia. Reason, then coming into play, rejects the greater part of this unmanageable wealth, and adopts a certain number of sounds which have already been reduced to a vague and generic sense, and by derivation, combination, and affixes, which are the root sounds, produces those endless families of words, related to each other in every degree of kindred, from the closest to the most doubtful, which grammar finally ranges in the categories known as the parts of speech."254 "That metaphor makes language grow is evident. It brings about connection between place, time, and sound ideas."255

138. Primitive dialects. The cebus azarae, a monkey of Paraguay, makes six distinct sounds when excited, which causes its comrades to emit similar sounds.256 The island Caribs have two distinct vocabularies, one of which is used by men and by women when speaking to each other, and by men when repeating, in oratio obliqua, some saying of the women. Their councils of war are held in a secret jargon into which women are never initiated.257 The men and women have separate languages, a custom which is noted also amongst the Guycurus and other peoples of Brazil.258 Amongst the Arawaks the difference between the languages of the sexes is not in regard to the use of words only, but also in regard to their inflection.259 The two languages are sometimes differentiated by a constant change, e.g. where in the man's language two vowels come together the woman's language [139] intercalates a k.260 The Arawaks have words which only men may speak, and others which only women may speak.261 Dialectical variations are illustrated for us by facts which come under observation and report. Christian262 mentions an American negro castaway, who settled on Raven's Island with a native wife and children and a few relatives and servants. In forty years they had produced "a new and peculiar dialect of their own, broadening the softer vowels and substituting th or f for the original t sound in the parent ponapeian." Martius mentions that native boatmen in Brazil, who had grown up together, had each some little peculiarity of pronunciation. Such a difference would produce a dialect in case of isolation. On the other hand, the ecclesiastics adopted the Tupi language and made it a general language for the province of Gram Para, so that it was used in the pulpit until 1757 and is now necessary for intercourse in the interior.263 The Gauchos of central Uruguay speak Spanish with harsh rough accents. They change y and ll into the French j.264 Whitney and Waitz thought that all American languages proceeded from a single original one. Powell thought that they were "many languages, belonging to distinct families, which have no apparent unity of origin."265 Evidence is adduced, however, that "the same aboriginal peoples who named the waters of North America coined also the prehistoric geographical titles in South America."266 The Finns and Samoyeds are, from the standpoint of language, practically the same race. The two tongues present the highest development of the agglutinative process of the Ural-Altaic languages.267

139. Taking up and dropping languages. The way in which languages are taken up or dropped is also perplexing. Keane268 gives a list of peoples who have dropped one language and taken up another; he also gives a list of those who have changed physical type but have retained the same language. Holub269 mentions the Makololo, who have almost entirely disappeared, but [140] their language has passed to their conquerors. It became necessary to the latter from the spread of their dominion and from their closer intercourse with the peoples south of the Zambesi, on account of which, "without any intentional interference by the rulers, a common and easily understood language showed itself indispensable." Almost every village in New Guinea has its own language, and it is said that in New Britain people who live thirty miles apart cannot understand each other.270

140. Pigeon dialects. The Germans find themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with aborigines because they have no dialect like pigeon English or the Coast Malay used by the Dutch.271 Many examples are given, from the Baltic region, of peasant dialects made in sport by subjecting all words to the same modification.272 Our own children often do this to English in order to make a secret language.

141. How languages grow. What we see in these cases is that, if we suppose men to have joined in coöperative effort with only the sounds used by apes and monkeys, the requirement of their interests would push them on to develop languages such as we now know. The isolating, agglutinative, incorporative, and inflectional languages can be put in a series according to the convenience and correctness of the logical processes which they embody and teach. The Semitic languages evidently teach a logic different from that of the Indo-European. It is a different way of thinking which is inculcated in each great family of languages. They represent stages in the evolution of thought or ways of thinking. The instance is one of those which best show us how folkways are built up and how they are pulled down. The agglutination of words and forms sometimes seems like a steady building process; again, the process will not go forward at all. "In the agglutinative languages speech is berry jam. In the inflectional languages each word is like a soldier in his place with his outfit."273 The "gooing" of a baby is a case of the poetic power in its blossoming exuberance. The accidental errors of pronunciation which are due to very slight individual variations in the form of the [141] vocal organs are cases of individual contribution to the development of language. The baby words and individual mispronunciations which are taken up by a family and its friends, but never get further, show us how dialects grow. There are changes in language which are, "in their inception, inaccuracies of speech. They attest the influence of that immense numerical majority among the speakers of English who do not take sufficient pains to speak correctly, but whose blunders become finally the norm of the language."274 In analogy things which are alike are embraced in a single term; in metaphor two or more things which seem alike, but may not be so, are grouped together and are embraced in a single term. All these modes of change in language attest the work of individuals on language. Sometimes there is extension of influence to a group. Sometimes the influence is only temporary and is rejected again. Sometimes it falls in with a drift of taste or habit, when it is taken up and colors the pronunciation or usage of the population of a great district, and becomes fixed in the language. All this is true also on the negative side, since usage of words, accent, timbre of the voice, and pronunciation (drawling, nasal tones) expel older usages. Language therefore illustrates well all the great changes of folkways under the heads of coöperation and antagonism. We have an excellent chance to study the operation in the case of slang. A people who are prosperous and happy, optimistic and progressive, will produce much slang. It is a case of play. They amuse themselves with the language. We may think the new words and phrases vulgar and in bad taste, or senseless and ridiculous. We may reject them, but the masses will decide whether they shall be permanently rejected or not. The vote is informal. The most confirmed purist will by and by utter a new slang word when he needs it. One's objections are broken down. One's taste is spoiled by what he hears. We are right in the midst of the operation of making folkways and can perceive it close at hand.

142. Money. Money is another primitive device which is produced in the folkways. Money was not called into existence [ 142] by any need universally experienced and which all tried to satisfy as well as they could. It was produced by developing other devices, due to other motives, until money was reached as a result. Property can be traced to portable objects which were amulets, trophies, and ornaments all at once. These could be accumulated, and if they were thought to be the abodes of powerful spirits, they were gifts which were eagerly sought, or valuable objects for exchange. They led to hoarding (since the owner did not like to part with them), and they served as marks of personal distinction.275 The interplay of vanity and religion with the love of property demands attention. Religion also caused the aborigines of the northwest provinces of South America to go to the rivers for gold only in sufficient amount to buy what they needed. Any surplus they returned to the stream. "They say that if they borrow more than they really need the river-god will not lend them any more."276 In later times and higher civilization coins have been used as amulets to ward off or to cure disease.277 The Greenland Eskimo laughed when they were offered gold and silver coins. They wanted objects of steel, for which they would give anything which they had and which was desired.278 The Tarahumari of Sonora do not care for silver money. Their Crœsus raises three hundred or four hundred bushels of corn per annum. The largest herd of cattle contains thirty or forty head. They generally prefer cotton cloth to dollars.279 "A Dyak has no conception of the use of a circulating medium. He may be seen wandering in the Bazaar with a ball of bee's wax in his hand for days together, because he cannot find anybody willing to take it for the exact article which he requires."280 We meet with a case in which people have gold but live on a system of barter. It is a people in Laos, north of Siam. They weigh gold alone in scales against seeds of grain.281 In the British [143] Museum (Case F, Ireland) may be seen bronze rings, to be sewn on garments as armor or to be used as money, or both. The people along the west coast of Hindostan, from the Persian Gulf to Ceylon, used as money the fishhook which was their most important tool. It became degraded into a piece of doubled wire of silver or bronze. If the degradation had gone on, doubtless it would have resulted in a lump of metal, just as the Siamese silver coins are the result of doubling up silver rings.282 The play of custom and convention is well shown by the use of the Macedonian coins in England. The coins of Philip bore on the obverse a head with a wreath, and on the reverse a chariot driver drawn by two horses. In Britain this coin became a sign of value and lost its reference to the sovereign. It is possible to show the order of the reigns of the kings by the successive omissions of parts of the figures, until only the wreath was left and four perpendicular strokes and two circles for the legs of one horse and two chariot wheels. Each change was a mark of value and then it was further changed to save trouble.283 On the Palau Islands there were seven grades of money, determined by the size. Only three or four pieces exist of the first grade. The second grade is of jasper. The third consists of agate cylinders. These three grades are used only by nobles. They have the same rank as gems amongst us. The people think of the money as coming from an island where it lives a divine life, the lower ranks serving the upper. They have myths of the coming of the money to Palau.284 These examples show to what a great extent other ideas than those of value come into play in money.

143. Intergroup and intragroup money. When money is used to overcome the difficulties of barter two cases are to be distinguished,—the intergroup and the intragroup uses, which are primarily distinguished by a space relation. The intragroup use is here, in the we-group, close at hand. The intergroup use is between our group and some out-group. It will be found that all money problems include these two cases. "At least we shall [ 144] find that the current commonplace of the economists about the succession of natural economy, money economy, and credit economy, is not even remotely apt to the real problems."285 What is true is that, on a money economy, it is found that there is, or may be, a constant exchange of money for goods and goods for money, from which gain or loss may result; and furthermore that the risk (aleatory element) in this exchange is intensified, if time is allowed to intervene. Inside the we-group the first need for money is for fees, fines, amercements, and bride price. In Melanesia pigs are not called money and there is shell, feather, and mat money, but pigs are paid for fines, penalties, contributions to feasts, fees in the secret society, pay for wives, and in other societal relations. What is needed is a mobile form of wealth, with which social dues can be paid. This is the function of money which the paper-money projectors have in mind when they propose to issue paper which the state shall take for taxes. It is evident that it is to be distinguished from the economic function of money as a circulating medium. The intragroup money needs to be especially a measure and store of value, while the intergroup money needs to be a medium of exchange. In the former case barter is easy; in the latter case it is regular. In the former case a multiple standard is available; in the latter case what is needed to discharge balances is a commodity of universal demand. When credit is introduced its sphere is intragroup. The debtors would like the money to be what every one can get. The creditors would like it to be what every one wants.

144. Various predominant wares. In the northeastern horn of Africa the units of value which are used as money are salt, metal, skins, cotton, glass, tobacco, wax, coffee beans, and korarima. Cattle and slaves are also used as units of value from time to time amongst the Oromo. Salt is used as money in prismatic pieces, twenty-two centimeters long and three centimeters to five millimeters broad at the bottom, which weigh from seven hundred and f [145] ifty grams to one and one half kilograms each. It is carried in bundles of twenty to thirty pieces, wound in leaves.286 The Galla use rods of iron six to twelve centimeters long, somewhat thicker in the middle, well available for lance ends, one hundred and thirty of which are worth one thaler in Schoa; also pieces of copper, tin, and zinc; calf-skins; black, printed, and unprinted cotton cloth; pieces of cloth; coarse red cotton yarn (for knitting); and strings of beads. The universal and intergroup money is the Maria Theresa thaler weighing 571.5 to 576 English grains.287 Cameron mentions the exchange of intergroup money for intragroup money at a fair at Kawile, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. At the opening of the fair the money changers gave out the local money of bugle beads, which they took in again when the fair closed.288 On the French Congo the boatmen were paid with paper bons, which were superseded by metal ones in 1887. When the recipient takes his bon to the station he obtains at first a number of nails, beads, or other articles for it, which he can then exchange for what he wants. Tokens of copper are issued at Franceville, stamped "F," of different shapes and sizes, but always of the same shape and size for the same value in French money.289 At Grand Bassam in West Africa the manilla (bracelet) serves as money. For six months the natives give oil for these bracelets of metal mixed of copper, lead, zinc, antimony, and iron, which can be closed around the arm or leg of a slave by a blow of the hammer. Then for six months they exchange the bracelets for the European goods which they want.290 These bracelets were a store of wealth for the black men.291 The Kru have few cattle, which pass from one to another in bride purchases, since these can be made with nothing else. It is impossible to have wives and cattle too until one's daughters grow up.292 Since the seventeenth century cylindrical (bugle) green-blue beads have been money on the ivory and gold coasts. They [146] come from an ancient cemetery on the Bokabo Mountains and are of Egyptian origin. They were buried with the dead.293 A local money of stone is reported also from Avetime in Ehveland. It is said to have been used as ornament. Pieces of quartz and sandstone, rudely square but with broken corners, from four to five centimeters in diameter and one and a half to two centimeters thick, rubbed down by friction, have been found.294

145. Intragroup money from property; intergroup money from trade. These cases already show us the distinction between intragroup money and intergroup money. The effect of trade is to develop one or more predominant wares. In the intragroup exchanges this is an object of high desire to individuals for use. It may be an amulet ornament, or a thing of great use in the struggle for existence, e.g. cattle, or a thing of universal acceptance by which anything can be obtained. In intergroup trade it is the chief object of export, the thing for which the trade is carried on, e.g. salt, metal, fur. If this commodity is not easily divisible, the money is something which can be given "to boot," e.g. tobacco, sugar, opium, tea, betel.295 That is money which will "pass." This does not mean that which can be forced to pass ("legal tender"), but that which will go without force. Amulet ornaments may be either a whim which does not take, or fashion may seize upon something of this kind and make it a tribe mark. Then it becomes group money, because it is universally desired. The articles admit of accumulation, and ostentation is a new joy; they also admit of change and variety. They are available for gifts to the medicine man (to satisfy ghosts, get rain, or thwart disease). They may be used to buy a wife, or to buy a step in the secret society of the men, or to pay a fine or penalty to the chief. The differentiation of goods starts emotion on the line of least resistance, and the predominant goods are the ones of widest demand. Often the predominant ware has a gain from taboo, probably on account of relation to the dead.296 A thing [147] which is rare and hard to get may become intragroup money. In Fiji the teeth of the spermaceti whale are taken as a measure of value and sign of peace. In German New Guinea the bent tusks of a boar are used as money. In California red birds' heads are used in the same way. Trophy skulls of birds and beasts become a store of wealth, and money with which trade can be carried on with neighbors.297 The first step seems to be to use the predominant article as the third term of reference in barter. Intergroup money is really a ware and so remains, as gold is now; but groups widen as communication improves, and group money gets a very wide range. In intergroup affairs, therefore, the relations sooner become impersonal and mechanical. The things which are best for this purpose become mobile. Some are better as stores of value, others as means of power, others as measures of value. The last are on the way to become money. The others are more like gems. Thus group money arose from property; intergroup money from trade.

146. Shell and beads. Shells had very great convenience for money and their value was increased by the fact that ghosts dwelt in them. Cowries were early used as money, 2200 of them equaling in value one franc.298 They are now losing currency. On Fernando Po bits of achatectonia shells are made into belts and used as currency.299 A far less widespread shell of a sea snail was used in northern Transvaal.300 Other cases of the use of shells will be given below. A dress pattern of cotton cloth, seven ells, called a "tobe," is a unit of monetary reference through the Sudan.301 Another money in the same region is the iron spade, with which tribute is paid to the petty rulers of eastern Equatoria. The spades are made of native iron and are used upon occasion to cut down the grass.302 Expeditions into the Niam Niam territories always have a smith with them whose duty it is to make rings of copper and iron wire, with a square section, for minor purchases.303 The currency of beads has greatly lessened wherever more useful objects of European manufacture have become known.304 Forms of the lance head are used to buy a [148] wife, who costs twenty or thirty of them.305 Further south von Götzen found brass wire, in pieces fifteen to thirty-five centimeters long, in use as money, not being an article of use, but a real money used to store value, to buy what is wanted, and to pay taxes for protection against one's forest neighbors.306 Formerly, when beads were still used as money, each district had its own preferred size, shape, and color. Travelers found that the fashion in a district had changed since the information was obtained, relying on which they had provided themselves. This is, however, evidently a part of the operation of differentiating the predominant ware.307

147. Token money. Token money demands treatment by itself, as a special development of the money-producing movement. If different groups adopt different kinds of amulet ornaments as money, such intragroup money may be token money. If one such group conquers another, the conquerors may throw the money of the conquered out of use (whites and Indians as to wampum). In Burma Chinese gambling counters are used as money.308 Guttapercha tokens issued by street-car companies in South America are said to be used in the same way. Postage stamps, milk tickets, etc., have been so used by us. In Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century, pieces of paper were circulated which had no redemption whatever. They bore the names of coins of silver which did not exist, but which had a definition in a certain amount of silver of a certain fineness. At Carthage pieces of leather which inclosed an unknown object, probably one of the holy moneys, were circulated.309 The same is reported of bits of leather cut, like samples, from a skin and circulated in place of it. The device succeeded for the in-group money, but it led to the attempt to put copper tokens in the place of silver coins, which resulted in disaster.310 The cacao beans of Mexico were wares, if of good quality. Larger ones of poorer quality were money. A part of the value was imaginary. Cloth was formerly money in Bohemia. A loosely woven variety of cloth was used for this purpose, the cloth utilities as a textile fabric and as money being separated. On the west coast of Africa little mats were used as money. They were stamped by the Portuguese government. Mat [149] money was also used on the New Hebrides, especially to buy grades in the great secret society. The mats are long and narrow and are more esteemed when they are old and black from the smoke of the huts. They are kept in little houses where they are smoked. "When they hang with soot they are particularly valued."311 Useless broken rice is used as money in Burma and elsewhere in the East.312 The use of token money, in which a part of the value is imaginary, always implies the inclosure of a group and the exclusion of foreign trade. Then, within the group, the value may be said to be real and not imaginary. It depends on the monopoly law of value and varies with the quantity but not proportionately to the quantity. Kublai-Khan, using a Chinese device, got possession of all the gold and silver and issued paper. His empire was so great that all trade was intragroup trade, and his power made his paper money pass.313 The Andamanese made inferior pots to be used as a medium in barter.314 They have very little trade; are on a stage of mutual gift making.315 Token money is an aberration of the folkways, due to misapprehension of the peculiarity of group money. At the same time it has been used with advantage for subsidiary silver coinage.

148. Selection of a predominant ware. Crawfurd, in his history of the Indian Archipelago, mentions a number of different articles used there as money,—cakes of beeswax, salt, gold dust, cattle, and tin.316 The tin coins are small irregular laminæ with a hole in the center, 5600 of them being worth a dollar. Brass coins which come down from the Buddhist sovereigns of Java are still met with; also other brass coins introduced by the Mohammedan sovereigns. In the museum at Vienna copper rings, bound into a circle, inclosed in a fibrous envelope, are another form of money. The selection of a predominant ware is shown in such cases as the one described in Ling Roth.317 When Low was at Kiau, in 1851, beads and brass wire were wanted. When others were there some years later the people all had their hearts set on brass wire. The Englishmen "distributed a good deal of cloth, at reasonable rates, in exchange for food and services rendered." In 1858 they found that even brass wire, unless of very great size, was despised, and cloth was eagerly desired.

[150] One thing which helped the selection of a predominant ware was that only a specified article would make peace, atone for a wrong, compose a quarrel, or ransom a captive. Also various articles obtained such prestige, on account of age and the glory of ancestors, that the possession of them conferred authority and social importance on their owners. Such are porcelain jars in Borneo, bronze drums in Burma, bronze cannon in the East-Indian Archipelago. Many African chiefs stored up ivory tusks for social prestige long before the white men came and gave them value in world commerce.318

149. Stone money in Melanesia. We must, however, turn our attention to Melanesia where the shell and stone money have been pushed to a most remarkable development, quite out of line with the rest of the Melanesian civilization. On the Solomon Islands there are some petty reef communities which occupy themselves solely with fishing and making shell-bead money.319 On New Britain divarra is made by boring and stringing fathoms of shell money. A fathom is worth two shillings sterling, and two hundred and fifty fathoms coiled up together looks like a life buoy.320 In the northwestern Solomon Islands the currency consists of beasts' teeth of two kinds,—those of a kind of flying dog and of a kind of dolphin. Each tooth is bored at the root and they are strung on thin cords. These people also use the small disks of shell, five millimeters in diameter and from one to one and a half millimeters thick.321 The shell money of New Britain has very great influence on the lives of the people. It minimizes the evil and fatality of war, in which every life and every wound must be paid for. It establishes the right of property. It makes the people frugal and industrious, and makes them a commercial people. To it may also be attributed their selfishness and ingratitude. "Its influence is supposed to extend even to the next life. There is not a custom connected with life or death in which this money does not play a great and leading part.... Take away their money and their secret societies sink at once into nothing, and most of their customs become nothing."322 Evidently the missionary testifies that the money stimulates commercialism with all its good and ill. Coils of feathers which are spoken of as money are also reported from the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz. Feathers are attached with resin to the outside of coils, inside of which are charms, each possessing a protective property. This money is very rare and, if shown, may be handled only by the owner.323 Our information as to the commercial uses and effects of these island shell moneys is very imperfect. The money seems to be still on the stage of gems. It is used to buy steps of rank in the secret society, which cost pigs and money and mark social importance, which is, like [151] other forms of force, regarded as supernatural. Rank can be gained only by the consent of those who already have it.324

150. Plutocratic effects of money. It must not be understood that the money, on the barbaric stage, enters into the struggle for existence, at least for food. There is only slight organization of labor. Each one produces what he needs. There is little luxury. "Nevertheless, money plays the chief rôle in the life of the people. The man, regarded as an animal, has enough to do to support life. If he wants a wife, wants to found a family, wants to be a member of the state, he must have money."325 It is evident that the circulation of this money must produce phenomena which are unfamiliar to us.

The estimate placed by the Solomon Islanders on great stones of aragonite, obtained in the southern Palau islands, is such that they incur great risks in going to get them in their frail boats.326 The pieces have the appearance of our own grindstones. They are set in rows by the men's clubhouses, and are in care of the chiefs. Christian mentions two of the Big Houses on Yap with stone money piled against the foundations. One piece was twelve feet in diameter and one and a half feet thick, and had a hole in the center two and a half feet in diameter.327 A certain Captain O'Keefe, in 1882, fitted out a Chinese vessel and brought thousands of pieces of money from Palau to Yap. He brought the whole island in debt to himself. Nowadays they want big stones. Such six feet in diameter are not rare. This kind of money is the money of the men; that of the women is of mussel shells strung on strings. The exchange of a big piece for smaller kinds of money involves considerations of rank. Two of equal rank, and well disposed, exchange by dignity; if one is inferior, the good will of the other is requisite. The glass and porcelain money on Yap must have come from China or Japan. It has controlled the social development of the islands. It is also noticeable that other things of high utility, e.g. the wooden vessels in which yellow powder is prepared, or in which food is set forth at feasts, are made the objects of exchange, and, at the making of peace after a fight, or at other negotiations, affect the relations of tribes.328 At the present time bags of dried cocoanut are employed as a medium of exchange, probably in intergroup trade.329 What Kubary330 says about the use of the money shows that it has no proper circulation. It accumulates in the [152] hands of the great men, since it is used to pay fees, fines, gifts, tribute, etc. The armengol women, marriages, and public festivals start it out again, and on its way back it performs many social services. It is also reasonable to suppose that, having got a footing on these islands, it spread to others by social contagion. This explains the presence of a general medium of exchange amongst people who are otherwise barely out of the stone age.331 The tales about the crimes which have been connected with the history of great pieces of the aragonite stone332 remind us of the stories about the greatest diamonds yet found.

151. Money in northwestern North America. In South America nothing served the purposes of money. There was none in Peru. Metal, if they had any, was used by all for ornament.333 Martius, however, says of the Mauhes that they used seeds of paullinia sorbilis as money. They obtained from the seeds a remedy for skin disease and diarrhœa.334 The Nishinam of California had two kinds of shell money, ullo and hawok. The former consists of pieces, one or two inches long and one third of that in width, strung on a fiber. The pieces of shell take a high polish and make a fine necklace. The hawok is small money by comparison. A string of the large kind was worth ten dollars. It consisted of ten pieces. A string of one hundred and seventy-seven pieces of the small kind sold for seven dollars. In early days every Indian in California had, on an average, one hundred dollars' worth of the shell money, the value of two women (although they did not buy wives) or three average ponies.335 The Hupa of California will not sell to an American the flakes of jasper or obsidian which they parade at their dances. They are not knives, but jewelry and money amongst themselves. Nearly every man has ten lines tattooed across the inside of his left arm. A string of five shells is the standard unit. It is drawn over the left thumb nail. If it reaches the uppermost tattooed line it is worth five dollars per shell.336 They also grind down pieces of stone which looks like meershaum into cylinders one to three inches long, which they wear as jewelry and use as money.337 The Eskimo of Alaska used skins as money. Here the effect of intergroup trade has been to change the skin which was taken as the unit. It is now the beaver. Other skins are rated as multiples or submultiples of this.338 In Washington Territory dentalium and abelone shells were the money, also slaves, skins, and blankets, until the closer contact with whites produced changes.339 The Karok use as money the red scalps of woodpeckers which are rated at from $2.50 to $5.00 each, and also dentalium shells of which they grind off the tip. The shortest pieces are worth twenty-five cents, the longest about two dollars. The strings are generally about the [153] length of a man's arm. They were worth forty or fifty dollars a string, but have fallen in value, especially amongst the young.340 The copper plates which are so highly valued on the northwestern coast may be esteemed holy on account of the ring in them. Slaves are killed and their flesh is used as bait in catching the dentalium snails, perhaps in order to get a mystic idea into the shells of the snails.341

152. Wampumpeag and roanoke. On the Atlantic coast shell money was made on Long Island Sound and at Narragansett from the shell of the round clam, in two colors, white and purple, the latter from the dark spot in the shell. These were bugles, the hole running in the thickness of the shell. They were called wampumpeag, were sewed on deer or other fine skins, and the belts thus made were used to emphasize points in negotiation or in treaties, or in speeches. Farther down the coast beads were made like flat button molds, with holes bored through them perpendicularly to the plane of the shell, and called roanoke. These beads, of both kinds, but especially of the former kind, spread by exchange into the Mississippi Valley, and in the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached the upper waters of the Missouri River.

153. Ring money; use of metal. The standpoint of the Vedic hymns is that the cow is the real measure of value, but metal, especially gold, is used for money in the payment of penalties and weregild. The objects at stake in formulæ of oaths and of duels were estimated in gold.342 There was therefore a pure gold currency. In ancient India, however, silver and copper were also used and locally some coins of lead and mixed metals occurred. In value one of gold equaled ten of silver, and one of silver forty of copper.343 The most ancient money of China consisted of shells,344 also of knives and dress patterns of silk.345 The knives had rings at the end of the handle and were gradually reduced to rings of metal as money.346 The same ancient king who established measures of length and capacity is the legendary author of money (2697 B.C.). He fixed the five objects of exchange,—beads, jade, gold, knives, textiles. The sign for money was combined of the signs for "shell" and "to exchange."347 We hear that the Chinese emperor, 119 B.C., gave to his vassals squares of white deerskin, about one foot on a side, embroidered on the hem. He who had one of these could get an audience of the emperor.348 We are inclined to connect with that usage the use of a scarf of bluish-white silk in central Asia, which was used in all greetings and ceremonies. A certain quality of this scarf was used in places as the unit of value.349 Przewalsky mentions the chadak [154] which is given to every guest in southern Mongolia, for which another must be given in return. In Chalcha chadaks are used as money, not as gifts.350 An intragroup money of copper or brass rings is also reported from Korintji on Sumatra. They are cast of three sizes, so that one hundred and twenty, three hundred and sixty, and four hundred and eighty are required to equal a Dutch gulden.351 In the Old Testament the bride price and penalties were to be paid in money.352 Gifts and fees to the sanctuary were to be paid in kind.353 If the sacrificer wished to redeem his animal, etc., he must pay twenty per cent more than the priest's assessment of it.354 Until the Exile the precious metals were paid by weight.355 The rings represented on the Egyptian monuments were of wire with a round section. Those found by Schliemann at Mykenæ are similar, or they are spirals of wire.356 In Homer cattle are the unit of value, but metals are used as media. The talent is mentioned only in reference to gold.357 Possibly Schurz is right in supposing that fluctuations in the value of cattle and sheep forced the classical nations to use metal.358 The metals were in the shape of caldrons or tripods, in which fines were imposed. They may have been accumulated because used as money, or a great man who had many clients may have needed many for meals.359 "The transition from the old simple mode of exchange to the use of currency can nowhere be better traced than amongst the Romans." Fines were set in cattle or sheep, but copper was used as well, weighed when sold. Then the state set the shape and fineness of the bars and stamped them with the mark of a sheep or ox. Later the copper was marked to indicate its value, and so money was reached.360 Amongst Germans and Scandinavians the cow was the primitive unit of value.361 It was superseded by metals used in rings to make out the fractions.362

154. The evolution of money. It is evident that money was developed out of trade by instinctive operations of interest, and that money existed long before the idea of it was formed. The separate operations were stimulated only by the most immediate [155] and superficial desires, but they set supply and demand in motion and produced economic value thousands of years before any man conceived of value. The rational analysis of value and money is not yet satisfactorily made. There are, therefore, points of view in which money is the most marvelous product of the folkways. The unconsciousness of the operation and the secondary results of it are here in the strongest contrast. Inside of the we-group useful property was shared or exchanged in an infinite variety of ways, according to variations of circumstances. We cannot follow the customs which thence arose, because the phenomena have been reported to us without distinction between intragroup and intergroup transactions. We see groups of predominant wares set out in intergroup trade, and only slowly is a smaller number segregated to be the general terms of every trade. The inconvenience of barter was only slowly felt, and could not have been a motive until trade was customary and familiar. In intragroup exchanges the predominant ware was more easily differentiated. It was the thing greatly desired. Here the amulet-trophy-ornament was important for the elements of superstition, vanity, and magic which it bore. In intergroup trade the utility of the object predominated. It was sought in journeys only for its utility, and in that trade the transactions first became impersonal. In the selection of leading wares individuals could not experiment for their own risk. By taking what each wanted at a time selection at last resulted, and when we are told that a certain group uses this or that group of articles for money, we are told only what articles predominate in their desires or transactions; in other words, what stage in the selection of a money they have reached. It is evident that this entire operation was an impersonal and unregulated play of custom, which went through a long and varying evolution, but kept its authority all the time and at every stage. The persistence of the word "shilling" in our language is a striking proof of the power of custom—above all, popular custom—in connection with [156] money. The metric system was invented to be a rational system, but the populace has insisted on dividing kilograms and liters into halves and quarters. Language, money, and weights and measures are things which show the power of popular custom more than any others. The selection of predominant wares reached its acme in the selection of one, not necessarily the commodity most desired, but, after the function of money is perceived, the one which performs it best. To return and take up a greater number is to go backward on the path of civilization.

155. The ethical functions of money. From shells to gold the ethics of social relations has clung to money. There is more pure plutocracy in Melanesia than in New York. The differentiation of men by wealth is greatly aided by money, because money adds immensely to the mobility of wealth and lets all forces reach their full effect in transactions. The social effect of debt is best seen in barbarous societies which have money. Debt and war together made slavery.363 It is, however, an entire mistake to regard a money-system as in itself a mischief-working system. The effect of money is exhausted when we notice that it makes wealth mobile and lets forces work out their full result by removing friction. So soon as there is a money there is a chance for exchanges of money for goods and goods for money, also for the loan and repayment of money at different times, under which transactions interests may change and speculation can arise. These facts have always interested the ethical philosophers. "Naught hath grown current amongst mankind so mischievous as money. This brings cities to their fall. This drives men homeless, and moves honest minds to base contrivings. This hath taught mankind the use of villainies, and how to give an impious turn to every kind of act."364 In such diatribes "money" stands for wealth in general. Money, properly speaking, has no more character than axes of stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves [157] any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and "are fully the equal of white men in cheating."365 They do it with shell money as whites do it with gold, silver, and banknotes. That is to say, the "money" is indifferent because it has no ethical function at all and absolutely no character.

156. There are other topics which might be brought under the struggle for existence as a cluster of folkways, with great advantage. The struggle for existence takes on many different forms and produces phenomena which are cases of folkways. It speedily develops industrial organization, which, in one point of view, is only the interaction of folkways. Weights and measures, the measurement of time, the communication of intelligence, and trade are primary folkways in their earliest forms and deserve careful study as such.

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CHAPTER IV. LABOR, WEALTH↩

Introduction.—Notions of labor.—Classical and mediæval notions.—Labor has always existed.—Modern view of labor.—Movable capital in modern society; conditions of equality; present temporary status of the demand for men.—Effect of the facility of winning wealth.—Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change.—Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate.—The French revolution.—Ruling classes; special privileges; corruption of the mores.—The standard of living.

157. The topics treated in Chapter III—tools, language, and money—belong almost entirely in the folkways. The element of esteem for tools is sometimes very great. They are made divine and receive worship. Nevertheless, there is little reflection stimulated to produce a sense of their importance to welfare. Therefore the moral element pertaining to the mores is not prominent in them. When the moral element exists at all in regard to tools, language, or money, it is independent and rises to the conception of prosperity, its sense and conditions. There are notions at all stages of civilization about productive labor and wealth, as parts of the fate of man on earth and of the conditions of his happiness and welfare. At this point they take the character of a philosophy, and are turned back on the work, as regulative notions of how, and how much, to work. The mores of the struggle for existence are in those notions. From the time when men had any accumulated wealth they seem to have been struck by its effect on the character of the possessor. The creature seemed to be stronger than the creator. Here ethical reflections began. They have been more actively produced since it has been possible for men to acquire wealth in a lifetime by their own efforts. Envy has been awakened, and has been [159] gratified by theoretical discussions of the power, rights, and duties of wealth. When wealth was due to the possession of land or to the possession of rank and political power, the facts about its distribution seemed to be like the differences in health, strength, beauty, etc. It now appears that the ethics of poverty are as well worth studying as those of wealth, and that, in short, every man's case brings its own ethics, or that there are no ethics at all in the matter. The ideas, however, which are current in the society at the time are conditions for the individual, and they are a part of the mores of the environment in which the struggle for existence must be carried on.

158. Notions of labor. Nature peoples generally regard productive labor as the business of women, unworthy of men. The Jews believed in a God who worked six days and rested on the seventh. He differed from the Olympian gods of Greece, who were revelers, and from Buddha who tried to do nothing, or from Brahma who was only Thought. The Sabbath of rest implied other days of labor. In the book of Proverbs idleness is denounced as the cause of poverty and want.366 Many passages are cited from the rabbinical literature in honor of productive labor and in disapproval of idleness.367 In Book II, Chapter 62, of the Apostolic Constitutions, the basis of which is a Jewish work, it is taught that gainful occupations should be incidental and that the worship of God should be the main work of life. Hellenic shows and theaters are to be avoided. To this the Christian editor added heathen shows and sports of any kind. Young men ought to work to earn their own support. The Zoroastrian religion was a developed form of the strife between good forces and evil forces. The good men must enlist on the side of the good forces. This religion especially approved all the economic virtues, and productive efforts, like the clearing of waste land, or other labor to increase favorable conditions and to overcome harmful or obstructive influences, were religious, and were counted as help to the good forces.

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159. Classical and mediæval notions of labor. The Greeks and Romans regarded all labor for gain as degrading. The Greeks seem to have reached this opinion through a great esteem for intellectual pursuits, which they thought means of cultivation. The gainful occupations, or any occupations pursued for gain, were "banausic," which meant that they had an effect opposite to that of cultivation. The Romans seem to have adopted the Greek view, but they were prepared for it by militarism. The Middle Ages got the notion of labor from the Roman tradition. They mixed this with the biblical view. Labor was a necessity, as a consequence and penalty of sin, and directly connected, as a curse, with the "Fall." It was correlative to a curse on the ground, by which, also as a curse for sin, it was made hard to win subsistence by agriculture. The mediæval philosophers, being clerics, held a life of contemplation to be far superior to one of labor or fighting. Labor was at best an evil necessity, a hardship, a symptom of the case of man, alienated from God and toiling to get back, if there was a way to get back, to the kingdom of God. The church offered a way to get back, namely, by sacraments, devotion, ritual, etc., that is, by a technically religious life, which could be lived successfully only if practiced exclusively. It occupied all the time of the "religious," technically so called. Labor was used for penance and for ascetic purposes. Often it was employed for useful results and with beneficial effect on useful arts. The purpose, however, was to ward off the vices of leisure. The ascetic temper and taste made labor sweet, so long as asceticism ruled the mores of the age.368 Labor for economic production was not appreciated by the church. The production of wealth was not a religious purpose. It was even discouraged, since disapproval of wealth and luxury was one of the deep controlling principles of mediæval Christianity. The unreality of mediæval world philosophy appeared most distinctly in the views of marriage and labor, the two chief interests of everyday life. Marriage was a concession, a compromise with human weakness. There was something better, viz. celibacy. Labor was a base necessity. Contemplation was better.

[161] 160. Labor has always existed. Wealth became possible. Land. In all these cases the view of labor was dogmatic. It was enjoined by religion. There was some sense and truth in each view, but each was incomplete. The pursuit of gainful effort is as old as the existence of man on earth. The development of trade and transportation, slavery, political security, and the invention of money and credit are steps in it which have made possible large operations, great gains, and wealth. Some men have seized these chances and have made a powerful class. Rulers, chiefs, and medicine men have observed this power which might either enhance or supplant their own, and have sought to win it. In all primitive agricultural societies land is the only possession which can yield a large annual revenue for comfort and power. The mediæval people of all classes got as much of it as they could. It would be very difficult indeed to mention any time when there were no rich men, and still harder to mention a time when the power of wealth was not admired and envied, and given its sway (sec. 150). Thus the religions and philosophies may have preached various doctrines about wealth, and may have found obedience, but the production of wealth, the love of wealth, and the power of wealth have run through all human history. The religions and philosophies have not lacked their effect, but they have always had to compromise with facts, just as we see them do to-day. The compromise has been in the mores. In so far as it was imperfect and only partly effected there have been contradictions in the mores. Such was the case in the Middle Ages. Wealth had great power. It at last won the day. In the fifteenth century all wanted it, and were ready to do anything to get it. Venality became the leading trait of the mores of the age. It affected the interpretation of the traditional doctrines of labor, wealth, the highest good, and of virtue, so that men of high purpose and honest hearts were carried away while professing disregard of wealth and luxury.

161. Modern view of labor. It is only in the most recent times, and imperfectly as yet, that labor has been recognized as a blessing, or, at worst, as a necessity which has great moral and social compensations, and which, if rightly understood and [ 162] wisely used, brings joy and satisfaction. This can only be true, however, when labor is crowned by achievement, and that is when it is productive of wealth. Labor for the sake of labor is sport. It has its limits, and lies outside of the struggle for existence, which is real, and is not play. Labor in the struggle for existence is irksome and painful, and is never happy or reasonably attractive except when it produces results. To glorify labor and decry wealth is to multiply absurdities. The modern man is set in a new dilemma. The father labors, wins, and saves that his son may have wealth and leisure. Only too often the son finds his inheritance a curse. Where is the error? Shall the fathers renounce their labors?

162. Movable capital in modern society. Conditions of equality. Present temporary status of the demand for men. In modern times movable capital has been immensely developed and even fixed capital has been made mobile by the joint-stock device. It has disputed and largely defeated the social power of land property. It has become the social power. While land owners possessed the great social advantage, they could form a class of hereditary nobles. The nobles now disappear because their social advantage is gone. The modern financiers, masters of industry, merchants, and transporters now hold control of movable capital. They hold social and political power. They have not yet formed a caste of nobles, but they may do so. They may, by intermarriages, absorb the remnants of the old nobility and limit their marriages further to their own set. It is thus that classes form and reform, as new groups in the society get possession of new elements of social power, because power produces results. The dogmas of philosophers deal with what ought to be. What is and shall be is determined by the forces at work. No forces appear which make men equal. Temporary conditions occur under which no forces are at work which any one can seize upon. Then no superiority tells, and all are approximately equal. Such conditions exist in a new colony or state, or whenever the ratio of population to land is small. If we take into account the reflex effect of the new countries on Europe, it is easy to see that the whole civilized world has been under these conditions [163] for the last two hundred or three hundred years. The effect of the creation of an immense stock of movable capital, of the opportunities in commerce and industry offered to men of talent, of the immense aid of science to industry, of the opening of new continents and the peopling of them by the poorest and worst in Europe, has been to produce modern mores. All our popular faiths, hopes, enjoyments, and powers are due to these great changes in the conditions of life. The new status makes us believe in all kinds of rosy doctrines about human welfare, and about the struggle for existence and the competition of life; it also gives us all our contempt for old-fashioned kings and nobles, creates democracies, and brings forth new social classes and gives them power. For the time being things are so turned about that numbers are a source of power. Men are in demand, and an increase in their number increases their value. Why then should we not join in dithyrambic oratory, and set all our mores to optimism? The reason is because the existing status is temporary and the conditions in it are evanescent. That men should be in demand on the earth is a temporary and passing status of the conjuncture which makes things now true which in a wider view are delusive. These facts, however, will not arrest the optimism, the self-confidence, the joy in life, and the eagerness for the future, of the masses of to-day.

163. Effect of the facility of winning wealth. All the changes in conditions of life in the last four hundred years have refashioned the mores and given modern society new ideas, standards, codes, philosophies, and religions. Nothing acts more directly on the mores than the facility with which great numbers of people can accumulate wealth by industry. If it is difficult to do so, classes become fixed and stable. Then there will be an old and stiff aristocracy which will tolerate no upstarts, and other classes will settle into established gradations of dependence. The old Russian boyars were an example of such an aristocracy. Certain mediæval cities ran into this form. In it the mores of conservatism are developed,—unchangeable manners, fixed usages and ideas, unenlightenment, refusal of new ideas, subserviency of the lower classes, and sycophancy. The [ 164] government is suspicious and cruel. If it is easily possible to gain wealth, a class of upstart rich men arises who, in a few years, must be recognized by the aristocracy, because they possess financial power and are needed. Struggles and civil wars may occur, as in the Italian cities, during this change, and the old aristocracy may long hold aloof from the new. In time, the new men win their way. The history of every state in Europe proves it. Old fortunes decay and old families die out. The result is inevitable. Laws and institutions cannot prevent it. Certain mores may have been recognized as aristocratic and there may be lamentations over their decline. They are poetic, romantic, and adventurous. Therefore they call out regret for their loss from those who do not think what would come back with them if they were recalled. Ethical philosophers may see ample reason to doubt the benefit of new mores and the vulgarization of everything. Society cannot stand still, and its movement will run the course set by the forces which produce it. It must be accepted and profit must be drawn from it, as best possible.

164. Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change. The effect of the opening of new continents, the application of new inventions, and the expansion of commerce has been to make it easy for men with suitable talent to increase wealth. These changes have cheapened all luxuries, that is, have reduced them to common necessities. They have made land easily accessible to all, even the poorest, in the new countries, while lowering rent in old countries. They have raised wages and raised the standard of living and comfort. They have lessened the competition of life throughout civilized nations, and have made the struggle for existence far less severe. It is the changes in life conditions which have made slavery impossible and extended humanitarian sympathy. They have lessened social differentiation (that is, they have democratized), and they have intensified the industrial organization. In detail, and for individuals, this has often caused hardship. For the petty professional and semiprofessional classes it has been made harder to keep up the externals of a certain social position. For those classes the standard of living has [165] risen faster than steam has cheapened luxuries. Discontent, anxiety, care for appearances, desire to impose by display, envy, and mean social ambition characterize the mores, together with energy and enterprise. Envy and discontent are amongst the very strongest traits of modern society. Very often they are only manifestations of irritated vanity. It is in the nature of things that classes of men and forms of property shall go through endless vicissitudes of advantage and disadvantage. Nobody can foresee these and speculate upon them with success. When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. "Wealth, whether in land or money, has been increased by marriages and inheritances, reduced to fragments by divisions, even in noble families [in spite of settlements and entails], dissipated by prodigals, reconstituted by men of economical habits, centupled by industrious and competent men of enterprise, scattered by the indolent, the unfortunate, and the men of bad judgment, who have risked it unwisely. Political events have affected it as well as the favor of princes, advantageous offices in the state, popular revolts, wars, confiscations, from the abolition of serfdom in the fourteenth century until the abolition, in 1790, of the dues known as feudal, although they were, for the most part, owned by members of the bourgeoisie."369 So it will be in the future, in spite of all that men can do. If two men had the same sum of money in 1200, and one bought land while the other became a money lender, anywhere in western Europe, the former would to-day be more or less rich according to the position of his land. He might be a great millionaire. The other would have scarcely anything left.370 Shall we then all buy land now? Let those do so who can foresee the course of values in the next seven hundred years. The popular notion is that nobles have always owned land. The truth is that men who have acquired wealth have bought land and got themselves ennobled. In France, "in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nineteen twentieths of those who were [166] called nobles were middle-class men enriched, decorated, and possessed of land."371 The middle class in western Europe has been formed out of the labor class within seven hundred years. The whole middle class, therefore, represents the successful rise of the serfs, but, since a labor class still remains, it is asserted that there has been no change. On the other hand, there has been a movement of nobles and middle-class grandees downward into the labor class and the proletariat. It was said, a few years ago, that a Plantagenet was a butcher in a suburb of London. It is also asserted that representatives of great mediæval families are now to be found as small farmers, farm laborers, or tramps in modern England.372

165. Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate. For our purpose it suffices here to notice how the mores have followed the changes in life conditions, how they have reacted on the current faiths and philosophies, and how they have produced ethical notions to justify the mores themselves. They have produced notions of natural rights and of political philosophy to support the new institutions. There are thousands in the United States who believe that every adult male has a natural right to vote, and that the vote makes the citizen. The doctrine of natural rights has received some judicial recognition, and it has been more or less accepted and applied in the constitutions of various states which were established in the nineteenth century. The American doctrines of 1776 and the French doctrines of 1789 are carried on and used in stump oratory until they get in the way of some new popular purpose, but what produced both was the fact that some new classes had won wealth and economic power and they wanted political recognition. To get it they had to invent some new "great principles" to justify their revolt against tradition. That is the way in which all "great principles" are produced. They are always made for an exigency. Their usefulness passes with the occasion. The mores are forever adjusting efforts to circumstances. Sooner or later they need new great principles. Then [167] they obliterate the old ones. The old jingle of words no longer wins a response. The doctrine is dead. In 1776 it seemed to every Whig in America that it was a pure axiom to say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. They clung to this as a sacred dogma for over a hundred years, because it did not affect unfavorably any interest. It is untrue. Governments get their powers from the historical fact of their existence. They are all ephemeral, subject to change. When a change takes place it is controlled by the ideas and interests of the time of change, when the popular element in self-government may be much greater than when the constitution was last previously established. In 1898 the popular will, in the United States, was to take possession of the Philippine Islands and to become rulers there, not ruled, as the fathers were in the colonies of 1776. The great doctrine of the source of due power was quickly trampled under foot. The same fate awaits all the rest of the "great principles." The doctrine that all men are equal is being gradually dropped, from its inherent absurdity, and we may at any time find it expedient to drop the jingle about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was only good historically to destroy the doctrine, "Everything for the people; nothing by them."

166. The French Revolution. The French Revolution was due to the fact that a great change had come about in the distribution of economic power between classes and in the class mores which correspond to economic power. All the political institutions of a modern state are conservative in the sense that they retain and sustain what is and has been, and resist interference or change. The historical picture is often such that abuses are maintained and reform seems hopeless, on account of the power of existing institutions and customs and the depth of convictions of social welfare which have become traditional. The student of the history is led to believe that any reform or revolution, as a dissolution of the inherited system of repression and retention, is worth all that it may cost. Hence some students of history become believers in "revolution" as a beneficent social force or engine. In the case of the French Revolution, [168] the passions which were set loose destroyed the whole social order, swept away all the institutions, and even destroyed all the inherited mores. It is evident that this last is what the revolutionists finally aimed at. The ancien régime came to mean the whole fabric of the old society, with its codes, standards, and ideas of right, wrong, the desirable, etc. The revolutionists also undertook to invent new mores, that is, new codes and standards, new conceptions of things socially desirable, a new religion, and new notions of civil duty and responsibility. During the Directory and the Consulate there was a gulf between the ancient and the new in which there was anarchy of the mores, even after the civil machinery was repaired and set in operation again. Napoleon brought back institutions and forms of social order so far as seemed desirable for his own interest. The historical continuity was broken and has remained so. Of the ancien régime there can be found to-day only ruins and relics. Nevertheless, the ancient mores of social faith and morality, of social well living, of religious duty and family virtue, are substantially what they were before the great explosion. This is the last and greatest lesson of the revolution: it is impossible to abolish the mores and to replace them by new ones rationally invented. To change a monarchy into a republic is trifling. Individuals and classes can be guillotined. Institutions can be overturned. Religion can be abolished or put out of fashion. The mores are in the habits of the people, and are needed and practiced every day. The revolutionists ordered changes in the social ritual, and they brought about a disuse of "monsieur" and "madame." All their innovations in the ritual have fallen into disuse, and the old fashions have returned, in obedience to common sense. The new classes have not enjoyed their victory over the old as to courtesy, social comity, and civil good-fellowship. They have abandoned it, and have recognized the fact that the old aristocracy had well solved all matters of this kind. As wealth has increased and artisans and peasants have gained new powers of production and acquisition, they have learned to laugh at the civil philosophy and enthusiasm of the eighteenth-century philosophers, and have ordered their lives, as far as [169] possible or convenient, on the old aristocratic models. Sansculottism is inconsistent with respect for productive labor, or with the accumulation of wealth. No one who can earn great wages or who possesses wealth will, out of zeal for philosophical doctrines, prefer to live in squalor and want. The relation of modern mores to new feelings in respect to labor and trade, and to the accumulation of wealth, are to be easily perceived from the course of modern revolutions.

167. Ruling classes. Special privileges. Corruption of the mores. In every societal system or order there must be a ruling class or classes; in other words, a class gets control of any society and determines its political form or system. The ruling class, therefore, has the power. Will it not use the power to divert social effort to its own service and gain? It must be expected to do so, unless it is checked by institutions which call into action opposing interests and forces. There is no class which can be trusted to rule society with due justice to all, not abusing its power for its own interest. The task of constitutional government is to devise institutions which shall come into play at the critical periods to prevent the abusive control of the powers of a state by the controlling classes in it. The ruling classes in mediæval society were warriors and ecclesiastics, and they used all their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of other classes. Modern society is ruled by the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty which secure to all safety of person and property. They have not, therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of political power. The history of the nineteenth century, however, plainly showed the power of capital in the modern state. Special legislation, charters, and franchises proved to be easy legislative means of using the powers of the state for the pecuniary benefit of the few. In the first half of the century, in the United States, banks of issue were used to an extravagant pitch for private interest. The history is disgraceful, and it is a permanent degradation of popular government that power could not be found, or did not exist, in the [170] system to subjugate this abuse and repress this corruption of state power. The protective-tariff system is simply an elaborate system by which certain interests inside of a country get control of legislation in order to tax their fellow-citizens for their own benefit. Some of the victims claim to be taken "into the steal," and if they can make enough trouble for the clique in power, they can force their own admission. That only teaches all that the great way to succeed in the pursuit of wealth is to organize a steal of some kind and get inside of it. The pension system in the United States is an abuse which has escaped from control. There is no longer any attempt to cope with it. It is the share of the "common man" in the great system of public plunder. "Graft" is only a proof of the wide extent to which this lesson to get into the steal is learned. It only shows that the corrupt use of legislation and political power has affected the mores. Every one must have his little sphere of plunder and especial advantage. This conviction and taste becomes so current that it affects all new legislation. The legislators do not doubt that it is reasonable and right to enact laws which provide favor for special interests, or to practice legislative strikes on insurance companies, railroads, telephone companies, etc. They laugh at remonstrance as out of date and "unpractical." The administrators of life-insurance companies, savings banks, trusts, etc., proceed on the belief that men in positions of power and control will use their positions for their own advantage. They think that that is only common sense. "What else are we here for?" It is the supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on special interests and saving the public from raids of plunderers. The modern democratic states fail under this test. There is not a great state in the world which was not democratized in the nineteenth century. There is not one of them which did not have great financial scandals before the century closed. Financial scandal is the curse of all the modern parliamentary states with a wide suffrage. They give liberty and security, with open chances for individual enterprise, from which results great individual [171] satisfaction and happiness, but the political machinery offers opportunities for manipulation and corrupt abuse. They educate their citizens to seek advantages in the industrial organization by legislative devices, and to use them to the uttermost. The effect is seen in the mores. We hear of plutocracy and tainted money, of the power of wealth, and the wickedness of corporations. The disease is less specific. It is constitutional. The critics are as subject to it as the criticised. A disease of the mores is a disease of public opinion as to standards, codes, ideas of truth and right, and of things worth working for and means of success. Such a disease affects everybody. It penetrates and spoils every institution. It spreads from generation to generation, and at last it destroys in the masses the power of ethical judgment.

168. The standard of living. One of the purest of all the products of current mores is the standard of living. It belongs to a subgroup and is a product of the mores of a subgroup. It has been called a psychological or ethical product, which view plainly is due to an imperfect analysis or classification. The standard of living is the measure of decency and suitability in material comfort (diet, dress, dwelling, etc.) which is traditional and habitual in a subgroup. It is often wise and necessary to disregard the social standard of comfort, because it imposes foolish expenses and contemptible ostentation, but it is very difficult to disregard the social standard of comfort. The standard is upheld by fear of social disapproval, if one derogates from class "respectability." The disapproval or contempt of one's nearest associates is the sanction. The standards and code of respectability are in the class mores. They get inside of the mind and heart of members of the class, and betray each to the class demands.

169. If, however, the standard of living which one has inherited from his class is adopted as an individual standard, and is made the object of effort and self-denial, the individual and social results are of high value. One man said, "Live like a hog and you will behave like one"; to which another replied, "Behave like a hog and you will live like one." Both were right in about [172] equal measure. The social standard of a class acts like honor. It sustains self-respect and duty to self and family. The pain which is produced by derogation produces effort and self-denial. The social standard may well call out and concentrate all there is in a man to work for his social welfare. Evidently the standard of living never can do more than that. It never can add anything to the forces in a man's own character and attainments.

[173]

CHAPTER V. SOCIETAL SELECTION↩

Social selection by the mores.—Instrumentalities of suggestion.—Symbols, pictures, etc.—Apparatus of suggestion.—Watchwords, catchwords.—"Slave," "democracy."—Epithets.—Phrases.—Pathos.—Pathos is unfavorable to truth.—Analysis and verification as tests.—Humanity.—Selection by distinction.—Aristocracies.—Fashion.—Conventionalization.—Uncivilized fashions.—Ideals of beauty.—Fashion in other things than dress.—Miscellaneous fashions.—All deformations by fashion are irrational.—Satires on fashion.—Fashion in faiths and ideals.—Fashion is not trivial, not subject to argument.—Remoter effects of fashion.—Slang and expletives.—Poses, fads, and cant.—Illustrations.—Heroes, scapegoats, and butts.—Caricature.—Relation of fads, etc., to mores.—Ideals.—Ideals of beauty.—The man-as-he-should-be.—The standard type of man.—Who does the thinking?—The gentleman.—Standards set by taboos.—Crimes.—Criminal law.—Mass phenomena of fear and hope.—Manias, delusions.—Monstrous mass phenomena.—Gregariousness in the Middle Ages.—The mendicant orders.—Other mendicants.—Popular mania for poverty and beggary.—Delusions.—Manias and suggestion.—Power of the crowd over the individual.—Discipline by pain.—The mediæval church operated societal selection.—The mediæval church.—Sacerdotal celibacy.—The masses wanted clerical celibacy.—Abelard.—The selection of sacerdotal celibacy.—How the church operated selection.—Mores and morals; social code.—Orthodoxy; treatment of dissent; selection by torture.—Execution by burning.—Burning in North American colonies.—Solidarity in penalty for fault of one.—Torture in the ancient states.—Torture in the Roman empire.—Jewish and Christian universality; who persecutes whom?—The ordeal.—Irrationality of torture.—Inquisitorial procedure from Roman law.—Bishops as inquisitors.—Definition of heretic.—The Albigenses.—Persecution was popular.—Theory of persecution.—Duties laid on the civil authority.—Public opinion as to the burning of heretics.—The shares of the church and the masses.—The church uses its power for selfish aggrandizement.—The inquisition took shape slowly.—Frederick II and his code.—Formative legislation.—Dungeons.—The yellow crosses.—Confiscation.—Operation of the inquisition.—Success of the inquisition.—Torture in civil and ecclesiastical trials.—The selection accomplished.—Torture in England.—The Spanish inquisition.—The inquisition in Venice.—The use of the inquisition for political and personal purposes.—Stages of the selection by murder.

170. Social selection by the mores. The most important fact about the mores is their dominion over the individual. Arising he knows not whence or how, they meet his opening mind in [ 174] earliest childhood, give him his outfit of ideas, faiths, and tastes, and lead him into prescribed mental processes. They bring to him codes of action, standards, and rules of ethics. They have a model of the man-as-he-should-be to which they mold him, in spite of himself and without his knowledge. If he submits and consents, he is taken up and may attain great social success. If he resists and dissents, he is thrown out and may be trodden under foot. The mores are therefore an engine of social selection. Their coercion of the individual is the mode in which they operate the selection, and the details of the process deserve study. Some folkways exercise an unknown and unintelligent selection. Infanticide does this (Chapter VII). Slavery always exerts a very powerful selection, both physical and social (Chapter VI).

171. Instrumentalities of suggestion. Suggestion is exerted in the mores by a number of instrumentalities, all of which have their origin in the mores, and may only extend to all what some have thought and felt, or may (at a later stage) be used with set intention to act suggestively in extending certain mores.

Myths, legends, fables, and mythology spread notions through a group, and from generation to generation, until the notions become components of the mores, being interwoven with the folkways. Epic poems have powerfully influenced the mores. They present types of heroic actions and character which serve as models to the young. The Iliad and Odyssey became text-books for the instruction of Greek youth. They set notions of heroism and duty, and furnished all Greeks with a common stock of narratives, ideas, and ideals, and with sentiments which everybody knew and which could be rearoused by an allusion. Everybody was expected to produce the same reaction under the allusion. Perhaps that was a conventional assumption, and the reaction in thought and feeling may have been only conventional in many cases, but the suggestion did not fail of its effect even then. Later, when the ideals of epic heroism and of the old respect for the gods were popularly rejected and derided, this renunciation of the old stock of common ideas and faiths marked [175] a decline in the morale of the nation. It is a very important question: What is the effect of conventional humbug in the mores of a people, which is suggested to the young as solemn and sacred, and which they have to find out and reject later in life? The Mahabharata, the Kalevala, the Edda, the Nibelungen Noth, are other examples of popular epics which had great influence on the mores for centuries. Such poems present models of action and principle, but it is inevitable that a later time will not appreciate them and will turn them to ridicule, or will make of them only poses and affectations. The former is the effect most likely to be produced on the masses, the latter on the cultured classes. In the Greco-Roman world, at the beginning of the Christian era, various philosophic sects tried to restore and renew the ideals of Greek heroism, virtue, and religious faith, so far as they seemed to have permanent ethical value. The popular mores were never touched by this effort. In fact, it is impossible for us to know whether the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Pliny represent to us the real rules of life of those men, or are only a literary pose. In the Renaissance, and since then, men educated in the classics have been influenced by them in regard to their standards of noble and praiseworthy character, and of what should be cultivated in thought and conduct. Such men have had a common stock of quotations, of accepted views in life philosophy, and of current ethical opinions. This stock, however, has been common to the members of the technical guild of the learned. It has never affected the masses. Amongst Protestants the Bible has, in the last four hundred years, furnished a common stock of history and anecdote, and has also furnished phrases and current quotations familiar to all classes. It has furnished codes and standards which none dared to disavow, and the suggestion of which has been overpowering. The effect on popular mores has been very great.

172. Symbols, pictures. Before the ability to read became general art was employed in the form of symbols to carry suggestion. Symbolic acts were employed in trade and contracts, in marriage and religion. For us writing has taken the place of [ 176] symbols as a means of suggestion. Symbols do not appeal to us. They are not in our habits. Illustrative pictures influence us. The introduction of them into daily newspapers is an important development of the arts of suggestion. Mediæval art in colored glass, carving, sculpture, and pictures reveals the grossness and crass simplicity of the mediæval imagination, but also its childish originality and directness. No doubt it was on account of these latter characteristics that it had such suggestive power. It was graphic. It stimulated and inflamed the kind of imagination which produced it. It found its subjects in heaven, hell, demons, torture, and the scriptural incidents which contained any horrible, fantastic, or grotesque elements. The crucifix represented a man dying in the agony of torture, and it was the chief symbol of the religion. The suggestion in all this art produced barbaric passion and sensuality. Any one who, in childhood, had in his hands one of the old Bibles illustrated by wood cuts knows what power the cuts had to determine the concept which was formed from the text, and which has persisted through life, in spite of later instruction.

173. Apparatus of suggestion. In modern times the apparatus of suggestion is in language, not in pictures, carvings, morality plays, or other visible products of art. Watchwords, catchwords, phrases, and epithets are the modern instrumentalities. There are words which are used currently as if their meaning was perfectly simple, clear, and unambiguous, which are not defined at all. "Democracy," the "People," "Wall Street," "Slave," "Americanism," are examples. These words have been called "symbols." They might better be called "tokens." They are like token coins. They "pass"; that is their most noteworthy characteristic. They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are always current above their value. They always reveal the invincible tendency of the masses to mythologize. They are personified and a superhuman energy is attributed to them. "Democracy" is not treated as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc., but as a Power from some outside origin, which brings into human affairs an inspiration and energy of its own. The "People" is not the population, [177] but a creation of mythology, to which inherent faculties and capacities are ascribed beyond what can be verified within experience. "Wall Street" takes the place which used to be assigned to the devil. What is that "Wall Street" which is currently spoken of by editors and public men as thinking, wanting, working for, certain things? There is a collective interest which is so designated which is real, but the popular notion under "Wall Street" is unanalyzed. It is a phantasm or a myth. In all these cases there is a tyranny in the term. Who dare criticise democracy or the people? Who dare put himself on the side of Wall Street? The tyranny is greatest in regard to "American" and "Americanism." Who dare say that he is not "American"? Who dare repudiate what is declared to be "Americanism"? It follows that if anything is base and bogus it is always labeled "American." If a thing is to be recommended which cannot be justified, it is put under "Americanism." Who does not shudder at the fear of being called "unpatriotic"? and to repudiate what any one chooses to call "American" is to be unpatriotic. If there is any document of Americanism, it is the Declaration of Independence. Those who have Americanism especially in charge have repudiated the doctrine that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," because it stood in the way of what they wanted to do. They denounce those who cling to the doctrine as un-American. Then we see what Americanism and patriotism are. They are the duty laid upon us all to applaud, follow, and obey whatever a ruling clique of newspapers and politicians chooses to say or wants to do. "England" has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The "symbols," or "tokens," always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them and overwhelm people who are not trained to verify assertions and dissect fallacies.

174. Watchwords, catchwords. A watchword sums up one policy, doctrine, view, or phase of a subject. It may be legitimate and useful, but a watchword easily changes its meaning and takes up foreign connotations or fallacious suggestions. [ 178] Critical analysis is required to detect and exclude the fallacy. Catchwords are acutely adapted to stimulate desires. In the presidential campaign of 1900 we saw a catchword deliberately invented,—"the full dinner pail." Such an invention turns suggestion into an art. Socialism, as a subject of popular agitation, consists almost altogether of watchwords, catchwords, and phrases of suggestion: "the boon of nature," "the banquet of life," "the disinherited," "the submerged tenth," "the mine to the miner," "restore the land to the landless." Trades unionism consists almost entirely, on its philosophical side, of suggestive watchwords and phrases. It is said that "labor" creates all value. This is not true, but the fallacy is complete when labor is taken in the sense of "laborers," collectively and technically so called,—an abuse of language which is now current. To say that wage-earners create all value is to assert a proposition from which numerous and weighty consequences follow as to rights and interests. "The interest of one is the interest of all" is a principle which is as good for a band of robbers as for a union of any other kind. "Making work" by not producing is the greatest industrial fallacy possible.

175. Slave, democracy. Since "democratic" is now a word to conjure with, we hear of democracy in industry, banking, education, science, etc., where the word is destitute of meaning or is fallacious. It is used to prejudice the discussion. Since the abolition of slavery the word "slave" has become a token. In current discussions we hear of "rent slaves," "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. These words bear witness to great confusion and error in the popular notions of what freedom is and can be. For negroes emancipation contained a great disillusion. They had to learn what being "free" did not mean. Debt slavery is the oldest kind of slavery except war captivity. A man in debt is not free. A man who has made a contract is not free. A man who has contracted duties and obligations as husband and father, or has been born into them as citizen, son, brother, etc., is not free. Can we imagine ourselves "free" from the conditions of human life? Does it do [179] any good to stigmatize the case as "wages slavery," when what it means is that a man is under a necessity to earn his living? It would be a grand reform in the mores if the masses should learn to turn away in contempt from all this rhetoric.

176. Epithets. Works of fiction have furnished the language with epithets for types of individuals (sec. 622). Don Quixote, Faust, Punch, Reinecke Fuchs, Br'er Rabbit, Falstaff, Bottom, and many from Dickens (Pickwick, Pecksniff, Podsnap, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep) are examples. The words are like coins. They condense ideas and produce classes. They economize language. They also produce summary criticisms and definition of types by societal selection. All the reading classes get the use of common epithets, and the usage passes to other classes in time. The coercion of an epithet of contempt or disapproval is something which it requires great moral courage to endure.

177. Phrases. The educated classes are victims of the phrase. Phrases are rhetorical flourishes adapted to the pet notions of the time. They are artifices of suggestion. They are the same old tricks of the medicine man adapted to an age of literature and common schools. Instead of a rattle or a drum the operator talks about "destiny" and "duty," or molds into easy phrases the sentiments which are popular. It is only a difference of method. Solemnity, unction, and rhetorical skill are needed. Often the phrases embody only visionary generalities. "Citizenship," "publicity," "public policy," "restraint of trade," "he who holds the sea will hold the land," "trade follows the flag," "the dollar of the fathers," "the key of the Pacific," "peace with honor," are some of the recent coinages or recoinages. Phrases have great power when they are antithetical or alliterative. Some opponents of the silver proposition were quite perplexed by the saying: "The white man with the yellow metal is beaten by the yellow man with the white metal." In 1844 the alliterative watchword "Fifty-four forty or fight" nearly provoked a war. If it had been "Forty-nine thirty or fight," that would not have had nearly so great effect. The "Cape to Cairo" railroad is another case of alliteration. Humanitarianism has permeated our mores and has been a fountain of phrases. [180] Forty years ago the phrase "enthusiasm of humanity" was invented. It inspired a school of sentimental philosophizing about social relations, which has been carried on by phrase making: "the dignity of labor," "the nobility of humanity," "a man is not a ware," "an existence worthy of humanity," "a living wage." "Humanity" in modern languages is generally used in two senses: (a) the human race, (b) the sympathetic sentiment between man and man. This ambiguity enters into all the phrases which are humanitarian.

178. Pathos. Suggestion is powerfully aided by pathos, in the original Greek sense of the word. Pathos is the glamour of sentiment which grows up around the pet notion of an age and people, and which protects it from criticism. The Greeks, in the fourth century before Christ, cherished pathos in regard to tyrannicide. Tyrants were bosses, produced by democracy in towns, but hated by democrats. Tyrannicides were surrounded with a halo of heroism and popular admiration.373 Something of the same sentiment was revived in the sixteenth century, when it appeared that a tyrant was any ruler whose politics one did not like. It cost several rulers their lives. Pathos was a large element in the notions of woman and knighthood (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), of the church (thirteenth century), of the Holy Sepulcher (eleventh and twelfth centuries). In the thirteenth century there was a large element of pathos in the glorification of poverty. A great deal of pathos has been expended on the history and institutions of Greece and Rome in modern times. Classical studies still depend largely on it for their prestige. There is a pathos of democracy in the United States. In all English-speaking countries marriage is an object of pathos. The pathos is cultivated by poetry and novels. Humanitarianism is nourished by pathos and it stimulates pathos. The "poor" and the "laborers" are objects of pathos, on account of which these terms, in literature, refer to a conventional and unreal concept. Consequently there is no honest discussion of any topic which concerns the poor or laborers. Some people make opposition to alcohol an object of pathos.

[181] 179. Pathos is unfavorable to truth. Whenever pathos is in play the subject is privileged. It is regarded with a kind of affection, and is protected from severe examination. It is made holy or sacred. The thing is cherished with such a preëstablished preference and faith that it is thought wrong to verify it. Pathos, therefore, is unfavorable to truth. It has always been an element in religion. It is an element now in patriotism, and in regard to the history of one's own country. The coercion of pathos on the individual comes in popular disapproval of truth-telling about the matter in question. The toleration for forgery and fraud in the Christian church until modern times, which to modern people seems so shocking and inexplicable, was chiefly due to pathos about religion and the church. If a forgery would help the church or religion, any one who opposed it would seem to be an enemy of religion and the church and willing to violate the pathos which surrounded them.

180. The value of analysis and verification as tests. In all the cases of the use of catchwords, watchwords, and phrases, the stereotyped forms of language seem to convey thought, especially ascertained truth, and they do it in a way to preclude verification. It is absolutely essential to correct thinking and successful discussion to reject stereotyped forms, and to insist on analysis and verification. Evidently all forms of suggestion tend to create an atmosphere of delusion. Pathos increases the atmosphere of delusion. It introduces elements which corrupt the judgment. In effect, it continues the old notion that there are edifying falsehoods and useful deceits. The masses always infuse a large emotional element into all their likes and dislikes, approval and disapproval. Hence, in time, they surround what they accept with pathos which it is hard to break through.

181. Humanity. The standard of humanity or of decent behavior, especially towards the weak or those persons who may be at one's mercy, or animals, is entirely in the mores of the group and time. To the Gauchos of Uruguay "inhumanity and love of bloodshed become second nature." Their customs of treating beasts habituate them to bloodshed. "They are callous to the sight of blood and suffering and come to positively [182] enjoy it." They have no affection for their horses and dogs. They murder for plunder.374 It is very rarely that we meet with such a description as that of any people. Polynesians were bloodthirsty and cruel, perhaps because they had no chase of wild animals in which to expend their energies.375 North American Indians could invent frightful tortures, but they were not bloodthirsty. They were not humane. Suffering did not revolt them. Schomburgk376 tells a story of an Indian who became enraged at his wife because she groaned with toothache. He cut down her hammock and caused her to fall so that she suffered a dislocation of the arm. A European witness went to the chief with a report and remonstrance, but the chief was astonished that any one should take any notice of such an incident. The Assyrians cut in stone representations of flaying, impaling, etc., and of a king with his own royal hands putting out the eyes of prisoners. The Egyptians represented kings slaying men (national enemies) in masses. The Romans enjoyed bloodshed and the sight of suffering.377 The Middle Ages reveled in cruelty to men and beasts. It is in the Middle Ages that we could find the nearest parallels to the Gauchos above. None of these people felt that repulsive revolt of the whole nature at inhumanity which characterizes modern cultivated people. The horrors have all receded out of our experience, and almost out of our knowledge. The line of familiarity is set far off. Therefore a little thing in the way of inhumanity is strange and exerts its full repulsive effect. Things happen, however, which show us that human nature is not changed, and that the brute in it may awake again at any time. It is all a question of time, custom, and occasion, and the individual is coerced to adopt the mores as to these matters which are then and there current.

182. Selection by distinction. One of the leading modes by which the group exercises selection of its adopted type on the individual is by distinction. Distinction is selection. It appeals to vanity. It acts in two ways and has two opposite effects. One likes to be separated from the crowd by what is admired, and dislikes to be distinguished for what is not admired. Cases [ 183] occur in which the noteworthy person is not sure whether he ought to be proud or ashamed of that for which he is distinguished. When a society gives titles, decorations, and rewards for acts, it stimulates what it rewards and causes new cases of it. The operation of selection is direct and rational. The cases in which the application of distinction is irrational show most clearly its selective effect. School-teachers are familiar with the fact that children will imitate a peculiarity of one which marks him out from all the rest, even if it is a deformity or defect. Why then wonder that barbarian mothers try to deform their babies towards an adopted type of bodily perfection which is not rationally preferable? A lady of my acquaintance showed me one of her dolls which had wire attachments on its legs in imitation of those worn by children for orthopedic effect. She explained that when she was a child, another child who had soft bones or weak ankles, and who wore irons for them, was brought into her group of playmates. They all admired and envied her, and all wished that they had weak bones so that they could wear irons. This lady made wire attachments for her doll that it might reach the highest standard.

183. Aristocracies. All aristocracies are groups of those who are distinguished, at the time, for the possession of those things which are admired or approved, and which give superiority in the struggle for existence or in social power. In the higher civilization, until modern times, the possession of land was the only social power which would raise a man above sordid cares and enable him to plan his life as he chose. By talent an income could be won which would give the same advantage, but not with the same security of permanence and independence. The fields for talent were war, civil administration, and religion, the last including all mental activity. Men of talent had to win their place by craft and charlatanism (sorcery, astrology, therapeutics). Their position never was independent, except in church establishments. They had to win recognition from warriors and landowners, and they became comrades and allies of the latter. Merchants and bankers were the aristocracy at Carthage, Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and in the Hansa. [184] Talented military men were aristocrats under Napoleon, courtiers were such under Louis XIV, and ecclesiastics at Rome. Since the fourteenth century capital has become a new and the greatest and indispensable social power. Those who, at any time, have the then most important social power in their hands are courted and flattered, envied and served, by the rest. They make an aristocracy. The aristocrats are the distinguished ones, and their existence and recognition give direction to social ambition. Of course this acts selectively to call out what is most advantageous and most valued in the society.

184. There are a number of mass phenomena which are on a lower grade than the mores, lacking the elements of truth and right with respect to welfare, which illustrate still further and more obviously the coercion of all mass movements over the individual. These are fashion, poses, fads, and affectations.

185. Fashion. Fashion in dress has covered both absurdities and indecencies with the ægis of custom. From the beginning of the fourteenth century laws appear against indecent dress. What nobles invented, generally in order to give especial zest to the costume of a special occasion, that burghers and later peasants imitated and made common.378 In the fifteenth century the man's hose fitted the legs and hips tightly. The latchet was of a different color, and was decorated and stuffed as if to exaggerate still further the indecent obtrusiveness of it.379 Schultz380 says that the pictures which we have do not show the full indecency of the dress against which the clergy and moralists of the fifteenth century uttered denunciations, but only those forms which were considered decent, that is, those which were within the limits which custom at the time had established. At the same time women began to uncover the neck and bosom. The extent to which this may be carried is always controlled by fashion and the mores. Puritans and Quakers attempted to restrict it entirely, and to so construct the dress, by a neckerchief or attachment to the bodice, that the shape of the bust should be entirely concealed. The mores rejected this rule as [185] excessive. In spite of all the eloquence of the moral preachers, that form of dress which shows neck and bosom has become established, only that it is specialized for full dress and covered by conventionalization.

186. Conventionalization. Conventionalization also comes into play to cover the dress of the ballet or burlesque opera and the bathing dress. Conventionalization always includes strict specification and limits of time, place, and occasion, beyond which the same dress would become vicious. Amongst Moslems and Orientals this conventionalization as to dress has never been introduced. We are familiar with the fact that when a fashion has been introduced and has become common our eye is formed to it, and no one looks "right" or stylish who does not conform to it. We also know that after the fashion has changed things in the discarded fashion look dowdy and rustic. No one can resist these impressions, try as he may. This fact, in the experience of everybody, gives us an example of the power of current custom over the individual. While a fashion reigns its tendency is to greater and greater extravagance in order to produce the desired and admired effect. Then the toleration for any questionable element in the fashion is extended and the extension is unnoticed. If a woman of 1860, in the dress of her time, were to meet a woman of 1906, in the dress of her time, each would be amazed at the indecency of the dress of the other. No dress ever was more, or more justly, denounced for ugliness, inconvenience, and indecency than the crinoline, but all the women from 1855 to 1865, including some of the sweetest who ever lived, wore it. No inference whatever as to their taste or character would be justified. There never is any rational judgment in the fashion of dress. No criticism can reach it. In a few cases we know what actress or princess started a certain fashion, but in the great majority of cases we do not know whence it came or who was responsible for it. We all have to obey it. We hardly ever have any chance to answer back. Its all-sufficient sanction is that "everybody wears it," or wears it so. Evidently this is only a special application to dress of a general usage—conventionalization.

[186] 187. Uncivilized fashions. Those "good old times" of simplicity and common sense in dress must be sought in the time anterior to waistband and apron. All the barbarians and savages were guilty of folly, frivolity, and self-deformation in the service of fashion. They found an ideal somewhere which they wanted to attain, or they wanted to be distinguished, that is, raised out of the commonplace and universal. At one stage distinction comes from being in the fashion in a high and marked degree. Also each one flees the distinction of being out of the fashion, which would not draw admiration. At another stage distinction comes from starting a new fashion. This may be done by an ornament, if it is well selected so that it will "take."381 Beads have been a fashionable ornament from the days of savagery until to-day. An Indian woman in Florida "had six quarts (probably a peck) of the beads gathered about her neck, hanging down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin, and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move her head. She, however, was only a little, if any, better off in her possessions than most of the others. Others were about equally burdened. Even girl babies are favored by their proud mammas with a varying quantity of the coveted neckwear. The cumbersome beads are said to be worn by night as well as by day."382 "A woman sometimes hangs a weight of over five pounds around her neck, for besides the ordinary necklaces the northern women wear one or more large white, polished shells, which are brought from the western coast and which weigh from half a pound upward."383 "Fashions change in Bechuanaland; one year the women all wear blue beads, but perhaps the next (and just when a trader has laid in a supply of blue beads) they refuse to wear any color but yellow. At the time of writing [1886] the men wore small black pot hats, but several years ago they had used huge felt hats, like that of Rip Van Winkle, and as a consequence the stores are full of those unsalable ones."384

[187] 188. Fashion in ethnography. The Carib women in Surinam think that large calves of the leg are a beauty. Therefore they bind the leg above the ankle to make the calves larger. They begin the treatment on children.385 Some Australian mothers press down their babies' noses. "They laugh at the sharp noses of Europeans, and call them tomahawk noses, preferring their own style."386 The presence of two races side by side calls attention to the characteristic differences. Race vanity then produces an effort to emphasize the race characteristics. Samoan mothers want the noses and foreheads of their babies to be flat, and they squeeze them with their hands accordingly.387 The "Papuan ideal of female beauty has a big nose, big breasts, and a dark-brown, smooth skin."388 To-day the Papuans all smoke white clay pipes. Four weeks later no one will smoke a white pipe. All want brown ones. Still four weeks later no one wants any pipe at all. All run around with red umbrellas.389 On the Solomon Islands sometimes they want plain pipes; then again, pipes with a ship or anchor carved on them; again, pipes with a knob. Women wear great weights of metal as rings for ornament.390 The Galla women wear rings to the weight of four or six pounds.391 Tylor392 says that an African belle wears big copper rings which become hot in the sun, so that the lady has to have an attendant, whose duty it is to cool them down by wetting them. The queen of the Wavunias on the Congo wore a brass collar around her neck, which weighed from sixteen to twenty pounds. She had to lie down once in a while to rest.393 The Herero wear iron which in the dry climate retains luster. The women wear bracelets and leglets, and iron beads from the size of a pea to that of a potato. They carry weights up to thirty-five [188] pounds and are forced to walk with a slow, dragging step which is considered aristocratic. Iron is rare and worth more than silver.394 Livingstone says that in Balonda poorer people imitate the step of those who carry big weights of ornament, although they are wearing but a few ounces.395 Some women of the Dinka carry fifty pounds of iron. The rings on legs and arms clank like the fetters of slaves. The men wear massive ivory rings on the upper arm. The rich cover the whole arm. The men also wear leather bracelets and necklaces.396 In Behar, Hindostan, the women wear brass rings on their legs. "One of these is heavy, nearly a foot broad, and serrated all around the edges. It can only be put on the legs by a blacksmith, who fits it on the legs of the women with his hammer, while they writhe upon the ground in pain." Women of the milkman caste wear bangles of bell metal, often up to the elbow. "The greater the number of bangles, the more beautiful the wearer is considered."397 The satirist could easily show that all these details are shown now in our fashions.

189. Ideals of beauty. In Melanesia a girdle ten centimeters wide is worn, drawn as tight as possible. One cut from the body of a man twenty-seven years old measured only sixty-five centimeters.398 The women of the Barito valley wear the sarong around the thighs so tight that it restricts the steps and produces a mincing gait which they think beautiful.399 The Rukuyenn of Guiana have an ideal of female beauty which is marked by a large abdomen. They wind the abdomen with many girdles to make it appear large. "The women of the Payaguas, in Paraguay, from youth up, elongate the breasts, and they continue this after they are mothers by means of bandages."400 The southern Arabs drop hot grease from a candle on a bride's fingers, and then plaster the fingers with henna. Then the grease is taken off, and light-colored spots (if possible, regular) are left where it was, while the rest of the skin is colored brown by the henna. [ 189] They put on the bride seventeen garments, a silk one and a muslin one alternately; then a mantle over all, and a rug on the mantle, and all possible ornaments.401 Flinders Petrie thinks that we must recognize a principle of "racial taste," "which belongs to each people as much as their language, which may be borrowed like languages from one race by another, but which survives changes and long eclipses even more than language."402 The cases given show that ideals of beauty are somehow formed, which call for a deformation of the human body. The foreheads are flattened, the lips enlarged, the ears drawn down, the skull forced into a sugar-loaf shape, the nose flattened, etc., to try to reach a form approved by fashion. There is an ideal of beauty behind the fashion, a selected type of superiority, which must be assumed as the purpose of the fashion.

190. Fashion in other things than dress. As will appear below, fashion controls many things besides dress. It governs the forms of utensils, weapons, canoes and boats, tools, etc., amongst savages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a fashionable attitude or pose in standing for women, in which the abdomen was thrown forward. It is often seen in pictures and portraits.403 It is inelegant and destitute of meaning. The Venetians were luxurious and frivolous, jealous and distrustful of women, and fond of pleasure and fashion. From the end of the sixteenth century a shopkeeper in the Merceria adopted a custom of showing the new fashions of Paris on Ascension Day by means of a life-size doll dressed in them.404 The Venetian women of that period wore patins, shoes with blocks underneath, some of which were two feet high. The women were unable to walk without a maid on each side to support them.405 Yriarte thinks that these patins were due to the policy of the husbands. When an ambassador, in conversation with the doge and his counselors, said that shoes would be far more convenient, a counselor replied, "Only too convenient! [190] Only too much so!" Under the French Directory, a demi-terme was the name of a framework worn by women to look as if they would soon be mothers.406 Thirty years ago "poufs" were worn to enlarge the dress on the hips at the side. The "Grecian bend," stooping forward, was an attitude both in walking and standing. Then followed the bustle. Later, the contour was closely fitted by the dress. No one thought that the human figure would be improved if changed as the dress made it appear to be. No fashion was adopted because it would have an indecent effect. The point for our purpose is that women wore dresses of the appointed shape because everybody did so, and for no other reason, being unconscious of the effect.

Erasmus, in his colloquy on the Franciscans, makes one of the characters say: "I think that the whole matter of dress depends upon custom and the opinions which are current." He refers to some unnamed place where adulterers, after conviction, are never allowed to uncover the private parts, and says, "Custom has made it, for them, the greatest of all punishments." "The fact is that nothing is so ridiculous that usage may not make it pass."

Fashion has controlled the mode of dressing the hair and deforming the body. It has determined what animals, or what special race of an animal species, should be petted. It controls music and literature, so that a composer, poet, or novelist is the rage or is forgotten. In mediæval literature the modes of allegory were highly esteemed and very commonly used. The writers described war and battles over and over again, and paid little attention to nature. In fact, natural background, geography, and meteorology were made as conventional as stage scenery, and were treated as of no interest and little importance. Modern taste for reality and for the natural details throws this mediæval characteristic by contrast into strong relief.

191. Miscellaneous fashions. Fashion rules in architecture. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, English Renaissance and Gothic were regarded as barbaric, and palladian was admired. In France the preference was for rococo and [191] Mansard forms. At the present time the English Renaissance and Gothic are in favor again, and palladian is regarded with disfavor. Painting and sculpture undergo variations of fashion as to standards and methods. The same is true of literature. Poetry and novels follow phases of fashion. A successful novel makes imitations and sets a fashion for a time. Types of heroes and ideals of character come and go by fashion. The type of the man-as-he-should-be varies by fashion, and this type exerts a great selection in the education of the young. Educational methods run through fashions. Fads in methods of teaching arise, are advocated with great emphasis, have their run, decline, and disappear. There are fashions of standing, walking, sitting, gesture, language (slang, expletives), pronunciation, key of the voice, inflection, and sentence accent; fashions in shaking hands, dancing, eating and drinking, showing respect, visiting, foods, hours of meals, and deportment. When snuff was taken attitudes and gestures in taking it were cultivated which were thought stylish. Fashion determines what type of female beauty is at a time preferred,—plump or svelte, blond or brunette, large or petite, red-haired or black-haired. When was that "simple time of our fathers" when people were too sensible to care for fashions? It certainly was before the Pharaohs and perhaps before the glacial epoch. Isaiah (iii. 16) rebukes the follies of fashion. Chrysostom preached to the early church against tricks and manners of gesture and walk which had been learned in the theater. Since literature has existed moralists have satirized fashion. Galton has noticed what any one may verify,—that old portraits show "indisputable signs of one predominant type of face supplanting another." "If we may believe caricaturists, the fleshiness and obesity of many English men and women in the earlier years of this century [nineteenth] must have been prodigious."407 Part of this phenomenon may be due to the fashion of painting. The portrait painter warps all his subjects toward the current standard of "good looks," but it is more probable that there is a true play of variation. Platycnemism and the pierced olecranon run in groups for a time. Then [192] they run out. There are fashions in disease, as if fashion were really in nature. This goes beyond the limits of our definition, but the rise and passing away of variations in breeding plants and animals, and perhaps in men, suggests that fashion may be an analogous play of experiment, half caprice, half earnest, whose utility lies in selection. If there was no reaching out after novelty except upon rational determination, the case would be very different from what it is when variation brings spontaneous suggestions. Our present modes of dress (aside from the variations imposed by fashion) are the resultant of all the fashions of the last two thousand years.

192. All deformations by fashion are irrational. There is no guarantee that fashions will serve expediency. Deformations of the skull may not be harmful; they are not useful. The block inserted in the lip interferes with eating and speaking. It alters the language. Saliva cannot be retained, and flows over it. To those who are outside the fashion it is extremely ugly and disgusting. To those inside the fashion it is a standard of beauty and a badge of dignity and tribal position. All fashions tend to extravagance because the senses become accustomed to them, and it is necessary, in order to renew the impression of distinction, to exaggerate. The extravagances of fashion run through all grades of civilization. They show that fashion, coming from the whole to the individual, adds nothing to the sense, judgment, or taste of the latter, but imposes on him a coercion to conform. He who dissents is thought rustic and boorish. He is more or less severely boycotted, which means not only that he is made to suffer, but that he loses important advantages and hurts his interests.

193. Satires on fashion. Forty years ago a lady who swung her arms as she walked was considered strong-minded. A lady who was young when the present queen of England introduced the fashion of brushing up the hair and uncovering the ears says that it seemed indecent. Fashion is stronger than autocracy. Nicholas I of Russia disapproved of late hours and ordered that court balls should be commenced early that they might be finished early. He found himself almost alone until eleven [193] o'clock, and had to give up his reform.408 In the height of the crinoline fashion Leech published in Punch a picture of two maiden ladies who "think crinoline a preposterous and extravagant invention and appear at a party in a simple and elegant attire." The shocked horror of the bystanders is perfect, but the two ladies would to-day be quite in the fashion. Du Maurier published in Punch a skit in which a little girl asked her mother how Eve knew, the first time that she saw Cain as a baby, that he was not ugly. This is a very clever hit at the origin of conventions. There was when Cain was born no established convention that all babies are pretty.

194. Fashion in faiths and ideals. There are also fashions in trading, banking, political devices, traveling, inn keeping, book making, shows, amusements, flowers, fancywork, carriages, gardens, and games. There seem to be fashions in logic and reasoning. Arguments which are accepted as convincing at one time have no effect at another (sec. 227, n. 4). For centuries western Europe accepted the argument for the necessity of torture in the administration of justice as convincing. At different periods the satisfaction in allegory as a valid method of interpretation has been manifested and the taste for allegory in the arts has appeared. Philosophy goes through a cycle of forms by fashion. Even mathematics and science do the same, both as to method and as to concepts. That is why "methodology" is eternal. Mediæval "realism" ruled all thought for centuries, and its dominion is yet by no means broken. It prevails in political philosophy now. Nominalism is the philosophy of modern thought. Scholasticism held all the mental outfit of the learned. Thomas Aquinas summed up all that man knows or needs to know. A modern man finds it hard to hold his own attention throughout a page of it, even for historical purposes. "Phlogiston" and "vortices" had their day and are forgotten. Eighteenth-century deism and nineteenth-century rationalism interest nobody any more. Eighteenth-century economists argued in favor of stimulating population in order to make wages low, and thereby win in international competition. They never had a [ 194] compunction or a doubt about this argument. No wonder it has been asserted that all truth, except that which is mathematically demonstrable, is only a function of the age. When the earth is underpopulated and there is an economic demand for men, democracy is inevitable. That state of things cannot be permanent. Therefore democracy cannot last. It contains no absolute and "eternal" truth. While it lasts a certain set of political notions and devices are in fashion. Certain moral standards go with them. Evolution is now accepted as a final fact in regard to organic phenomena. A philosophy of nature is derived from it. Is it only a fashion,—a phase of thought? For to all but a very few such a philosophy has no guarantee except that it is current. All accept it because all accept it, and for no other reason. Narrower philosophies become the fashion in classes, coteries, and cliques. They are really affectations of something which wins prestige and comes to be a badge of culture or other superiority. A few are distinguished because they know Greek, or because they are "freethinkers," or because they are ritualists, or because they profess a certain cultus in art, or because they are disciples of Ruskin, Eastlake, Carlyle, Emerson, Browning, Tolstoi, or Nietsche, and cultivate the ideas and practices which these men have advocated as true and wise. Often such fashions of thought or art pass from a narrow coterie to a wider class, and sometimes they permeate the mores and influence an age. When men believed in witches they did so because everybody did. When the belief in witches was given up it was because a few men set the fashion, and it was no longer "enlightened" to believe in them.

195. Fashion not trivial; not subject to argument. Fashion is by no means trivial. It is a form of the dominance of the group over the individual, and it is quite as often harmful as beneficial. There is no arguing with the fashion. In the case of dress we can sometimes tell what princess or actress started the fashion, and we sometimes know, in the case of ideas, who set them afloat. Generally, however, it is not known who started a fashion in dress. The authority of fashion is imperative as to everything which it touches. The sanctions are ridicule and [ 195] powerlessness. The dissenter hurts himself; he never affects the fashion. No woman, whatever her age or position or her opinion about the crinoline fashion, could avoid wearing one. No effort to introduce a fashion of "rational dress" for women has ever yet succeeded. An artist, novelist, poet, or playwright of a school which is out of fashion fails and is lost. An opponent of the notions which are current can get no hearing. The fashion, therefore, operates a selection in which success and merit are often divorced from each other, but the selection is pitiless. The canons of criticism are set by fashion. It follows that there is no rational effect of fashion. There was a rule in goblinism: Say naught but good of the dead. The rule was dictated by fear that the ghost would be angry and return to avenge the dead. The rule has come down to us and is an imperative one. Eulogies on the dead are, therefore, conventional falsehoods. It is quite impossible for any one to depart from the fashion. The principle is in fashion that one should take the side of the weaker party in a contest. This principle has no rational ground at all. There is simply a slight probability that the stronger will be in the wrong. Fashion requires that we should all affect nonpartisanship in discussion, although it is absurd to do so. Of course these weighty rules on important matters go over into the mores, but they are fashions because they are arbitrary, have no rational grounds, cannot be put to any test, and have no sanction except that everybody submits to them.

196. Remoter effects of fashion. The selective effect of fashion, in spite of its irrationality and independently of the goodness or badness of its effect on interests, is a reflection on the intelligence of men. It accounts for many heterogeneous phenomena in society. The fashions influence the mores. They can make a thing modest or immodest, proper or improper, and, if they last long enough, they affect the sense and the standards of modesty and propriety. Fashions of banking and trading affect standards of honesty, or definitions of cheating and gambling. Public shows, dances, punishments, and executions affect, in time, standards of decency, taste in amusement, sentiments of humanity, views as to what is interesting and attractive. [ 196] Methods of argument which are fashionable may train people to flippancy, sophistry, levity of mind, and may destroy the power to think and reason correctly. Scherr409 says that fashion served as a means to transfer to Germany the depravation of morals which had corrupted the Latin nations in the sixteenth century. Fashions now spread through all civilized nations by contact and contagion. They are spread by literature.

197. Slang and expletives. Slang and expletives are fashions in language. Expletives are of all grades from simple interjections to the strongest profanity. Many expletives are ancient religious formulas of objurgation, obsecration, asseveration, anathema, etc. They express a desire to curse or bless, invite or repel. Where the original sense is lost they sink into interjections, the whole sense of which is in the accent. Their use rises and falls with fashion in nations, classes, groups, and families, and it controls the habits of individuals. Whether certain persons use a pious dialect, a learned (pedantic) dialect, a gambler's slang, a phraseology of excessive adjectives and silly expletives, or profane expressions, oaths, and phrases which abuse sacred things, depends on birth and training. In this sense each dialect is the language for each group and corresponds to the mores of the group. There may be some psychology of expletives,410 but they seem to be accounted for, like slang, by the expediency of expression, which is the purpose of all language. There is a need for expression which will win attention and impress the memory. A strong expletive shocks an opponent, or it is an instinctive reaction on a situation which threatens the well-being of the speaker. It is a vent to emotion which gives relief from it when other relief is not possible. This last is one of the chief useful reasons for expletives. However, even then they are a vicious habit, for stronger and stronger expressions are required to win the same subjective effects. Old expressions lose force. Slang is the new coinage. The mintage is often graphic and droll; it is also often stupid and vulgar. A selection goes on. Some of it is rejected and [197] some enters into the language. Expletives also go out of fashion. The strain for effect can be satisfied only by constantly greater and greater excess. It becomes a bad personal habit to use grotesque and extravagant expressions. Slang and expletives destroy the power of clear and cogent expression in speech or writing; and they must affect powers of thinking. Although slang is a new coinage which reinvigorates the language, the fashion of slang and expletives must be rated, like the fashion of using tobacco and alcohol, as at best a form of play, a habit and custom which springs from no need and conduces to no interest. The acts result in an idle satisfaction of the doer, and the good or ill effects all fall within his own organism. The prevalence of such fashions in a society becomes a fact of its mores, for there will be rational effects on interests. The selective effect of them is in the resistance to the fashions or subjection to them. They are only to a limited extent enforced by social sanctions. There is personal liberty in regard to them. Resistance depends on independent judgment and self-control, and produces independence and self-control; that is, it affects character. Groups are differentiated inside the society of those who resist and those who do not, and the effect on the mores (character of the group) results. The selective effects appear in the competition of life between the two groups.

198. Poses, fads, and cant. When fashion seizes upon an idea or usage and elevates it to a feature of a society at a period, it is, as was said above, affected by those who cannot attain to the real type and who exaggerate its external forms. The humanism of the Renaissance produced an affectation of learning, dilettante interest in collecting manuscripts, and zeal for style which was genuine in scholars, but was an affectation of the followers. There was also an affectation of pagan philosophy and of alienation from Christianity. The euphuists in England in the sixteenth century, the précieuses of Molière's time, the illuminati of the eighteenth century, are instances of groups of people who took up a whim and exaggerated conduct of a certain type, practicing an affectation. There are poses which are practiced as a fashion for a time. Fads get currency. [198] Dandyism, athleticism, pedantry of various kinds, reforms of various kinds, movements, causes, and questions are phenomena of fads around which groups cluster, formed of persons who have a common taste and sentiment. Poses go with them. Poses are also affected by those who select a type of character which is approved. The dandy has had a score of slang names within two centuries corresponding to varieties of the pose and dress which he affected. He has now given way to the athlete, who is quite a different type. The Byronic pose prevailed for a generation. Goethe's Werther inspired a pose. They would both now be ridiculed. Favorite heroes in novels have often set a pose. Carlyle inspired a literary pose ("hatred of shams," etc.). He and Ruskin set a certain cant afloat, for every fad and pose which pretends to be sober and earnest must have a cant. Zola, D'Annunzio, Wagner, Ibsen, Gorky, Tolstoi, Sudermann, are men who have operated suggestion on the public mind of our time. They get a response from a certain number who thus cluster into a self-selected union of sympathy and propagate the cult of a view of life. Gloom and savagery, passion and crime, luxury and lust, romance and adventure, adultery and divorce, self-indulgence and cynicism, the reality of foulness and decay, are so suggested as to become centers on which receptive minds will organize and congenial ones will combine in sympathy. It is the effect of a great and active literature of belles-lettres, which is practically current throughout the civilized world, to multiply these sects of sentimental philosophy, with the fads and poses which correspond, and to provide them with appropriate cant. The cant of the voluptuary, the cynical egoist, the friend of humanity, and all the rest is just as distinct as that of the religious sectarian. Each of the little groups operates its own selection, but each is small. They interfere with and neutralize each other, but a general drift may be imparted by them to the mores. Our age is optimistic by virtue of the economic opportunities, power, and prosperity which it enjoys. The writers above mentioned are all pessimistic. They do not affect the age except upon the surface, by entertaining it, but they disturb its moral philosophy, [199] they confuse its standards and codes, and they corrupt its tastes. They set fashions in literature which the writers of the second class imitate. In general, they relax the inhibitions which have come down to us in our mores without giving by suggestion an independence of character which would replace the traditions by sound judgments. Their influence will be greater when it has been diluted so as to reach the great mass. It hardly can be worse than that of the literature which is now used by that class.

199. Illustrations. In the later days of Greece the study of Homer became an affectation. Dio Chrysostom tells of a visit he made to a colony on the Borysthenes, in which nearly all could read the Iliad, and heard it more willingly than anything else.411 The Athenians, especially the gilded youth, affected Spartan manners and ways. The dandies went about with uncut hair, unwashed hands, and they practiced fist-fights. They were as proud of torn ears as German students are of cuts on their faces.412 The religious and social reforms of Augustus were a pose. They lacked sincerity and were adopted for a political purpose. Men took them up who did not conform their own conduct to them. Hence a "general social falsehood" was the result.413 In the fourth and fifth centuries all the well-to-do classes spent their time in making imitations of the ancient literature and philosophy. They tried to imitate Seneca and Pliny, writing compositions and letters, and pursuing a mode of life which they supposed the men of the period of glory had lived.414 The French of the fifteenth century had the greatest fear of ridicule; the Italians feared most that they might appear to be simpletons.415 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the "chevaliers transis" wore furs in summer and summer mantles in winter. They meant to prove that "love suffices for everything."416 Old pictures of the sixteenth century show that it was considered modest to squint. A Spaniard thought [200] that it showed friendship for any one to squint at him. It was also considered a sign of probity to have the lips primly closed and drawn.417 The Italian cicisbeo in the seventeenth century was a cavalier servente, who attended a married lady. Such men practiced extravagances and affectations, and are generally described as effeminate.418

200. Heroes, scapegoats and butts, caricature. Fashion sets, for any group at any time, its pet likes and dislikes. The mass must have its heroes, but also its victims and scapegoats and the butts of its ridicule. Caricature is futile when it is destitute of point. The test of it lies in the popular response which shows whether it has touched the core of the thing or not. When it can do this it reveals the real truth about the thing better than a volume of argument could do it. Sometimes a popular conviction is produced by a single incident which is a very important societal fact. The voyage of the Oregon from the Pacific (1898) convinced the American people that they must cut a canal through the isthmus. Probably this conviction was a non sequitur, but argument cannot overcome it, and it will control action with all the financial and other consequences which must ensue. A satire, an epigram, or a caricature may suffice to produce such a conviction.

201. Caricature. The mere rhetorical form may have the greatest importance. A caricature often stings national vanity. A state may be represented as afraid, as having "backed down," as having appeared ridiculous. Group vanity is often a stronger motive than personal vanity, and the desire to gratify it will prove stronger than any rational conviction.

202. Relation of fads, etc., to mores. Thus the vanities, desires, prejudices, faiths, likes, and dislikes, which pervade a society, coerce dissenters and become stronger and stronger mass phenomena. They then affect interests. Then they wind strands of influence and control around individuals and demand sacrifices. In their combination they weave webs of action which constitute life and history. The selection which they [201] exert, drawing in some and repelling others, produces results on the societal fabric of a later time. The consequences react on character, moral tone, life philosophy, ethical principles, and ruling sentiments. Thus they affect the mores, or even enter into them. The whole is handed on to the rising generation to be their outfit of knowledge, faith, and policy, and their rules of duty and well living.

203. Ideals. An ideal is entirely unscientific. It is a phantasm which has little or no connection with fact. Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function of science and art. There is no process by which to reach an ideal. There are no tests by which to verify it. It is therefore impossible to frame a proposition about an ideal which can be proved or disproved. It follows that the use of ideals is to be strictly limited to proper cases, and that the attempt to use ideals in social discussion does not deserve serious consideration. An ideal differs from a model in that the model is deduced from reality but within the bounds of reality. It is subject to approved methods of attainment and realization. An ideal also differs from a standard, for a standard must be real.

204. When ideals may be used. What are the proper cases for the use of ideals? Ideals can be useful when they are formed in the imagination of the person who is to realize them by his own exertions, for then the ideal and the programme of action are in the same consciousness, and therefore the defects of an ideal are reduced or removed. Ideals are useful (a) in homiletics, which are chiefly occupied with attempts at suggestion. In limited cases a preacher or teacher can suggest ideals which, if apprehended and adopted, become types toward which young persons may train themselves. Even then these cases merge in the next class. (b) Ideals are useful in self-education. The idea is then taken up from books or from admired persons by suggestion and imitation, or from autosuggestion, but generally from a combination of the two. An ideal from autosuggestion produces enthusiasm. The fantastic character of the ideal, if the person is young, is unimportant. His will is enlisted [202] to work for it. He can constantly compare the ideal with his experience. The ideal is at last shorn down to reality and merges in sober plans of effort. (c) A far larger field for ideals is afforded by vanity. As vanity is itself a subjective affection, but one which can be awakened only in society, it uses the imagination to suppose cases, plan unlimited schemes, devise types of self-decoration and dreams of superiority, distinction, power, success, and glory. The creations are all phantasms. The ends are all ideals. These ideals may not be extravagant. Vanity generally creates them by raising to a higher pitch some treatment of the body or dress, some admired trait of character, some action which has won glory, or given pleasure and won applause. This whole field for ideals is largely influenced by suggestion from the current tastes and fashionable standards in the group, but autosuggestion is also very active in it. (d) Ideals also find a great field in marriage. In this case ideals of happiness have powerfully affected the institution at all its stages. Experience of marriage has been partly pleasant and partly the contrary. The experience has stimulated the reflection: How blessed it would be if only this or that unpleasant detail could be corrected! This has led to idealization or the imaginative conception of a modified institution. Our novels now sometimes aid in this idealization. Men loved their daughters with zealous and protective affection long before they loved their wives. The father's love reached out to follow his daughter into matrimony and to secure for her some stipulations which should free wedlock for her from pain or care which other wives had to endure. These stipulations were always guided by idealization. The rich and great were first able to realize the modifications. These then passed into fashion, custom, and the mores, and the institution was perfected and refined by them.

205. Ideals of beauty. The educated ideals under the second and third of the above heads become mass phenomena under the influence of fashion, when they control many or all. Ideal types of beauty are adopted by a group. Uncivilized people adopt such types of bodily beauty (sec. 189). The origin of them is unknown. A Samoan mother presses her thumb on the [203] nose of her baby to flatten it.419 An Indian mother puts a board on the forehead of her baby to make it recede. Teeth are knocked out, or filed into prescribed shapes, or blackened. The skin is painted, cut into scars, or tattooed. Goblinism may have furnished the original motives for some deformations, but the natural physical features of the group which distinguish it from others, or the features produced by goblinistic usages, come to be the standard of beauty for the group. Those features are accentuated and exaggerated by the deformations which are practiced. The aim is at an ideal perfection of physical beauty. All fashion in dress has the same philosophy. In other cases, also, it seems that fashion is pursuing a fleeting and impossible ideal of perfect beauty, style, grace, dexterity, etc., which shall give distinction and superiority or impose subjection.

206. The man-as-he-should-be. Group ideals may be types of character. In the Old Testament the ideal type is the "just man," who conformed to ritual standards at all points. A Moslem is a man who is "faithful" to Islam, which is self-surrender to the Omnipotent One.420 The type of the perfect man-as-he-should-be in the Mahabharata is one who will give his all to a Brahmin. The god Siva, disguised as a Brahmin, came to a hero. He ordered the hero to kill his own son and serve his corpse for the Brahmin to eat. The hero obeyed at once. The Brahmin set the hero's buildings on fire, but the latter served the dish without heeding the fire. The Brahmin ordered him to eat of the dish. He prepared to obey, but was excused from this trial. He had triumphantly stood the test. There was nothing he would not do for a Brahmin.421 The poem also contains a type of female perfection in person and character,—Savitri.422 The Greeks had many standards of personal excellence and social worth which entered to some extent into their mores. The ideal types were noble and refined. They have affected the mores of the class educated in the "humanities" since the Renaissance. [204] They have never been truly incorporated in the mores of any society. Olbos was wealth, with grace, opulence, elegance, and generosity, and so wealth when not sordid or arrogant, the opposite of plutocratic. Arete was capacity, capability, and practical efficiency,—executive ability. Aidos was the opposite of "cheek." Sophrosyne was continence, self-control. Kalokagathie contained notions of economic, æsthetic, and moral good, fused into a single concept.423 The eleutheros was the gentleman endowed with all admirable qualities.424 The Greeks proved that people could sink very low while talking very nobly. The ideals were in the literature, not in the mores. "Their predisposition, their will, and their fate formed a consistent whole, and their decline was a consequence of the social and political life which they lived."425 In the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. the man-as-he-should-be was religious,—a hermit or a monk. In any case he was an ascetic. In Charlemagne's time the preferred type was changed. It became the warrior and knight, and led up to chivalry. A new poetry flourished to develop and propagate the new ideal. In mediæval society there were strongly defined ideals of the man-as-he-should-be. Milte was generosity of heart and mind. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the noble desire of the lord to share all he had with his retainers, which desire called out their devotion to him.426 The minstrels meant by it lavishness of gifts to themselves. Maze was the cardinal virtue. It meant observation of the limits in all actions and manifestations of feeling, the opposite of excess and extravagance.427 The church taught admiration of arbitrary ideals of ecclesiastical virtues. The ideals were ascetic. They seem to have been derived from the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, but they offer an example of borrowed and adopted ideals which were fully incorporated in the popular mores. The age accepted ascetic standards of goodness and character. The religious classes and the lay classes did not fall under the same [205] standards of conduct and duty. It was the business of the former to live by the full standard. All classes, however, accepted the standards as valid, and the layman conformed to them at times, or as far as worldly life would permit. Elizabeth of Thuringia seems to be the ideal of the married woman, but her saintliness interfered with her other duties, and even her own time does not seem to have been sure in its judgment of her. That she was flogged is a fact which has many relations to her character and her age.428 All admired men who practiced asceticism and self-discipline. The types of the age were knightliness and saintliness. They were both highly elaborated. The knightly type began to develop in the time of Charlemagne and ran through the crusades. It contained grotesque and absurd elements. The story of the crusades is a criticism upon it. The knight was a fantastic person, who might do isolated deeds of valor, but who could not make a plan, work persistently to a purpose, coöperate with others, or either enforce or submit to discipline. Both the knight and the saint were ideal types which exerted a controlling power of selection through centuries.

207. The standard type of man. Is the ideal of the man-as-he-should-be to be found, for us, in the "common man," or in the highest product of our culture? That is a most vital question for any society. It includes the question whether the society has a discord in itself as to its own ideal of the type of men it wants to produce. In the upper strata of the masses, amongst the educated, industrious, sober-minded people of good incomes, there exists the best family life. The children live constantly with their parents, and the latter watch over the health, manners, and morals of the children unceasingly from birth to maturity. The same parents make great sacrifices for the education of their children, although the class, as a class, has means to secure what is necessary without hard sacrifice. The point is that they value education highly and get it. We also multiply educational institutions. We feel sure that all this is good work. The churches and all good literature constantly inculcate good[206] manners and morals according to the standards in the present mores. Here is a set of objects to be prized and worked for in families, schools, self-education, literature, and art, which go to the production of a type of men as the highest product of our civilization. Then suddenly we are told that the common man is wise beyond all the philosophers. The man on the curbstone is the arbiter of our destinies, and the standard man. "Culture" is derided and sneered at. This latter view has great popularity. It brings up a serious question: whether we are spoiling our children by educating them. Are we spoiling them for political power? Are we putting them under disabilities for public influence? It is related of an English statesman, that when asked by an American mother whether she should send her son to Oxford, he replied: "Why send him to Oxford? Send him to Washington, where he will learn democracy. That is what he will need to know." Certainly it behooves us to know whether we are spoiling our sons by sending them to the universities, and whether we ought not rather to send them to Tammany Hall. Either on one side or the other there is a great mass of empty phrases and false but inflated rhetoric.

208. Who does the thinking? The notion that "the group thinks" deserves to be put by the side of the great freaks of philosophy which have been put forth from age to age. Only the élite of any society, in any age, think, and the world's thinking is carried on by them by the transplanting of ideas from mind to mind, under the stress and strain of clashing argument and tugging debate. If the group thinks, then thought costs nothing, but in truth thought costs beyond everything else, for thousands search and talk while only one finds; when he finds something, a step is won and all begins over again. If this is so, it ought to be universally known and recognized. All the mores would then conform to it.

209. The gentleman. In modern English-speaking society the "gentleman" is the name for the man-as-he-should-be. The type is not fixed and the definition is not established. It is a collective and social ideal. Gentlemen are a group in society who have selected a code and standard of conduct as most conducive to prosperous and pleasant social relations. Therefore [ 207] manners are an essential element in the type. A gentleman is one who has been educated to conform to the type, and that he has the cachet is indicated by his admission to the group. Novels develop and transmit the ideal; clubs are the tribunal of it. It is a floating notion which varies with the mores. The modern reader finds very few cases in Greek literature of what he can recognize as gentlemen. Orestes in the Electra of Euripides opens the discussion of what makes the worth of a man, but after saying that it is not wealth or poverty, and not valor in war, he flinches the question and says that it is better to leave it untouched. The peasant, married to Electra, certainly acts the gentleman. He also says of Orestes and Pylades, that if they really are as noble as they seem, they will be as well satisfied with humble fare as with grand fare. A gentleman of a century ago would not be approved now. A gentleman of to-day in the society of a century ago would be thought to have rowdy manners. Artificial manners are not in the taste of our time; athletics are. The "gentleman" always tends to an arbitrary definition. It appears now that he must have some skill at sports and games. The selective force of the social type of the gentleman is obvious in our own society. The sentiment noblesse oblige was once the name for the coercive force exerted on a noble by the code of his class. Now that fixed classes are gone and the gentleman is only defined by the usage and taste of an informal class, it is a term for the duties which go with social superiority of any kind, so far as those duties are prescribed and sanctioned by public opinion.

210. Social standard set by taboos. It may be still more important to notice that the standard social type is defined by taboos with only social sanctions. The negative side of noblesse oblige is more important than the positive. A gentleman is under more restraints than a non-gentleman. In the eighteenth century he patronized cockfights and prize fights, and he could get drunk, gamble, tell falsehoods, and deceive women without losing caste. He now finds that noblesse oblige forbids all these things, and that it puts him under disabilities in politics and business.

[208] A society exerts a positive selection on individuals by its definition of crimes and by its criminal jurisprudence. The taboos are turned into laws and are enforced by positive penalties.

211. Crimes. The number and variety of crimes depends on the positive action of the state. What things are crimes in a state, therefore, indicates what the ruling authority desires to prevent. The motives have often been entirely selfish on the part of a king or a ruling caste, or they were dictated by a desire to further the vanity of such persons. By judicial precedent at Rome it was made a crime to beat a slave, or to undress near a statue of the emperor, or to carry a coin bearing his image into a latrine or a lupanar.429 Xiphilin, in his epitome of the history of Dio Cassius, inserts a story that, in the reign of Domitian, a woman was executed for undressing near the statue of that emperor.430 The notions in the mores of what ought to be prevented have been very variable and arbitrary. Juvenal denounces a consul who while in office drove his own chariot, although by night.431 Seneca was shocked at the criminal luxury of putting snow in wine.432 Pliny is equally shocked at the fashion of wearing gold rings.433 Lecky, after citing these cases, refers to the denunciations uttered by the church fathers against women who wore false hair. Painting the face is an old fault of women, against which moral teachers of all ages have thundered. Very recently, amongst us, clergymen have denounced women for not wearing bonnets in church, because Paul said that she "dishonoreth her head, for that is even all one as if she were shaven."434 These were not indeed cases of crimes, but of alleged vices or sins. In sumptuary laws we have cases of legislation which made fashions crimes. In the eighteenth century there was little legislation against brothels, drinking places, or gambling houses. We make it a crime to sell rum, but not to drink it. On the other hand, until recently commercial transactions and the lending of [209] money for interest were so restricted in accordance with ethical and economic faiths that they were environed by crimes which are now obsolete. Heresy and sorcery were once very great crimes. Witchcraft and usury were abominable crimes.

212. Criminal law. In the original administration of justice it appears that there was only one punishment for the violation of taboo, sin and crime being coincident: that was death. Then, in cases, banishment was substituted for death, although this was only a change in form, since a banished man could not exist alone. In either case the selection was of the simplest kind. The society extruded from itself one who violated its rules. This is the fundamental sense of all punishments, like execution, transportation, or imprisonment, which remove the culprit from the society, permanently or for a time. Other punishments contained originally a large element of vengeance, vengeance being a primary impulse of great force to satisfy those whom the crimes injured and to deter others from the same crime. The administration of justice, therefore, bore witness to the judgment of the society as to what conduct and character should be selected for preservation or caused to cease. In all modern states the power to make acts crimes has been abused, and the motive of punishment has been so lost that we wrangle as to what it is. The ruling coterie uses the power to make things crimes to serve its own interests. Protectionists make it criminal to import goods. Governments do the same to further their fiscal purposes. They also make it criminal to immigrate or emigrate, or to coin money, even of full weight and fineness, or to carry letters and parcels. In England it is made a crime to violate railroad regulations. In some cases regulations for barber shops are enforced by making violations crimes. Generally, sanitary rules are so enforced. In the latest case it has been made a crime to spit in public places. The criminal law expresses the mores of the time when they have reached very concrete and definite formulæ of prohibition. Perhaps the administration of it expresses the mores still more clearly. It is now recognized as true that frightful penalties do not exert a proportionately deterrent effect. Our mores do not permit us to inflict pain in order to compel men to confess, or to put them [210] in solitary confinement in dark and loathsome dungeons, or to let our prisons become sinks of vice and misery or schools of crime. The selective effect of punishment is the one which we seem to aim at, although not very intelligently.

213. Mass phenomena of fear and hope. Manias and delusions are mental phenomena, but they are social. They are diseases of the mind, but they are epidemic. They are contagious, not as cholera is contagious, but contact with others is essential to them. They are mass phenomena.435 Some great hope (the good to be obtained by taking the heads of murdered men or from appeasing the gods by sacrificing one's children) or some great fear (drought, failure of food, purgatory), if common to the whole, makes them adopt any suggestion of a means to realize the hope or avert the feared calamity. Often there is no such quasi-rational reason for common action. Hysteria, especially amongst women and children, produces manias of falsehood, deceit (fasting women), trances, and witchcraft. In mediæval convents sometimes half the inmates were afflicted at the same time. Nervous depression and irritation produced physical acts of relief. One irritated another, and one surpassed another, until there was a catastrophe for the group.436 Religious enthusiasm has produced innumerable manias and delusions. Mediæval Christianity, Mohammedanism, Persia, and modern Russia furnish cases. Martyrdom proves nothing with regard to the truth or value of a religion. All the sects have had martyrs. Martyrdom, even under torture, has been sought, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, not only by Christians437 but by Donatists,438 Manichæans, and other most abominated heretics. Even the Adamites produced martyrs who went joyously to death.439 Quakers really provoked their own martyrdom in early New England.

214. Manias, delusions. The phenomena of manias, popular delusions, group hallucinations, self-immolation, etc., show the possibilities of mental contagion in a group. They are responses to hope or fear which affect large numbers at the same time. [ 211] They are often produced by public calamities, or other ills of life. Those who suffer feel themselves selected as victims, and they ask, Who has done this to us, and why? Often people who are not victims interpret a natural incident by egoistic reference. This is done not on account of the destruction wrought by an earthquake or a tornado, but from pure terror at what is not understood, e.g. an eclipse.440 Pilgrimages and crusades were cases of mania and delusion. The element of delusion was in the notion of high merit which could be won in pursuing the crusades. Very often manias and delusions are pure products of fashion, as in the case of the children's crusades, when the children caught the infection of the crusades, but did not know what they were doing, or why, and rushed on their own destruction. Often manias are logical deductions from notions (especially religious notions) which have been suggested, as in the case of the flagellants. It is the ills of life which drive people to such deductions, and they bear witness to excessive nervous excitement. The mediæval dancing mania was more purely nervous. The demonism and demonology of the Middle Ages was a fertile source for such deductions, which went far to produce the witchcraft mania. The demonistic notions taught by the church furnished popular deductions, which the church took up and reduced to dogmatic form, and returned as such to the masses. Thus the notions of sorcery, heresy, and witchcraft were developed.

215. Monstrous mass phenomena of mediæval society. There must have been a deep and strong anthropological reason for the development of monstrous social phenomena in mediæval society. The Latin world was disintegrated to its first elements between the sixth century and the tenth. Such a dissolution of society abolished the inherited mores with all their restraints and inhibitions, and left society to the control of fierce barbaric, that is physical, forces. At the same period the Latin world absorbed hordes of barbarians who were still on a low nomadic warrior stage of civilization, and who adopted the ruins of Roman culture without assimilating them. The Christian church contributed crass superstitions about the other world and the relations of this world to [212] it. The product was the Merovingian and Carlovingian history. Passion, sensuality, ferocity, superstitious ignorance, and fear characterized the age. It is supposed that western Europe was overpopulated and that the crusades operated a beneficial reduction of numbers.441 These facts may account for the gigantic mass phenomena in the early Middle Ages. Every sentiment was extravagant. Men were under some mighty gregarious instinct which drove them to act in masses, and they passed from one great passion or enthusiastic impulse to another at very short intervals. The passions of hatred and revenge were manifested, upon occasion, to the extremity of fiendishness. Nothing which the mind could conceive of seemed to be renounced as excessive (Clement V, John XXII). Gregory IX pursued the heretics and the emperor with an absorption of his whole being and a rancor which we cannot understand. Poverty was elevated into a noble virtue and a transcendent merit.442 This was the height of ascetic absurdity, since poverty is only want, and the next step would be a cult of suicide. The mendicant orders fought each other malignantly. Every difference of opinion made a war of extermination. Civil contests were carried on with extravagant ferocity as to the means used and as to the exultation of success or the penalty of failure. What was lacking was discipline. There was no authority or doctrine which could set limits to private passion. Life was held cheap. The gallows and the pit were in use all the time. The most marked product of invention was instruments of torture. Men and women were burned to death for frivolous reasons. Punishments taught people to gloat over suffering. Torture was inflicted as idly as we take testimony. With all this went deep faith in the efficacy of ritual and great other-worldliness, that is, immediate apprehension of the other world in this one. All the mores were adjusted to these features of faith and practice. It all proceeded out of the masses of the people. The church was borne along like a chip on the tide. The church hung back from the crusades until the depth of the popular interest had been tested. Then the crusades were declared to be the "will of God." This [213] gave their own idea back again to the masses with the approval of the societal authority. The masses insisted on having acts and apparatus provided by which to satisfy their application of dogma. The power of the keys and the treasure of salvation were provided accordingly. The souls of the people were torn by the antagonism between the wild passions of the age and the ecclesiastical restraints on conduct. They feared the wrath of God and hell to come. The ritual and sacramental system furnished a remedy. The flagellants were a phenomenon of seething, popular passion, outside of the church and unapproved by its authority. Antony of Padua (♰ 1231) started the movement by his sermons on repentance and the wrath of God. Processions of weeping, praying, self-scourging, and half-naked penitents appeared in the streets of all the towns of Christendom. "Nearly all enemies made friends. Usurers and robbers made haste to restore ill-gotten goods, and other vicious men confessed and renounced vanity. Prisons were opened. Prisoners were released. Exiles were allowed to return. Men and women accomplished works of pity and holiness, as if they feared the all-powerful God would consume them with fire from heaven."443 This movement was altogether popular. It broke out again in 1349, in connection with the Black Death. Flagellation for thirty-three and a half days was held to purge from all sin. This was heresy and the flagellants were persecuted. The theory was a purely popular application by the masses of the church doctrine of penance, outside of the church system. It reappeared from time to time. The dancing mania began at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1373 and lasted for several years.444 It was an outlet for high nervous tension under which the population was suffering on account of great calamities, social distress, and superstitious interpretations of the same. In short, the period was one of monstrous phenomena, extravagant passions, and unreasonable acts.

216. Gregariousness of the Middle Ages. "To estimate fully the force of these popular ebullitions in the Middle Ages, we must bear in mind the susceptibility of the people to contagious [214] emotions and enthusiasms of which we know little in our colder day. A trifle might start a movement which the wisest could not explain nor the most powerful restrain. It was during the preaching of this crusade [of 1208, against the Albigenses] that villages and towns in Germany were filled with women who, unable to expend their religious ardor in taking the cross, stripped themselves naked and ran silently through the roads and streets. Still more symptomatic of the diseased spirituality of the time was the crusade of the children, which desolated thousands of homes. From vast districts of territory, incited apparently by a simultaneous and spontaneous impulse, crowds of children set forth, without leaders or guides, in search of the Holy Land; and their only answer, when questioned as to their object, was that they were going to Jerusalem. Vainly did parents lock their children up; they would break loose and disappear; and the few who eventually found their way home again could give no reason for the overmastering longing which had carried them away. Nor must we lose sight of other and less creditable springs of action which brought to all crusades the vile, who came for license and spoil, and the base, who sought the immunity conferred by the quality of crusader."445 "To comprehend fully the magnitude and influence of these movements we must bear in mind the impressionable character of the populations and their readiness to yield to contagious emotion. When we are told that the Franciscan Berthold of Ratisbon frequently preached to crowds of sixty thousand souls, we realize what power was lodged in the hands of those who could reach masses so easily swayed and so full of blind yearnings to escape from the ignoble life to which they were condemned. How the slumbering souls were awakened is shown by the successive waves of excitement which swept over one portion of Europe after another about the middle of the thirteenth century. The dumb, untutored minds began to ask whether an existence of hopeless and brutal misery was all that was to be realized from the promises of the gospel. The church had made no real effort at internal reform; it was still grasping, covetous, licentious, and a strange desire [215] for something—they knew not exactly what—began to take possession of men's hearts and spread like an epidemic from village to village and from land to land."446

What we see here is the power of mere gregariousness, the impulse of acting in a crowd, without knowledge or purpose. The mere sense of being in the current movement, or "in the fashion," is a pleasure. When the movement is great in its compass and the numbers involved there is an exhilaration about being in it. If the notions by which it is enthused are great, or holy and noble, in form and pretense, even if not really so, it may become demonic, and it may accomplish incredible things. We had a grand illustration of this at the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1861, both in the North and South. Dissent on both sides was overwhelmed and all were swept away into the prevailing current.

217. The mendicant orders. The mendicant orders responded to the deepest popular faiths and highest standards of the thirteenth century. Francis of Assisi (♰ 1226) took up the notion that it was wrong to own property, or at least meritorious to renounce it, and affirmed that Christ and his apostles repudiated all property and lived on alms. The Timotheists of the fifth century had held this notion, but were rated as heretics.447 Poverty, for Francis, did not mean a little property, but absolute rejection of all property. This was necessarily only a pose. He had to use other men's property, the use being right. Therefore he could only renounce productive labor. The popular religious temper of the time revered simplicity, humility, self-denial, and renunciation of "the world" as especially evangelical virtues. They were thought to be summed up in poverty. That Francis was a hero of this type of religion has been universally admitted. The virtues were just the ones which the Roman court did not show. Jacques de Vitry, an enthusiastic preacher against the Albigenses, went through Italy to Palestine in 1216. He left a journal448 in which he recorded his sadness at observing that, at the papal court, all were busy with secular affairs, kings and kingdoms, quarrels and lawsuits, so that it was almost impossible to speak [216] about spiritual matters. He greatly admired the Franciscans, who were trying to renew primitive Christianity and save souls, thus shaming the prelates, who were "dogs who do not bark." The Count of Chiusi gave to Francis the mountain La Verna for retirement and meditation. Armed men were necessary to take possession of it against the beasts and robbers who had possession of it.449 Carmichael believes that Francis received the stigmata, which he describes in detail. The Francis of tradition is a fabulous person, created out of the pet ideas of his time.450 The historical person was a visionary. Dominic was a zealot. He wanted to convert all heretics by preaching or other means.

218. Other mendicant orders. De Vitry found Humiliati in Lombardy, who were living by ideas like those of Francis. The Augustinian hermits were founded in 1256, the Carmelites in 1245, and the Servites, or Servants of Mary, about 1275.451 These were all mendicants, and they bear witness to the character of the notions of the time about poverty. It was a mania, and is fully expressed in the Romaunt de la Rose. Perhaps Francis did not mean to "found an order." He wanted to live in a certain way with a few friends. The spontaneous and very rapid spread of his order proves that it was concordant with a great popular taste. Francis was a dreamer and enthusiast, not a politician or organizer at all. In his testament he says: "After the Lord had given me care of the brethren, no one showed me what I ought to do, but the Highest Himself revealed to me that I ought to live according to the mode of the Holy Gospel." He was not thwarted and subjugated by the curia during his life, but his ideals were not maintained by the men in the order. The man who was later pope Gregory IX aided him to organize the order and to make it practically efficient, that is, to take the enthusiasm out of it and make it practical.452 The popes of the thirteenth century approved. There was in the principles of the order an antagonism to the church as it was, and also an antagonism to common sense. The church authorities wanted to bring the order into practical use, and suspected it of the heresies of Florus. It therefore split into "conventuals," who conformed to the methods of conventual life, and the "spirituals," who clung to the doctrines and rules of the founder. The latter became "observantines" (1368) and "recollects" (1487).453 The two branches hated each other and fought on all occasions. In 1275 the spirituals were treated as heretics, imprisoned in [217] chains, and forbidden the sacrament.454 John XXII condemned their doctrine as heretical. This put the observantines in the same position as other heretical sects. They must be rebels and heretics or give up ideas which seemed to them the sum of all truth and wisdom. Generally they clung to their ideas like the heretics.455 One of their heroes was Bernard Delicieux (♰ 1320), who is celebrated as the only man who ever dared to resist the Inquisition. He was tortured twice, and condemned to imprisonment in chains on bread and water. He lived only a few months under this punishment.456 Out of admiration immense sums were given to the mendicants, and they became notorious for avarice and worldly self-seeking.457 As early as 1257 Bonaventura, the head of the order, reproached them with these faults.458 "Some of the venomous hatred expressed by the Italian satirists for the two great orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic may perhaps be due to an ancient grudge against them as a papal police founded in the interests of orthodoxy, but the chief point aimed at is the mixture of hypocrisy with immorality, which rendered them odious to all classes of society."459 "In general the Franciscans seem to us far less orthodox than the Dominicans. They issued from a popular movement which was irregular, unecclesiastical, very little conformed to the ideas of the hierarchy about discipline." "The followers of St. Francis continued to contain ardent-minded men who maintained that the Franciscan reform had not produced all its due results; that that reform was superior to popes and to the dispensations issued at Rome; that the appearance of the seraphic Francis was neither more nor less than the advent of a new Christianity and a new Christ, like in all respects to the first, but superior to it by poverty. Therefore all the democratic and communistic movements of later times,—the third order of St. Francis, the Beghards, Lollards, Bisocs, Fraticelli, Spiritual Brethren, Humiliati, and Poor Men of Lyons [Waldenses], who were exterminated by the state and the prisons of the Dominicans, have their origin in the old leaven of Katharism, Joachimism, and the eternal gospel."460

219. Popular mania for poverty and beggary. The strength of the mendicant orders was in their popularity. They reconquered for the church the respect of the masses. Then they became the inquisitors, and the abusers of power for their own interests, and fell into great disfavor. Their history shows well the course of interaction between the masses and the rulers, and the course of institutions born in popular mores but abused to serve private interests. The mendicant orders furnished the [218] army of papal absolutism. The Roman Catholic writers say that the popes saved the world from the despotism of emperors. What is true is that the pope and the emperor contended for the mastery, and the masses gave it to the pope. What the popes did with it we know. That is history. What the emperors would have done with it is matter for conjecture. It is very probable that they would have abused the power as badly as the popes did, but conjectural history is idle.

220. Delusions. Of popular delusions one of the most striking and recurrent examples is the belief that new and despised religious sects, which are forced to meet in private, practice obscene and abominable orgies. The early Christians were accused of such rites, and they charged dissenting sects with the same.461 The Manichæans, Waldenses, Huguenots, Puritans, Luciferans, Brothers of the Free Spirit, and so on through the whole list of heretical sects, have been so charged. Lea, in his History of the Inquisition, mentions over a dozen cases of such charges, some of which were true. Nowadays the same assertions are made against freemasons by Roman Catholics.462 Jews are believed by the peasants of eastern Europe to practice abominable rites in secret. The idea that secret sects use the blood of people not of their sect, especially of babies, in base rites is only a variant of the broad idea about secret rites. It is sometimes said that the charges were invented to make sects unpopular, but it is more probable that they arose from the secrecy of the meetings only. Christians are so charged now in China.463 The story of the discovery of such misbehavior always contains the same explanation—a husband followed his wife to the meeting and saw the proceedings.464

221. Manias need suggestion. Manias and delusions are like fashions and fads in that they always seem to need a suggestion from some outside source, and often it is impossible to find such a source. A strong popular belief, like the belief in Satan and demons, furnishes a ground for a general disposition to hold some other people responsible for all the ills which befall one's [219] self. Then the disposition to act cruelly against the suspected person arises to a mental disease, and by coöperation of others under the same aberration makes a mania.465 The explanation lies in autosuggestion or fixed ideas with the development loosely ranged under hysteria, which is the contagious form of nervous affection. The term "epidemic" can be applied only figuratively. "Mental disease occurs only on the ground of a specific constitutional and generally hereditary predisposition. It cannot therefore be spread epidemically, any more than diabetes or gout."466 The epidemic element is due to hysterical imitation. In like manner, epidemics or manias of suicide occur by imitation, e.g. amongst the Circumcellions, a subdivision of the Donatists, in Africa, in the middle of the fourth century A.D.467 Cognate with this was the mania for martyrdom which it required all the authority of the church to restrain.468 Josephus469 says of the Galileans, followers of Judas of Galilee, that they were famous for their indifference to death. Convents were often seats of frightful epidemics of hysteria. The accepted religious notions furnished a fruitful soil for it. To be possessed by devils was a distinction, and vanity was drawn into play.470 Autosuggestion was shown by actions which were, or were supposed to be, the actions proper for "possessed" people. Ascetic practices prepared the person to fall a victim to the contagion of hysteria. The predisposition was also cultivated by the religious ecstasies, the miracle and wonder faiths, and the current superstitions. Then there was the fact which nearly any one may have experienced, that an old and familiar story becomes mixed with memory, so that he thinks that what he heard of happened to himself. Untrained people also form strong convictions from notions which have been long and firmly held without evidence, and they offer to others the firmness of their own convictions as grounds for accepting the same faith without proof. Ritual acts and ascetic observances which others can see, also conduct and zeal [220] in prayer or singing, and the odors of incense, help this transfer of faith without or against proof. These appeals to suggestibility all come under the head of drama. Nowadays the novels with a tendency operate the same suggestion. A favorite field for it is sociological doctrine. In this field it is a favorite process to proceed by ideals, but ideals, as above shown (secs. 203, 204), are fantastic and easily degenerate into manias when they become mass phenomena. Mariolatry, the near end of the world, the coming of the Paraclete, are subjects of repeated manias, especially for minds unsettled by excessive ascetic observances. It follows from all these cases of mental aberration that the minds of the masses of a society cannot be acted on by deliberation and critical investigation, or by the weight of sound reasoning. There is a mysticism of democracy and a transcendentalism of political philosophy in the masses to-day, which can be operated on by the old methods of suggestion. The stock exchange shows the possibility of suggestion. What one ought to do is to perceive and hold fast to the truth, but also to know the delusion which the mass are about to adopt; but it is only the most exceptional men who can hold to a personal opinion against the opinion of the surrounding crowd.

222. Power of the crowd over the individual. The manias and delusions therefore dominate the individual like the fashions, fads, and affectations. It is the power of the crowd over the individual which is constant. The truth and justice of the popular opinion is of very inferior importance. The manias and delusions also operate selection, but not always in the same way, or in any way which can be defined. He who resists a mania may be trodden under foot like any other heretic. There occur cases, however, in which he wins by dissent. If he can outlive the mania, he will probably gain at a later time, when its folly is proved to all.

223. Discipline by pain. He who wants to make another do something, or to prevent him from doing something, may, if the former is the stronger, connect act or omission with the infliction of pain. This is only an imitation of nature, in which pain is a sanction and a deterrent. Family and school discipline have always rested on this artificial use of pain. It is, apparently, the [ 221] most primary application of force or coercion. It combines directly with vengeance, which is a primary passion of human nature. Punishment is of this philosophy, for by punishment we furnish, or add, a painful consequence to acts which we desire to restrain, in the hope that the consequence will cause reflection and make the victim desist. The punishment may be imprisonment (i.e. temporary exclusion from the society), or fine, or scourging, or other painful treatment. The sense of punishment is the same whether the punishment be physical pain or other disagreeable experience. Although we have come to adopt modern ideas about the infliction of physical pain in punishment, we cannot depart far from its fundamental theory and motive. In the past, physical pain has been employed also, in lynching and in regular proceedings, to enforce conformity, and to suppress dissent from the current mores of the society. The physical proceedings are measures to produce conformity which differ from boycotting and other methods of manifesting disapproval and inflicting unpopularity in that they are positive and physical. Then the selection is positive and is pursued by external and physical sanctions.

224. The mediæval church operated societal selection. It is evident that the mediæval church was a machine to exert societal selection. The great reason for its strength as such is that it never made the mores of the age; it proceeded out of them. It contributed, through a thousand previous years, phantasms about the other world and dogmas about the relation of this world to that one. These dogmas became mixed with all the experience of life in the days of civic decline and misery, and produced the mores of the tenth and eleventh centuries. All the great doctrines then took on the form of manias or delusions. In the early centuries of the Christian era "catholic" meant Christendom in its entirety, in contrast with the separate congregations, so that the concepts "all congregations" and the "universal church" are identical. However, the church over the whole world was thought to have been founded by the apostles, so that that only could be true which was found everywhere in Christendom. So "catholic" came to have a pregnant meaning, and got dogmatic and political [222] connotations.471 In the eleventh century all Christendom was reduced to civic fragments in which tyranny, oppression, and strife prevailed. It was not strange that "catholicity" was revived as an idea of a peace pact by means of which the church might unite Christendom into a peace group for the welfare of mankind (sec. 14). This was a grand idea. If the Christian church had devoted itself to the realization of it, by forms of constitutional liberty, the history of the world would have been different. The church, however, used "catholicity" as a name for universal submission to the bishop of Rome and for hierarchical discipline, and used all means to try to realize that conception. By the Inquisition and other apparatus it attempted to enforce conformity to this idea, and exercised a societal selection against all dissenters from it. The ecclesiastics of Cluny, in the eleventh century, gave form to this high-church doctrine, and they combined with it a rational effort to raise the clergy to honor for learning and piety, as a necessary step for the success of their church policy. The circumstances and ideas of the time gave to these efforts the form of a struggle for a monarchical constitution of the church. In the thirteenth century this monarchy came into collision with the empire as the other aspirant to the rule of Christendom. Already the papacy was losing moral hold on its subjects. The clergy were criticised for worldliness, arrogance, and tyranny, and the antagonism of the dynastic states, so far as they existed, found expression in popular literature. Walter von der Vogelweide is regarded as a forerunner of the Reformation on account of his bitter criticisms of the hierarchy.472 It is, however, very noteworthy that, in spite of the popular language of the writers and their appeals to common experience, they did not break the people away from their ecclesiastical allegiance, and also that the church authorities paid little heed to the criticisms of these persons. The miracle and moral plays were in the taste of the age entirely. Besides being gross, they were irreligious and blasphemous. Ecclesiastics tolerated them nevertheless.473 The [ 223] authorities moved only when "the faith" was brought in question. "The faith," therefore, acquired a technical signification of great importance. It was elevated to the domain of sentiment and duty and surrounded with pathos (sec. 178), while its meaning was undefined. In time it came to mean obedience to papal authority. Thus all the circumstances and streams of faith and sentiment of the eleventh and twelfth centuries concentrated in the hands of the hierarchy the control of society, because there was no other organ to accept the deposit. The Cluny programme was a programme of reform in the church such as everybody wanted. It gathered all "the good men" in a common will and purpose. The ideals and the means were selected, and the advocates of the same became the selected classes in society. They remained such long after the movement was spent and lost, but the notion remained that every good man, or would-be good man, ought to stand with the church.

225. The mediæval church. In the crusades the church went to war with Islam, another aspirant to rule mankind. It undoubtedly drilled and disciplined its own adherents by the crusades and thus confirmed its power. It is also certain that the crusades were popular and only put into effect the wish of the great body of Christians. It was the masses, therefore, who made the mediæval church. It possessed a corporate organization and hierarchy which was a body of personal interests, in which ambition, cupidity, and love of power were awakened. The church was venal, sensual, gross, and inhuman, because the mores of the age were such. How could the church be other than the age was? Where was it to find inspiration or illumination from without which should make ecclesiastics anything but men of their age? The men of that age left on record their testimony that the church was in no way better than the society.474 From the end of the twelfth century man after man and sect after sect arose, whose inspiration was moral indignation at the vices and abuses in the church. Wycliffe denied transubstantiation on rationalistic grounds, but his work all consisted in criticism of hierarchical abuses and of the principles which made the abuses [224] possible. The church never was on the level of the better mores of any time. Every investigation which we make leads us not to the church as the inspirer and leader, but to the dissenting apostles of righteousness, to the great fluctuations in the mores (chivalry, woman service, city growth, arts, and inventions), to the momentum of interests, to the variations in the folkways which travel (crusades and pilgrimages), commerce, industrial arts, money, credit, gunpowder, the printing press, etc., produced.

226. Sacerdotal celibacy. The church rode upon the tide and tried to keep possession of the social power and use it for the interest of ecclesiastics. Asceticism was in the mores. Everybody accepted the ascetic standard of merit and holiness as correct and just, whether he lived by it or not. Sacerdotal celibacy was a case of asceticism. Every one knew that it had come about in church history and was not scriptural or primitive. It was in the notions of the age that there were stages in righteousness, and that religious persons were bound to live by higher stages than persons not technically religious. Renunciation of sex was higher righteousness than realization of sex, as is taught in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians. This notion existed amongst heathen and pagans. The priests in the Melkart temple at Gades (Cadiz) were bound to celibacy.475

The merit of celibacy is a very old religious idea in Hindostan. The Todas have a celibate priesthood.476 "It is one of the inconsistencies of the Hindu religion that it enjoins the duty of marriage on all, yet honors celibacy as a condition of great sanctity, and a means of acquiring extraordinary religious merit and influence."477 "All the ascetic sects of the Saivas are celibates."478 Lamas at Shang (98° E. 36° N.) are allowed to marry, but not in Tibet.479 The Christian notion of the third century was that clerics ought to come up to the higher standard. This was the purest and highest reason for celibacy. It had been a standard of perfection in the Christian church for six hundred years before [225] Hildebrand. Whatever motives of policy or ecclesiastical ambition may have been mixed with it in the eleventh century, it had the merit of bringing doctrine and practice into accord.

227. The masses wanted clerical celibacy. It is to be noticed that clerical celibacy was a demand of the masses amongst church members, and that the demand came directly out of Christian mores. In the fourth century this doctrine was derived from sacramentarianism. The notion became fixed that there was an inherent and necessary incongruity between marriage and the celebration of the sacrament of the mass. "In the course of the fourth century it was a recognized principle that clerical marriages were criminal. They were celebrated, however, habitually, and usually with the greatest openness."480 That means that they were in antagonism with church opinion and its tendency at that time. Sacerdotalism triumphed in the fifth century. "Throughout the struggle the papacy had a most efficient ally in the people." Preachers exhorted the people to holiness, and the people required this of the clergy, and enforced it by riots and mob violence. Cases are cited which "bring before us the popular tendencies and modes of thought, and show us how powerful an instrument the passions of the people became, when skilfully aroused and directed by those in authority."481 The fundamental notion which underlies all asceticism was here at work, viz., that virtue has stages, that a man can be more than good, or worse than bad. The council of Constantinople, in 680, made new rules against the marriage of the clergy, because the old ones were neglected and forgotten. The motive stated was the welfare of the people, who regarded such marriages as scandalous. The excess in temper and doctrine was a mark of the period. The learned would have held the doctrine as a metaphysical truth only, but the masses turned it into a practical rule. The share of the masses in the establishment of the rule is a very important fact. Lea thinks that they were manipulated by the ecclesiastics.482 In the religious revival of the eleventh century the marriage of the clergy was "popularly regarded as a heresy and a scandal." [226] There was no defense of it.483 It was an undisputed fact that celibacy was not scriptural or primitive.484 At that time "all orders, from bishops down, without shame or concealment, were publicly married and lived with their wives as laymen, leaving their children fully provided for in their wills.... This laxity prevailed throughout the whole of Latin Christendom, sacerdotal marriage being everywhere so common that it was no longer punished as unlawful and scarcely even reprehended."485 "Not a thought of the worldly advantages consequent on the reform appears to have crossed the mind of Damiani. To him it was simply a matter of conscience that the ministers of Christ should be adorned with the austere purity through which alone lay the path to salvation. Accordingly, the arguments which he employs in his endless disputations carefully avoid the practical reasons which were the principal motive for enforcing celibacy. His main reliance was on the assumption that, as Christ was born of a virgin, so he should be served and the eucharist be handled only by virgins."486 This took up again the fifth-century doctrine in its popular form, but it evidently led directly up to the heresy that the validity or benefit of the sacrament depended on the purity of the priest. In his zeal for celibacy Hildebrand fell into this heresy, although a man was burned for it at Cambrai in 1077.487 Hildebrand also gave civil authorities power over ecclesiastics in order to carry out his reform.488 In the middle of the twelfth century the "reform" was directed against the women (wives), for fear of the resistance of the men. In Rome the women were enslaved and given to the church of the Lateran. All bishops were ordered to seize the women for the benefit of their churches.489 In 1095 the sacrament of marriage was declared by the lateran council less potent than the religious vow, although the contrary had been the church doctrine.490 Thus what came out of the popular mores underwent the growth [227] of formulated dogma and deduction. In the thirteenth century marriage of the clergy ceased, but concubinage continued, concubines being a legitimate but inferior order of wives, whose existence was tolerated on payment of a fee known as cullagium.491 "Scarcely had the efforts of Nicholas and Gregory put an end to sacerdotal marriage at Rome when the morals of the Roman clergy became a disgrace to Christendom."492 "Those women [clerical concubines] came to be invested with a quasi-ecclesiastical character, and to enjoy the dearly prized immunities attached to that position."493 Gerson (1363-1429) paid admiration to virginity and celibacy, but he "saw and appreciated its practical evils, and had no scruple in recommending concubinage as a preventive, which, though scandalous in itself, might serve to prevent greater scandals." In districts it became customary to require a new parish priest to take a concubine.494 "This was the inversion which the popular opinion had undergone in four centuries."495 "The principles of the church led irrevocably to the conclusion, paradoxical as it may seem, that he who was guilty of immorality, knowing it to be wrong, was far less criminal than he who married, believing it to be right."496 At Avignon, when it was the seat of the papacy, sex license and vice became proverbial. A speech of the most shameless cynicism is attributed to Cardinal Hugo, in which he described the effect, in 1251, of the residence of the papal court there for eight years. In the fourteenth century that city became the most wicked, and especially the most licentious, in Christendom.497 The first case of the presence of women at a feast in the Vatican is said to have been at the marriage of Teodorina, daughter of Innocent VIII, in 1488. Comedies were played before the mixed company.498

228. Abelard. A cleric who married flinched from the standard of his calling, in the view of the church. Hildebrand's decrees were like the other crowning acts of great men,—they came at the culmination of a great movement in the mores. They accorded [228] with the will and wish of the masses. In all ages acts are due to mixed motives, but in the Middle Ages the good motives were kept for show and the bad ones controlled. Clerics did not cease to have concubines until after the Council of Trent, and the difference between law and practice (bridged over by pecuniary penalties) called for special ethics and casuistry. The case of Abelard (1079-1142) shows what tragedies were caused. He claimed to be, and to some extent he was, a champion of reason and common sense, and he was a skeptic as to the current philosophy. He was vain, weak, and ambitious. He selected the loveliest woman he knew, and won her love, which he used to persuade her to be his concubine, that she might not hinder him in his career.499 The treatment accorded to Heloise shows that a woman could be a concubine of an ecclesiastic, but not his wife, without condemnation. That was the allowance for human despair under the ecclesiastical rules.500 Thus the church first suggested views of life and dogmas of religion, with which the masses combined their mores and returned them to the church as a gift of societal power. The church then formulated the mores and created disciplinary systems to use the power and make it institutional and perpetual. Then the mores revolted against the authority and the religion, and the ethics which it taught. A Roman Catholic writer says that a study of the Middle Ages will produce this result: "We shall have recognized in the church the professional peacemaker between states and factions, as well as between man and man, the equitable mediator between rulers and their subjects, the consistent champion of constitutional liberty, the alleviator of the inequalities of birth, the uninterested and industrious disseminator of letters, the refiner of habits and manners, the well-meaning guardian of the national wealth, health, and intellect, and the fearless censor of public and private morality."501 These are, indeed, the functions which the church ought to have fulfilled, and about which ecclesiastics said something from time to time. Also, the church did do something for these [229] interests when no great interest of the church was at stake on the other side. No unbiased student of the Middle Ages has been convinced that, in truth and justice, the work of the mediæval church could be thus summed up. The one consistent effort of the church was to establish papal authority. Its greatest crime was obscurantism, which was war on knowledge and civilization. This nothing can palliate or offset.

229. The English church and the mores. The church, however, from 1000 A.D. on was a machine of societal selection, and it pursued its work, suggesting and administering a work of that kind, grand results of which have come down to us in the civilization we have inherited. Our work largely consists in rational efforts to eliminate the elements which the church introduced. In some respects the history of clerical celibacy in England best illustrates the mores. In the sixteenth century the rule and usage of the church had inculcated, as a deep popular prejudice, the notion that a priest could not be married. Cranmer, in ordering a visitation, directed investigation "whether any do contemn married priests, and for that they be married will not receive the communion or other sacrament at their hands."502 This prejudice very slowly died out, but it did die out and the popular judgment favored and required clerical marriage. In the nineteenth century popular judgment rose in condemnation of fox-hunting parsons, and also of pluralists, and it has caused reforms and the disappearance of those classes.

230. The selection of sacerdotal celibacy. If it had not been for sacerdotal celibacy, there would have been ecclesiastical feudalization and the ecclesiastical benefices would have become hereditary. The children of priests inherited benefices and intermarried so long as the marriage of priests was allowed. There would have been a priestly caste.503 The church as an institution would have been greatly modified. The consequences we cannot imagine. If Hildebrand and the other eleventh-century leaders foresaw the effect, it was statesmanship on their part to establish the celibacy of the clergy. That institution has molded the priesthood and the mores of all who have adhered to the mediæval church. The [230] Latin people of southern Europe are now horrified at the notion of a married priest. The concubine of a priest is a wicked woman, but she is not a social abomination. All protest and resistance seems to have passed away and, since the sixteenth century, sacerdotal celibacy has been accepted as a feature of the Romish Church, which all its members are expected to accept. It is a grand triumph of social selection.

231. How the church operated selection. The church was a great hierarchical organization for social power and control, which inherited part of the intense integration of the Roman empire. Fra Paolo Sarpi said of it, in the seventeenth century: "The interests of Rome demand that there shall be no change by which the power of the pontiff would be diminished, or by which the curia would lose any of the profits which it wins from the states, but the novelties by which the profits of the curia would be increased, or by which the authority of the states would be diminished and that of the curia increased, are not abhorred, but are favored. This we see every day."504 The church decided all recognition and promotion, and disposed of all rewards of ambition. The monarchical and autocratic tendency in it was the correct process for attaining the purposes by which it was animated. Its legitimacy as an organization for realizing faiths and desires which prevailed in society is beyond question. It drew towards itself all the talent of the age except what was military. It crushed all dissenters and silenced all critics for centuries. Its enginery was all planned for selection. It disposed of the greatest prizes and the most dreadful penalties. All its methods were positive and realistic, and whatever can be accomplished by authority, tyranny, penalty, and repression it accomplished. In modern times political parties offer the nearest parallels. They are organizations for societal control, which distribute rewards and penalties and coerce dissenters. The history of the papacy in the fifteenth century reminds one of the history of Tammany Hall in the nineteenth century. The strength of Tammany is due to the fact that it fits the tastes and needs of a great modern city under democracy. When Tammany won an [231] election it was said that the people had put the city in their hands and that they ought to profit by it. When Leo X was elected pope he said, "God has given us the papacy; now let us enjoy it."505

232. Mores and morals; social code. For every one the mores give the notion of what ought to be. This includes the notion of what ought to be done, for all should coöperate to bring to pass, in the order of life, what ought to be. All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, politeness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, coöperation, and fellowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. The thirteenth century bred in every heart such a sentiment in regard to heretics that inquisitors had no more misgivings in their proceedings than men would have now if they should attempt to exterminate rattlesnakes. The sixteenth century gave to all such notions about witches that witch persecutors thought they were waging war on enemies of God and man. Of course the inquisitors and witch persecutors constantly developed the notions of heretics and witches. They exaggerated the notions and then gave them back again to the mores, in their expanded form, to inflame the hearts of men with terror and hate and to become, in the next stage, so much more fantastic and ferocious motives. Such is the reaction between the mores and the acts of the living generation. The world philosophy of the age is never anything but the reflection on the mental horizon, which is formed out of the mores, of the ruling ideas which are in the mores themselves. It is from a failure to recognize the to and fro in this reaction that the current notion arises that mores are produced by doctrines. The "morals" of an age are never anything but the consonance between what is done and what the mores of the age require. The whole revolves on itself, in the relation of the specific to the general, within the horizon formed by the mores. Every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute [232] philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is a delusion. New elements are brought in only by new conquests of nature through science and art. The new conquests change the conditions of life and the interests of the members of the society. Then the mores change by adaptation to new conditions and interests. The philosophy and ethics then follow to account for and justify the changes in the mores; often, also, to claim that they have caused the changes. They never do anything but draw new lines of bearing between the parts of the mores and the horizon of thought within which they are inclosed, and which is a deduction from the mores. The horizon is widened by more knowledge, but for one age it is just as much a generalization from the mores as for another. It is always unreal. It is only a product of thought. The ethical philosophers select points on this horizon from which to take their bearings, and they think that they have won some authority for their systems when they travel back again from the generalization to the specific custom out of which it was deduced. The cases of the inquisitors and witch persecutors who toiled arduously and continually for their chosen ends, for little or no reward, show us the relation between mores on the one side and philosophy, ethics, and religion on the other. (See Chapters IX, XIV, and XV.)

233. Orthodoxy in the mores. Treatment of dissent. Selection by torture. It has been observed above (sec. 100) that the masses always enforce conformity to the mores. Primitive taboos are absolute. There is no right of private judgment. Renegades, apostates, deserters, rebels, traitors, and heretics are but varieties of dissenters who are all subject to disapproval, hatred, banishment, and death. In higher stages of civilization this popular temper becomes a societal force which combines with civil arrangements, religious observances, literature, education, and philosophy. Toleration is no sentiment of the masses for anything which they care about. What they believe they believe, and they want it accepted and respected. Illustrations are furnished by zeal for political parties and for accepted political philosophy. The first punishment for dissent less than death is extrusion from the society. Next come bodily pains and penalties, that is, torture. [233] Torture is also applied in connection with the death penalty, or modes of death are devised which are as painful as they can be made. The motive is to deter any one from the class of acts which is especially abominated. In the cases above cited (sec. 211), under criminal law, it will be observed that death by burning was applied in the case of incest, or other very abominable crime, in the laws of Hammurabi and other ancient codes (sec. 234). Such extreme penalties are first devised to satisfy public temper. The ruler is sure of popularity if he shows rigor and ferocity. His act will be regarded as just. It is now the popular temper, when any one commits a crime which is regarded as very horrible, to think and say what frightful punishment he deserves. It is a primary outpouring of savage vengeance. When precedents have been established for frightful punishments, the rulers apply the same in cases of disobedience against themselves or their authority. Now torture and ferocious penalties have reached another stage. They were invented by the masses, or in order to appeal to the masses. They have now become the means of authority and discipline. The history of torture is a long development of knowledge of pain, and of devices to cause it. Then it becomes a means which is at the disposal of those who have the power. The Dominican Izarn, in a chant of triumph over the Albigenses, represents himself as arguing with one of them to whom he says, "Believe as we do or thou shalt be burned."506 This is the voice of a victorious party. It is the enforcement of uniformity against dissent. Systematic and legal torture then becomes an engine of uniformity and it acts selectively as it crushes out originality and independent suggestion. It is at the disposal of any party in power. Like every other system of policy it loses its effect on the imagination by familiarity, and that effect can be regained only by intensifying it. Therefore where torture has been long applied we find that it is developed to grades of incredible horror.

234. Execution by burning. In the ancient world execution by burning was applied only when some religious abomination was included in the crime, or when it seemed politically outrageous. In the laws of Hammurabi an hierodule who opened [234] a dramshop or entered one to get a drink was to be burned.507 One who committed incest with his mother was to meet the same punishment,508 also one who married a mother and her daughter at the same time.509 In Levit. xx. 14 if a man marries a mother and her daughter together, all are to be burned, and in Levit. xxi. 9 the daughter of a priest, if she becomes a harlot, is to be burned. At the end of the seventh century b.c. some priestly families connected with the temple of Amon at Napata, Egypt, by way of reform, introduced the custom of eating the meat of sacrifices uncooked. They were burned for heresy.510 In the year 5 B.C., upon a rumor of the death of Herod I, some Jews tore down the Roman eagle from the gate of the temple. Herod caused forty-two of them to be burned.511 Caligula caused an atellan composer to be burned in the arena for a sarcasm on the emperor.512 Constantine ordered that if a free woman had intercourse with a slave man, the man should be burned.513 In all the ancient and classical period, burning was reserved as a most painful form of death for the most abominable criminals and the most extravagant and rare crimes. By another law of Constantine it was ordered that if Jews and heaven worshipers should stone those who were converted from their sects to the Catholic faith, they should be burned.514 In the Theodosian Code, also, any slave who accused his master of any crime except high treason was to be burned alive without investigation.515 Thus burning became the penalty for criminals of a despised class or race.

235. Burning in North American colonies. In the colonial laws of Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia it was provided that negroes should be executed by burning. Here we have a recrudescence of the idea that great penalties are deterrent. Modern penologists do not believe that that is true. It is, however, the belief of the masses, which they have recently shown in methods of lynching. It might have been believed ten years ago that it would be impossible to get a [ 235] crowd of Americans to burn a man at the stake, but there have been many cases of it.516

236. Solidarity of group in penalty incurred by one. In primitive society any one who departed from the ways of ancestors was supposed to offend their ghosts; furthermore, he was supposed to bring down their avenging wrath on the whole group of which he was a member. This idea has prevailed until modern times. It aroused the sentiment of vengeance against the dissenter, and united all the rest in a common interest against him. Especially, if any misfortune befell the group, they turned against any one who had broken the taboos. Thus goblinism was united to the other reasons for disliking dissenters and gave it definite direction and motive. At Rome, "in the days of the republic, every famine, pestilence, or drought was followed by a searching investigation of the sacred rites, to ascertain what irregularity or neglect had caused the divine anger, and two instances are recorded in which vestal virgins were put to death because their unchastity was believed to have provoked a national calamity."517 In the Roman law is found a proposition which was often quoted in the Middle Ages: "That which is done against divine religion is done to the harm of all."518 Hale519 explains the tortures inflicted by the Iroquois, by their desire to mark some kinds of Indian warfare as very abominable, and so to drive them out of use. Torture always flatters vanity. He who inflicts it has power. To reduce, plunder, and torment an enemy is a great luxury. The lust of blood is a frightful demon when once it is aroused. A Hungarian woman of noble birth, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, tortured to death thirty or forty of her maidservants. She began by inflicting severe punishments and developed a fiendish passion for the sight of suffering and blood.520 It is the combinations of the other elements, religion, ambition, sex, vanity, and the lust of blood, with the dislike of dissenters, [236] which has caused the most frightful developments of torture and persecution. This brings us to the case of the mediæval inquisition. It is not to be expected that a phenomenon of high civilization will be simple and uniform. So the motives of Christian persecution to enforce conformity are numerous and mixed. It was directly against some of the leading principles of Christianity, but there are texts in the New Testament which were used to justify it.521

237. Torture in ancient states. The Egyptians used torture in all ordinary investigations to find out the facts.522 The Greeks had used torture. It was common in the Periclean age in the courts of Athens. The accused gave his slaves to be tortured "to challenge evidence against himself."523 Plutarch524 tells of a barber who heard of the defeat of Nicias in Sicily and ran to tell the magistrates. They tortured him as a maker of trouble by disseminating false news, until the story was confirmed. Philotas was charged with planning to kill Alexander. He was tortured and the desired proof was obtained.525 Eusebius,526 describing the persecution under Nerva, says that Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, being one hundred and twenty years old, was tortured for several days and then crucified. Torture underwent a special development in the Euphrates valley. The Assyrian stones show frightful tortures which kings sometimes inflicted with their own hands. Maiming, flaying, impaling, blinding, and smothering in hot ashes became usual forms in Persia. They passed to the Turks, and the stories of torture and death inflicted in southeastern Europe, or in modern Persia, show knowledge and inventive skill far beyond what the same peoples have otherwise shown. The motives have been religious contempt, hereditary animosity, and vengeance, as well as political and warlike antagonism.

238. Torture in the Roman empire. The Roman emperors lived in a great fear of supernatural attack. There was a very [237] great interest for many people in the question: When will the emperor die? Many, no doubt, made use of any apparatus of astrology or sorcery to find out. To the emperor and his adherents this seemed to prove a desire that he should die, and was interpreted as treasonable. The Christians helped to develop demonism. They regarded all the heathen gods as demons. As they gained power in society this notion spread, and there was a great revival of popular demonism. By the lex Julia de Majestate torture might be applied to persons charged with treason, and the definition of treason was greatly enlarged. Torture was used to great excess under Tiberius and Nero. In the fourth century, after the emperors became Christians, it was feared that persons who hated them would work them ill by sorcery with the aid of the demons, formerly heathen gods. Sorcery and treason were combined and strengthened by a great tide of superstition which overspread the Roman world.527 The first capital punishment for heresy in the Christian church seems to have been the torture and burning of Priscillian, a Manichæan, at Treves, in 385, with six of his adherents, by the Emperor Maximus. This act caused a sensation of truly Christian horror. Of the two bishops who were responsible, one was expelled from his see; the other resigned.528 In 579 King Chilperic caused ecclesiastics to be tortured for disloyal behavior. About 580 the same king, having married a servant maid, an act which caused family and political trouble, upon the death of two of her children, caused a woman to be tortured who was charged with murdering the children in the interest of their stepbrother. She confessed, revoked her confession, and was burned. Three years later another child of the queen died, and several women were tortured and burned or broken on the wheel for causing the death by sorcery.529 Pope Nicholas I, in 866, opposed the use of torture as barbaric, and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals take the same position in regard to it. Indeed, that was the orthodox Christian view in the dark ages.

[238] 239. Such was the course of descent by which torture came to the Middle Ages. It was in connection with the revival of the eleventh century that the Roman law of treason was made to apply to heresy by construing it as treason to God.530 It is, however, of the first importance to notice that it was the masses which first applied death by burning to heretics. The mob lynched heretics long before the church began to persecute.531 (See, further, sec. 253.)

240. Jewish and Christian universality. Who persecutes whom? The Jews held that their God was the only real God. The gods of other nations were "vanity," that is, nullity. They held that their religion was the only true one. When about the time of the birth of Christ they stepped before the Greco-Roman world with this claim, it cost them great hatred and abuse. In the history of religion it counts as a great fact of advance in religious conceptions. Christianity inherited the idea and applied it to itself. It has always claimed to be absolutely and alone true as a religious system. Every other religion is an invader of its domain. It was this attitude which gave a definition to heresy. Under paganism "speculation was untrammeled. The notion of there being any necessary guilt in erroneous opinion was unknown."532 When once this notion found acceptance it produced a great number of deductions and corollaries and gave form to a great number of customs, such as they had never had before. The effect on the selection of articles of faith out of the doctrines of warring sects and philosophies is obvious, also the effect on methods of controversy. The effects are important in the fourth and fifth centuries, and the notion became one of the postulates of all thinking. This is the ultimate reason for the wickedness of heresy and for the abomination of all heretics. Certainly Christianity did not, in this matter, improve on the philosophy of paganism. It was this attitude of Christianity and its neglect of the existing political authority which drew upon it the contempt, derision, and hatred of the heathen. The persecution of Christians was popular. It expressed the popular feeling, which was more constantly expressed in the popular comedy and [239] the improvised popular play.533 The persecution in Nerva's time was more popular than political.534 In the following century the Christians denounced heathenism as a worship of demons. "It is not surprising that the populace should have been firmly convinced that every great catastrophe that occurred was due to the presence of the enemies of the gods."535 "The history of the period of the Antonines continually manifests the desire of the populace to persecute, restrained by the humanity of the rulers."536 In the third century the Decian persecution was largely due to the "popular fanaticism caused by great calamities, which were ascribed to the anger of the gods at the neglect of their worship."537 "The most horrible recorded instances of torture were usually inflicted, either by the populace, or in their presence, in the arena."538 Frightful tortures were inflicted in the attempt to make Christians sacrifice to the heathen gods. This effort was due to the popular apprehension of solidarity in responsibility for the neglect by the Christians of the state gods, to the decline of all social welfare and the implied insult to the state. In the fourth century Christianity became the religion of the state and took up the task of persecuting the heathen. "The only question is: In whose hands is the power to persecute?" That question alone determines who shall persecute whom. Literature was produced which uttered savage hatred against all who were not fully orthodox, and the sects practiced violence and cruelty against each other to the full extent for which they found opportunity. "Never, perhaps, was the infliction of mutilation, and prolonged and agonizing forms of death, more common" than in the seventh and eighth centuries.539 "Great numbers were deprived of their ears and noses, tortured through several days, and at last burned alive or broken slowly on the wheel."540 At Byzantium, in the ninth century, a prefect of the palace was burned in the circus for appropriating the property of a widow. It became the custom that capital punishments were executed in the circus.541 [240] All this course of things was due to popular tastes and desires, and it was a course of popular education of the masses in cruelty, love of bloodshed, and gratification of low hatred and other base passions. All the laws, the exhortations of the clergy, and the public acts of torture and execution held out the suggestion that heresy was a thing deserving the extremest horror and abomination. What was heresy? No one knew unless he was an educated theologian, and such were rare. The vagueness of heresy made it more terrible. "The long-continued teaching of the church, that persistent heresy was the one crime for which there could be no pardon or excuse, seemed to deprive even the wisest and purest of all power of reasoning where it was concerned."542

241. The ordeal. The doctrines and sentiments of this early age were seed planted to produce an immeasurable crop in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when they were brought forth again and quoted with the authority of the church fathers. The ordeal is a question addressed to the superior powers in order to learn the truth. The question is always categorical: Is this man guilty or not? The irrationality is that there is a third possibility which cannot be tested; the superior powers may not answer at all. In the early Middle Ages the ordeal was in common use in all civil and ecclesiastical trials. Experience proved the fallacy of it. We are led to believe that the people of the dark ages, not yet being locked in dogmatism, although stupid and ignorant, were better able to learn from experience than those of later times. Innocent III, in 1212, forbade the use of the ordeal, the occasion being its use by the Bishop of Strasburg against heretics.543 The Lateran Council of 1215 forbade ecclesiastics to take any part in ordeals. It is perhaps true that torture was introduced from the Roman law after the ordeal was ruled out.544

242. Irrationality of torture. Torture was far more irrational than the ordeal. The Roman authorities had recorded warnings of its fallacy.545 Torture destroys nerve power, will, and consciousness. There comes a point at which the victim will assent to anything to escape pain, or to get a quick and easy death. [ 241] Therefore "confessions" under torture are of no value. Ulpian said of it, "Res est fragilis et periculosa et quae veritatem fallat."546 One of the templars said that if he was tortured further he would confess that he had murdered the Saviour. Another said that he would confess anything if he was tortured further, although he was ready to suffer any death for the Order of Templars. He would confess that he had killed the mother of God.547 A heretic under torture cried out that Christ, if so treated, would be proved a heretic.548 Bernard Delicieux declared before King Philip that Peter and Paul could be convicted of heresy by the methods of the inquisitors.549 Count Frederick von Spee, a Jesuit who opposed the witch persecutions, is quoted as saying, in 1631, "Treat the heads of the church, the judges, or me, as you treat those unhappy ones [accused of witchcraft], subject any of us to the same tortures, and you will discover that we are all sorcerers."550 He quoted an inquisitor who boasted that if he could get the pope on the rack he would prove him a sorcerer.551 In the thirteenth century "judges were well convinced of the failure of the procedure with its secret and subjective elements, but they could not in any other way cope with crime."552

This means, of course, that by long and manifold suggestion certain selected forms of crime had been stigmatized until the masses regarded them with horror. Then the apparatus of the administration of justice was brought to bear to exterminate all who could be charged with them, and when the process was objected to as horrible, it was defended on grounds of necessity to meet the horrible crime. By this action and reaction a great body of interests was enveloped in a special atmosphere, within which any excess of savagery was possible. The societal selection was prosecuted by murder of all dissenters.

243. Inquisitorial procedure from Roman law. The Roman criminal procedure was, in part, inquisitorial.553 In the later period [242] of the republic a private accuser, who must be an injured party, started and conducted the prosecution, but the magistrates could proceed on their own motion, upon denunciation, or by inquisitorial process. The last method became the custom under the empire. Prosecutions for treason were thus carried on, and by the end of the empire sorcerers and heretics, as hostes publici, like traitors, were thus tried. All citizens were bound to denounce such criminals. This procedure was taken up into the canon law, so that the Christian church inherited a system of procedure as well as the doctrines above stated.554

244. Bishops as inquisitors. In the Carolingian period bishops were instructed to seek out heretics and to secure their conversion, but they rarely distinguished themselves by zeal in this matter. The procedure was that of a grand jury set in motion by common report. Lucius III and Barbarossa, acting together in 1184, prepared a decretal in which the duty of bishops was reaffirmed and an attempt was made to give sharper method to their proceedings. They were to seek out heretics, holders of secret conventicles, or any who "in any way differed, in mode of life, from the faithful in general." Those who refused to be disciplined and to conform were to be abandoned to the secular arm for fitting punishment. All civil officers were to swear to enforce laws against heretics. Here we find the fundamental notions of the later Inquisition, but zealous executioners were wanting. If the decretal had been "obeyed strictly and energetically, it would have established an episcopal instead of a papal Inquisition."

245. Definition of heretic. The definition of a heretic just quoted occurs often and is the only one which could be formulated. A person was as liable to be charged with heresy if better than the crowd as if worse. "In fact, amid the license of the Middle Ages ascetic virtue was apt to be regarded as a sign of heresy. About 1220 a clerk of Spire, whose austerity subsequently led him to join the Franciscans, was only saved by the interposition of Conrad, afterwards Bishop of Hildesheim, from being burned as a heretic, because his preaching led certain women to lay aside their vanities of apparel and behave with [ 243] humility.... I have met with a case, in 1320, in which a poor old woman at Pamiers submitted to the dreadful sentence for heresy simply because she would not take an oath. She answered all interrogations on points of faith in orthodox fashion, but though offered her life if she would swear on the gospels, she refused to burden her soul with the sin, and for this she was condemned as a heretic."555 "Heretics who were admitted to be patterns of virtue were ruthlessly exterminated in the name of Christ, while in the same holy name the orthodox could purchase absolution for the vilest of crimes for a few coins."556 There could be no definition of a heretic but one who differed in life and conversation from the masses around him. This might mean strange language, dress, manners, or greater restraint in conduct. Pallor of countenance was a mark of a heretic from the fourth century to the twelfth.557 In the thirteenth century Franciscans were preëminently orthodox, but when John XXII stigmatized as heretical the assertion that Christ and his Apostles never had any property, they became criminals whom civil officers were bound to send to the stake.558 John was himself a heretic as to the "beatific vision." He thought that the dead would not enter the presence of God until the judgment day.559 The Franciscans held that the blood shed by Christ in the Passion lost its divinity, was separated from the Logos, and remained on earth. This was heresy.560 The Dominicans, with Thomas Aquinas, were heretics as to the immaculate conception.561 All the disputants on all sides of these questions went into the dispute at the risk of burning or being burned, as the tide should run.

246. The Albigenses. For some reason which is not easy to understand, the Manichæan doctrine took deep root in the Christian church from the fourth century on. To us the doctrine seems ethically bad, but that only shows how little religious dogmas make ethics. The enemies of the Albigenses recognized their high purity of life.562 They called themselves kathari, or puritans. Popular fanaticism commenced persecution against them in the [ 244] eleventh century. They were in antagonism to the hierarchy and the Catholic system, especially to papal autocracy. "Even with those abhorred sectaries, the church was wonderfully slow to proceed to extremities. It hesitated before the unaccustomed task. It shrank from contradicting its teachings of charity, and was driven forward by popular fanaticism. The persecution of Orleans, in 1017, was the work of King Robert, the Pious. The burning at Milan, soon after, was done by the people against the will of the archbishop.... Even as late as 1144, the church of Liège congratulated itself on having, by the mercy of God, saved the greater part of a number of confessed and convicted kathari from the turbulent mob which strove to burn them.... In 1145 the zealous populace seized the kathari and burned them, despite the resistance of the ecclesiastical authorities."563 These cases of lynching are the first cases, in the Middle Ages, of burning heretics. They show that the masses in the Christian church thought that the proper treatment of enemies of God, the church, and all men.

247. Persecution popular. Innocent III began war on the Albigenses at the beginning of the thirteenth century, as rebels and heretics. All Catholics approved what he did, and thought that the Albigenses richly deserved all the treatment they received. The age was not religious, but it had intense religiosity, and the whole religiosity was heated to a high pitch by the contest with the Albigenses. The pride, ambition, and arrogance of the hierarchy and the basest greed and love of plunder of the masses were enlisted against them. Lea's statement is therefore fully justified that "the Inquisition was not an organization arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of the church. It was rather a natural—one may almost say an inevitable—evolution of the forces at work in the thirteenth century, and no one can rightly appreciate the process of its development and the results of its activity without a somewhat minute consideration of the factors controlling the minds and souls of men during the ages which laid the foundation of modern civilization."564 In the mind of the age [ 245] "there was a universal consensus of opinion that there was nothing to do with a heretic but to burn him." This was one of those wide and popular notions upon which mores grow, because the folkways are adjusted to it in all departments of life as a rule of welfare. The courts of Toulouse at first, not recognizing the forces against the Albigenses, tried to protect their subjects, but "to the public law of the period [Raymond II of Toulouse] was an outlaw, without even the right of self-defense against the first-comer, for his very self-defense was rated among his crimes. In the popular faith of the age he was an accursed thing, without hope, here or hereafter. The only way of readmission into human fellowship, the only hope of salvation, lay in reconciliation with the church through the removal of the awful ban which had formed half of his inheritance. To obtain this he had repeatedly offered to sacrifice his honor and his subjects, and the offer had been contemptuously spurned.... The battle of toleration against persecution had been fought and lost; nor, with such a warning as the fate of the two Raymonds, was there risk that other potentates would disregard the public opinion of Christendom by ill-advised mercy to the heretic."565

248. An annalist of Worms is quoted about Dorso's operations on the upper Rhine in 1231. Dorso burned many persons of the peasant class. The annalist adds, "The people, when they saw this, were favorable to the inquisitors and helped them; and rightly, since those heretics deserved death. Confident in the approval of the masses, they went on to make arrests in towns and villages, as they pleased, and then they said to the judges, without further evidence, 'These are heretics. We withdraw our hands from them.' The judges were thus compelled to burn many. That was not according to the sense of the Holy Scriptures, and the ecclesiastics everywhere were greatly troubled. Since, however, the people took sides with the unjust judges, their will was executed everywhere." "The pitiless and incompetent judges later saw that they could not maintain their conduct without the help of great men, whom they won by saying that they would burn rich people, whose goods the great men [246] should have." "That pleased the great men, who helped them, and called them to their cities and towns." "The people, when they saw this, asked the reason, to which the persecutors answered, 'We would burn a hundred innocent if there was one guilty amongst them.'"566

249. It was also true of the persecutions of the philosophers in Mohammedan Spain that they were popular. "The best educated princes allowed themselves to be driven to persecute, in spite of their personal preferences, as a means of winning popularity."567

250. Theory of persecution. The public opinion of the ruling classes of Europe demanded that heresy should be exterminated at whatever cost, and yet with the suppression of open resistance the desired end seemed as far off as ever.... Trained experts were needed, whose sole business it should be to unearth the offenders and extort a confession of their guilt.... Thus to the public of the thirteenth century the organization of the Inquisition and its commitment to the children of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis appeared a perfectly natural or rather inevitable development arising from the admitted necessities of the time and the instrumentalities at hand.568

251. Duties laid on the civil authority. The secular authority accepted the functions allotted to it out of the spirit of the age. To fall into disfavor at Rome was, for a prince, to risk the loyalty of his subjects, with whom it was a point of high importance to belong to a "Christian" state, that is, one on good terms with the church. "We are not to imagine, however, from these reduplicated commands that the secular power, as a rule, showed itself in the slightest degree disinclined to perform the duty. The teachings of the church had made too profound an impression for any doubt in the premises to exist. As has been seen above, the laws of all the states of Europe prescribed concremation as the appropriate penalty for heresy, and even the free commonwealths of Italy recognized the Inquisition as the judge whose sentences were to be blindly executed."569

[247] 252. "The practice of burning the heretic alive was thus not the creature of positive law, but arose generally and spontaneously, and its adoption by the legislator was only the recognition of a popular custom."570 "Confession of heresy became a matter of vital importance, and no effort was deemed too great, no means too repulsive, to secure it. This became the center of the inquisitorial process, and it is deserving of detailed consideration, not only because it formed the basis of procedure in the Holy Office, but also because of the vast and deplorable influence which it exercised for five centuries on the whole judicial system of continental Europe."571 In the second half of the twelfth century burning had become, by custom, the usual punishment for heretics. The purpose was universally regarded as right and pious, and the means was thought wise and correct. Therefore the whole procedure went forward on a course of direct and consistent development.572 It was first decreed in positive law in the code of Pedro II, of Aragon, in 1197. In the laws of Frederick II, in 1224, the punishment was death by burning or loss of the tongue. In 1231, in Sicily, burning was made absolute. In 1238 the stake was made the law of the empire against heresy. In 1270 Louis IX made it the law of France.573 "Dominic and Francis, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas, Innocent III and St. Louis, were types, in their several ways, of which humanity, in any age, might well feel proud, and yet they were as unsparing of the heretic as Ezzelino da Romano was of his enemies. With such men it was not hope of gain or lust of blood or pride of opinion or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but represented public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century."574 That is to say, that the virtues of the individuals were overruled by the vices of the mores of the age.

253. The shares of the church and the masses. The steps of the process by which the Christian church was made an organization to enforce uniformity of confession by bodily pain, that is, [248] in fact, by murder, demand careful attention. Back of all the popular demands for persecution there was the teaching of the church in antecedent periods and a crude popular logic of detestation and destruction. Then the outbreak of persecution appears as a popular act with lynching executions. At this point the church, by virtue of its teaching and leading functions, ought to have repressed excessive zeal and guided the popular frenzy. It did not do so. It took the lead of the popular movement and encouraged it. This was its greatest crime, but it must be fairly understood that it acted with public opinion and was fully supported by the masses and by the culture classes. The Inquisition was not unpopular and was not disapproved. It was thought to be the proper and necessary means to deal with heresy, just as we now think police courts necessary to deal with petty crimes (see sec. 247). The system of persecution went on to extravagances. The masses disapproved. They could not be held to any responsibility. They turned against the ecclesiastical authorities and threw all the blame on them.

254. The church uses the power for selfish aggrandizement. Things now advanced, therefore, to the second stage. The church authorities accepted the executive duty in respect to the defense of the church and society against heresy. The popular idea was that heresy would bring down the wrath of God on all Christendom, or on the whole of the small group in which it occurred.575 The church authorities formulated doctrines, planned programmes, and appointed administrative officers. To them the commission laid upon them meant more social power, and they turned it into a measure of selfish aggrandizement. This alienated first all competent judges, and at last the masses.

255. The Inquisition took shape slowly. The Inquisition took shape very gradually through the first half of the thirteenth century. "In the proceedings of this period the rudimentary character of the Inquisition is evident." The mendicant orders furnished the first agents. They were admired and honored by the masses. Gregory IX, in his first bulls (1233), making the [ 249] Dominicans the official inquisitors, seemed to be uncertain as to the probable attitude which the bishops would adopt to this invasion of their jurisdiction, "while the character of his instructions shows that he had no conception of what the innovation was to lead to." "As yet there was no idea of superseding the episcopal functions." In fact, the mendicant orders supplanted the military orders as papal militia, just as they were later supplanted by the Jesuits, and they very greatly assisted the reorganization of the church into an absolute monarchy under the pope.576 Frederick II died in 1250. He was the first modern man on a throne. He had aimed to rule all Christendom by despotic methods which he perhaps learned from the Mohammedans. He would have made a monarchy if he had succeeded, which would have anticipated that of Charles V or Philip II by three hundred years.577 It was the mores of the age which decided between him and the pope. His court was a center of Arabic culture and of religious indifference. There were eunuchs, a harem, astrologers from Bagdad, and Jews richly pensioned by the emperor to translate Arabic works. "All these things were transmuted, in popular belief, into relations with Ashtaroth and Beelzebub."578 The saying that there had been three great impostors—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed—was attributed to him, and it appears that his contemporaries generally believed that he first used the statement. The only thing which he left behind was the code of laws which he had made, by way of concession and attempt to buy peace from the popes, by which all civil authorities were made constables and hangmen of the church, to which all dissenters were sacrificed.

256. Formative legislation. In 1252 Innocent IV issued a bull "which should establish machinery for systematic persecution as an integral part of the social edifice in every city and every state." He authorized the torture of witnesses. "These provisions are not the wild imaginings of a nightmare, but sober, matter-of-fact legislation, shrewdly and carefully devised to accomplish a settled policy, and it affords us a valuable insight into [250] the public opinion of the day to find that there was no effective resistance to its acceptance." There is evidence, twenty years later, that the Inquisition "had not been universally accepted with alacrity, but the few instances which we find recorded of refusal show how generally it was submitted to." The institution was in full vigor in Italy, but not beyond the Alps, "yet this was scarce necessary so long as public law and the conservative spirit of the ruling class everywhere rendered it the highest duty of the citizen of every degree to aid in every way the business of the inquisitor, and pious monarchs hastened to enforce the obligations of their subjects." "It was not the fault of the church if a bold monarch like Philip the Fair occasionally ventured to incur divine vengeance by protecting his subjects."579

257. Dungeons. It is evident that the lust of blood was educated into the mores by public executions with torture, by obscene adjuncts, by inhuman sports, and by public shows. Cruelty and inhumanity in civil cases were as great as under the Inquisition. A person apprehended on any charge was imprisoned in a frightful dungeon, damp, infested by rats and vermin, generally in chains, and he was often forced to lie in a constrained position. This was a part of the policy which prevailed in the administration of justice. It was intended to break the spirit and courage of the accused. Confinement was solitary, and various circumstances besides pain and hunger were brought to bear on the imagination. It was the rule that every accused person must fast for eight or ten hours before torture. The dungeons were often ingenious means of torture. There was one in the Bastille at Paris, the floor of which was conical, with the point downwards so that it was impossible to sit, or lie, or stand in it. In another, in the Châtelet, the floor was all the time covered by water, in which the prisoners must stand.580

258. The yellow crosses. One of the penalties inflicted by the Inquisition causes astonishment and at the same time shows how thoroughly the mass of the population were on the side of the Inquisition until the fifteenth century. Persons convicted of [ 251] heresy, but coerced to penitence, were forced to wear crosses of cloth, generally yellow, three spans long and two wide, sewed on their garments. Thus the symbol of Christian devotion was turned into a badge of shame.581 It pointed out the wearer as an outcast. However, it depended on the mass of the population to say what it should mean. How did they treat persons thus marked? They boycotted them. The wearers of crosses could not find employment, or human intercourse, or husbands, or wives. They were actually unable to get the relations with other men and women which are essential to existence.582 If the people had pitied them, or sympathized with them, they would have shown it by kindness, in spite of ecclesiastical orders. In fact, the cross was a badge of infamy and was enforced as such by public action. "The unfortunate penitent was exposed to the ridicule and derision of all whom he met, and was heavily handicapped in every effort to earn a livelihood."583 It is evident that the way in which the general public treated the cross-wearers can alone account for the weight which those under this penalty attached to it. "It was always considered very shameful." At Augsburg, in 1393, for seventy gold gulden, the wearing of crosses could be escaped.584

259. Confiscation. Another penalty of frightful effect was confiscation. As soon as a man was arrested for heresy, his property was sequestrated and inventoried. His family was thrown on the street. It was out of the Roman law that "pope and king drew the weapons which rendered the pursuit of heresy attractive and profitable." "The church cannot escape the responsibility of naturalizing this penalty in European law as a punishment for spiritual transgressions."585 "It would be difficult to estimate the amount of human misery arising from this source alone." "The threats of coercion which at first were necessary to induce the temporal princes to confiscate the property of their heretical subjects soon became superfluous, and history has few displays of man's eagerness to profit by his fellow's misfortunes more deplorable than that of the vultures which followed in the [252] wake of the Inquisition to batten on the ruin which it wrought." In Italy the confiscated property was divided into three parts by the pope's order. One part went to the Inquisition for its expenses, one part to the papal camera, and one part to the civil authority. Later, the civil authority generally got nothing. About 1335 a Franciscan bishop of Silva "reproached those of his brethren who act as inquisitors with their abuse of the funds accruing to the Holy Office.... The inquisitors monopolized the whole, spent it on themselves, or enriched their kindred at their pleasure." "Avarice joined hands with fanaticism, and between them they supplied motive power for a hundred years of fierce, unremitting, unrelenting persecution which, in the end, accomplished its main purpose." The confiscations did not concern the populace. They furnished the motive of the great to support the administration of the Inquisition.586 "Persecution, as a steady and continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation. It was this which supplied the fuel to keep up the fires of zeal, and when it was lacking the business of defending the faith languished lamentably. When katharism disappeared under the brilliant aggressiveness of Bernard Gui, the culminating point of the Inquisition was passed, and thenceforth it steadily declined, although still there were occasional confiscated estates over which king, prelate, and noble quarreled for some years to come."587 "The earnest endeavors of the inquisitors were directed much more to obtaining conversions with confiscations and betrayal of friends than to provoking martyrdoms.... The really effective weapons of the Holy Office, the real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be looked for in its dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating penances of the saffron crosses, and in the invisible police with which it benumbed the heart and soul of every man who had once fallen into its hands."588 It is evident that these means of tormenting and coercing dissenters went much further to cause them to disappear than autos-de-fe and other executions. The selection of those who submitted, or played the hypocrite, was accomplished in the fifteenth century.

[253] 260. Operation of the Inquisition. The Inquisition acted effectively. It kept detailed records and pursued its victims to the third generation.589 It covered Europe with a network of reports which would rival the most developed modern police systems, "putting the authorities on the alert to search for every stranger who wore the air of one differing in life and conversation from the ordinary run of the faithful." "To human apprehension, the papal Inquisition was well-nigh ubiquitous, omniscient, and omnipotent." Inquisitors were set free from all rules which had been found necessary to save judges from judicial error,590 and the formularies to guide inquisitors inculcated chicane, terrorism, deception, and brow-beating, and an art of entangling the accused in casuistry and dialectics. A new crime was invented for the cases in which confession could not be obtained: suspicion of heresy, which had three degrees, "light," "vehement," and "violent." Even papal decretals which restrained the effort to destroy the accused could be set aside.591 Thus the Inquisition coöperated with the criminal law. It operated on the society of Christendom for ten or twelve generations a selection of those who would submit and obey, and an elimination of those who dissented.

261. Success of the Inquisition. That the Inquisition succeeded in its purpose is certain. It forced at least external conformity and silence, especially of the masses. The heterodoxy of the Middle Ages "is divisible into two currents, of which one, called the 'eternal gospel,' includes the mystical and communistic sects which, starting from Joachim de Florus, after having filled the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ... was carried on, in the fourteenth, by the German mystics; the other, summed up in the blasphemy that there had been three great impostors [Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed], represents materialistic infidelity, due to a study of the Arabs, and skulking under the name of Averroes."592 Of these two schools of heretics the former was the more popular and tenacious. It is not to be understood that the masses ever recognized their own handiwork in the Inquisition, or the popes of the fifteenth century. On the contrary, the sequence goes on to [254] the fourth stage in which the masses, seeing the operation of ambition, venality, and despotism in the officers of the institution created to meet a popular demand, denounce it and turn against it to destroy it.

262. Torture in civil and ecclesiastical trials. (See sec. 237 ff.) In the course of its work the Inquisition had introduced torture into the administration of Christian justice and into the mores. The jurists were all corrupted by it. They supposed that, without torture, no crimes could be detected or punished, and this opinion ruled the administration of justice on the continent until the eighteenth century.593 Lea finds the earliest instances of legal torture in the Veronese Code of 1228, and in the Sicilian Constitutions of 1231;—work of the rationalist emperor, Frederick II, but it was "sparingly and hesitatingly employed." Innocent IV adopted it in 1252, but only secular authorities were to use it. This was to save the sanctity of ecclesiastics. In 1256 Alexander IV, "with characteristic indirection," authorized inquisitors and their associates to absolve each other, and grant dispensations for irregularities. This gave them absolute liberty, and they could inflict or supervise torture.594 There were other "poses," such as the prohibition to shed blood, i.e. to break the skin, and the rule to ask the civil power, when surrendering the victim to it, not to proceed to extremes, although it was bound to burn the victim. As the system continued in practice its methods were refined and its experts were trained. Any one who was charged must be convicted if possible. The torture produced permanent crippling or maiming. It would not do to release any one so marked with the investigation and then acquitted. Hence more and more frightful measures became necessary. Nevertheless cases occurred in which the accused held out beyond the power of the persecutors.595 At Bamberg, in 1614, a woman seventy-four years old endured torture up to the third grade. After three quarters of an hour on the "Bock" she fell dead. The verdict was that she had cleared herself, by enduring the torture, of the "evidence" against her, and would have been freed if she had lived. She was to have Christian burial, and a document attesting this finding was to be given to her husband and children. Some jurists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were led to doubt about torture, but they almost all agreed that it was necessary "in some cases." These were the reformers who were careful not to be extremists. We are told that Peter of Ravenna, in 1511, urged the abolition of torture, and that Louis Vivez, a Spaniard, took the same position a little later. Neither won any attention.596 In the Carolina, Charles V's law book of 1532, which was in general savage in its penalties, torture was to be applied only [255] in cases punishable by death or life imprisonment, and only on strong prima facie evidence of guilt. Confession under torture was to have no weight unless confirmed after an interval. These restrictions were not observed in practice.597 There are very many cases on record in which it was afterwards proved that many persons had suffered torture and cruel execution, upon confession, who were innocent of all crime.598

263. The selection accomplished. Thus the apparatus and devices for putting down dissent and enforcing submission to such authority as the great number were willing to recognize had attained a superficial success. Opposition was silenced. Dissent was made so dangerous that no one dared express it, except here and there a hero, and outward conformity to church discipline was almost universal. The mores also underwent influence from a societal power which was great and pervading. The external and artificial character of the conformity was so well known that a name was given to it,—implicita fides,—and this was discussed as to its nature and value. The mores are gravely affected by implicita fides when it is held by a great number of persons.599 The selection which had destroyed honest thinkers and sincere churchmen had cultivated a class of smooth hypocrites and submissive cowards. In the fifteenth century the whole of Christendom had accepted the church system with its concepts of welfare and its dictates of duty, and had adopted the ritual means of holiness and salvation which it prescribed. In fact, at no other time were men ever so busy as then with "good works," or so fussy about church ritual. Everybody was anxious not to be a heretic. At the same time the whole mediæeval system was falling to pieces, and the inventions and discoveries were disproving all received and approved ideas about the world and welfare in it. Gross sensuality and carnal lust got possession of society, and the church system was an independent system of balancing accounts with the other world. The theater declined into obscenity and coarseness, and the popular pulpit was hardly better.600 The learned world was returning to classical [256] paganism. The popes had their children in the Vatican and publicly married them there. Under Sextus IV the courtesans at Rome paid a tax which produced 20,000 ducats per annum. Prelates owned brothels. Innocent VIII tried to stop the scandal. In 1490 his vicar published an edict against all concubinage, but the pope forced him to recall it because all ecclesiastics had concubines. There were 6800 public meretrices at Rome besides private ones and concubines. Concubinage was really tolerated, subject to the payment of an amercement.601 The proceedings under Alexander VI were only the culmination of the license taken by men who were irresponsible masters of the world, and who showed the insanity of despotism just as the Roman emperors did.602 The church had broken down under the reaction of its own efforts to rule the world. It had made moral hypocrisy and religious humbug characteristic of Christians, for he who indulges in sensual vice and balances it off by ritual devices is morally subject to the deepest corruption of character. The church system had corrupted the mores by adding casuistry and dialectic smartness to the devices for regulating conduct and satisfying interests. The men of the Renaissance, especially in Italy, acted always from passionate motives and went to great excess. Their only system of conduct was success in what they wanted to do, and so they were often heroes of crime. Yet they all conformed to church ritual and discipline.

264. A great undertaking like the suppression of dissent by force and cruelty cannot be carried out in a great group of states without local differentiation and variation. To close the story, it is worth while to notice these variations in England, Spain, and Venice.

265. Torture in England. The Inquisition cannot be said to have existed in the British Islands or Scandinavia. The laws of Frederick II had no authority there. In England, in 1400, the death penalty for heresy was introduced by the statute de heretico comburendo. In 1414 a mixed tribunal of ecclesiastics and laymen was established to search out heretics and punish them. It was employed to suppress Lollardry. Under Edward VI these [ 257] laws were repealed; under Mary they were renewed. In the first Parliament of Elizabeth they were repealed again, except the statute of 1400, which was repealed in 1676, when Charles II wanted toleration for Roman Catholics. Then the ecclesiastical courts were restricted to ecclesiastical penalties.603 Torture was never legal in England. The use of it was pushed to the greatest extreme when Clement V and Philip the Fair were seeking evidence against the templars. Then the pope wrote a fatherly letter of expostulation to Edward of England, because of the lack of this engine in his dominions.604 Cases of torture no doubt occurred. The star chamber had an inquisitorial process in which the rack seems to have been used. Barbaro, a Venetian ambassador in the sixteenth century, reported the non-use of torture as an interesting fact in English mores. He says the English think that it often forces untrue confession, that it "spoils the body and an innocent life; thinking, moreover, that it is better to release a criminal than to punish an innocent man."605 From the thirteenth century it was forbidden to keep a prisoner in chains. In other countries this was the rule, and ingenuity was expended to fasten the prisoner in a most uncomfortable position.606 The last case of the rack in the star chamber was that of Peacham, in 1614.607 The last execution for heresy in the British Islands was that of a medical student at Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, named Aikenhead, in 1696.608 The greatest cruelty in England was "pressing" prisoners to compel them to plead because, if they did not plead, the trial could not go on.

It follows that the repressive system of the mediæval church did not produce effects on the mores in England.

266. The Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition is an offshoot and development of that of the mediæval church. The latter was started in Aragon and Navarre in 1238.609 In the latter half of the fourteenth century Eymerich (author of the Directorium Inquisitorum) conducted an inquisition in Aragon against Jews and Moors. In Castile, in 1400, an inquisition was in activity.610 None of these efforts produced a permanent establishment. In the reign of Isabella, Cardinal Mendoza organized the Inquisition as a state institution to establish the throne.611 The king named the inquisitors, who need not be ecclesiastics. The confiscated property of "heretics" fell to the state. Ecclesiastics were subject to the tribunal. The church long withheld approval from this inquisition, because it was political in origin and purpose, and was created outside the church organization and without church authorization. The populace also opposed it. This union of church and populace forced the grandees to support it.612 The punishments "implied confiscation of [ 258] property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled returned to society in a far more degraded condition than convicts released on ticket of leave. The stigma attached in perpetuity to the posterity of the condemned, whose names were conspicuously emblazoned upon church walls as foemen to Christ and to the state."613 When "the Spanish viceroys tried to introduce the Spanish Inquisition at Naples and Milan, the rebellious people received protection and support from the papacy, and the Holy Office, as remodeled in Rome, became a far less awful engine of oppression than that of Seville."614 The Spanish Inquisition went on to a new form, free from papal and royal control and possessing a "specific organization."615 "Like the ancient councils of the time of the Goths, the Inquisition is an arm which serves, in the hands of the monarch, to finish the subjugation of the numerous semi-feudal nobles created by the conquest, because before the faith there are no privileged persons, and no one is sheltered from the ire of the terrible tribunal. Its intervention is so absolute, and its dedication to its function so extravagant, that, rendering itself more Catholic than the pope, it usurps his authority and revolts against the orders of the pontiff, giving to the peninsular church the character of a national church, with the king at the head as pontiff, and the inquisitor by his side as chief prelate."616 The peculiar character of the Spanish Inquisition as a state institution and a civil engine should never be forgotten. It was very different from the papal Inquisition. The creature also ruled its creator, for it controlled the state in the direction of its own institutional character and purposes. The Spanish Inquisition, therefore, offers us the extreme development of the movement which started in the popular tastes, ideas, and wishes of the twelfth century, when it was employed for the selfish purposes of rulers. It presents the extreme case of a positive institution, born from the mores and winning independent power and authority over all interests. It very deeply affected Spanish mores. It had no great effect of societal selection.

267. Inquisition in Venice. The Inquisition in Venice took on a form which was to some extent peculiar. The Venetian political system was secret, suspicious, and despotic. It would not admit any interference from outside. Venice always pretended to hold off church authority. In fact, however, she could not maintain this attitude. The Inquisition won control of many subjects beyond heresy or only constructively heresy.617 Fra Paolo Sarpi618 made a collection of Venetian laws which show the jealousy of ecclesiastical interference, or which nullified the ordinances made in Rome. "The position of the republic was indefensible under the public law of the period. It was [ 259] so administering its own laws as to afford an asylum to a class universally proscribed, and refusing to allow the church to apply the only remedy deemed appropriate to this crying evil. It therefore yielded to the inevitable, but in a manner to preserve its own autonomy and independence."619 "The truth is that, in regard both to the Holy Office and the index, Venice was never strong enough to maintain the independence which she voted."620 In 1573 Paolo Veronese was summoned by the Holy Office to explain and justify his picture of the Supper, now in the Louvre. He had put in a man at arms, a greyhound, and other figures which the inquisitors thought irrelevant and unfit. He was ordered to change the picture within three months. He put Magdalen in the place of the greyhound.621 It is impossible to make a definite statement of the results of the Venetian effort to resist the church system, but that such an effort was made in Italy is an important historical fact.

268. Use of the Inquisition for political and personal purposes. In spite of the religiosity of the age there were princes and factions which cared more for political power than for theological questions. When the power of the Inquisition was established many ecclesiastical and civil persons desired to employ its agency for their personal or party ends. Boniface VIII, in the bull Unam Sanctam, laid down in full force the doctrine of papal supremacy and independence. Any one who resisted the power lodged by God in the church resisted God, unless, like the Manichæans, he believed in two principles, in which case he was a heretic. If the pope errs, he can be judged by God alone. There is no earthly appeal. "We say, declare, define, and pronounce, that it is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subjected to the Roman pontiff." "It was soon perceived that an accusation of heresy was a peculiarly easy and efficient method of attacking a political enemy."622 John XXII, in his quarrel with Visconti, trumped up charges of heresy which won public opinion away from Visconti, disassociated his friends, and ruined him. Heresy and damnation were used to and fro, as interest dictated, and only for policy.623 This is the extreme development of the action against dissenters in its third stage, the abuse of power for selfish purposes. "Heretic" became an epithet of immense power in factional quarrels, and the Inquisition was a weapon which any one could use who could seize it. Hence effects on the mores were produced in an age when factions were numerous and their quarrels constant. In these cases, however, the selectional effect was only against the personal enemies of the powerful, and was not a societal effect at all.

269. We have distinguished four stages in the story of the attempt to establish religious uniformity under papal control in [260] the Middle Ages. I. The church taught doctrines and alleged facts about the wickedness of aberrant opinions. II. The masses, accepting these teachings, built deductions upon them, and drew inferences as to the proper treatment of dissenters. They put the inferences in effect by lynching acts. III. The leaders of society accepted the leadership of these popular movements, and the church went on to teach hatred of dissenters and extreme abuse of them. It elevated persecution to a theory of social welfare by the extermination of dissenters, reduced the views and notions of the masses to dogmas, and led in selection by murder. IV. These ideas and practices were then vulgarized by the masses again. Trial by torture, bloody executions, and finally witchcraft persecutions were the results in the next stage. Witchcraft persecutions were not selective. They are well worth study as the greatest illustration of the degree of aberration which the mores may undergo, but they lie aside from the present topic. In savage life alleged witchcraft is punished with great torture and a painful death,624 but nothing of the kind is found in any of the great religions except Latin Christianity.

[261]

CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY↩

Origin and motives.—Slavery taught steady labor.—Servitude of group to group.—Slavery and polygamy.—Some men serve others.—Freedom and equality.—Figurative use of "slave."—Ethnography of slavery.—Family slavery.—Slavery amongst North American savages.—Slavery in South America.—Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia.—Slavery in the East Indies.—Slavery in Asia.—Slavery in Japan.—Slavery in higher civilization.—Slavery amongst Jews.—Slavery in the classical states.—Slavery at Rome.—Slave revolts.—Later Roman slavery.—Slaves in the civil wars; clientage.—Manumission. Natural liberty.—Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.—Rise of freedom in industry.—Freedmen in the state.—Philosophers opponents of slavery.—The industrial colleges.—Laws changed in favor of slaves.—Christianity and slavery.—The colonate.—Depopulation.—Summary view of Roman slavery.—The Therapeuts.—Slavery amongst the Germanic nations.—The sale of children.—Slavery and the state.—Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages.—Slavery in France.—Slavery in Islam.—Review of slavery in Islam.—Slavery in England.—Slavery in America.—Colonial slavery.—Slavery preferred by slaves.—The future of slavery.—Relation of slavery to the mores and to ethics.

270. Origin and motives. Slavery is a thing in the mores which is not well covered by our definition. Slavery does not arise in the folkways from the unconscious experimentation of individuals who have the same need which they desire to satisfy, and who try in separate acts to do it as well as they can. It is rather due to ill feeling towards members of an out-group, to desire to get something for nothing, to the love of dominion which belongs to vanity, and to hatred of labor. "The simple wish to use the bodily powers of another person, as a means of ministering to one's own ease or pleasure, is doubtless the foundation of slavery, and as old as human nature."625 "There is an extraordinary power of tyranny invested in the chiefs of tribes and nations of men that so vastly outweighs the analogous power possessed by the leaders of animal herds as to rank as a [262] special attribute of human society, eminently conducive to slavishness."626 The desire to get ease or other good by the labor of another, and the incidental gratification to vanity, seem to be the fundamental principles in slavery, when philosophically regarded, after the rule of one man over others has become established. The whole group, however, must approve of the custom and must enforce it; otherwise it cannot exist. It appears that slavery began historically with the war captive, if he or she was not put to death, as he was liable to be by the laws of war. Those laws put the defeated, with his wife, children, and property, at the mercy of the victors. The defeated might be tortured to death, as was done amongst the North American Indians, or they might be saved from death by the women. Then they were put to help the women and were rated as women. Slavery, therefore, in its origin, was a humanitarian improvement in the laws of war, and an alleviation of the status of women. It seems to be established that it began where the economic system was such that there was a gain in making a slave of a war captive instead of killing him. It follows that slavery, wherever it has existed, has affected all the mores of the society. It promised great results gratis. It will appear below that it has been a terrible afrit, a demon which promised service but which became a master. When adopted into the folkways it has dominated and given tone and color to them all. That is the reason for giving it a place here.

271. Slavery taught steady labor. It seems to be also right to understand that slavery proved to be a great schoolmaster to teach men steady work. If that view is correct, we must understand that no men would do any hard, persistent work if they could help it. The defeated were forced to it, and learned to submit to it. Then they helped the whole society up to a higher status, in which they also shared.627 Von Götzen gives some proof of this when he states that he and his troop of carriers sat by the camp fire evenings and that one after another told his life. "Nearly all had been, as children, brought from the inner country to the coast by slave dealers. Now they were proud of [263] this slavery, proud of belonging to the 'cultivated' and of not being any longer 'wild' men."628 In that view slavery is a part of the discipline by which the human race has learned how to carry on the industrial organization. There are some tasks which have been very hard and very disagreeable. Comrades in an in-group have never forced these on each other. It seemed to be good fun, as well as wise policy, to make members of a rival out-group do these tasks, after defeating them in war. For women the grinding of seeds (grain) always was a heavy burden until modern machinery brought natural powers to do it. For men the rowing of boats (galleys) has been a very hard kind of work.629 After slavery came to exist it was extended to other cases, even to some classes of cases in the in-group. Of these cases the first was that of debt. Amongst the Eveans a debtor who cannot pay is put to death. This, however, is a very exceptional rule.630 The course of thought is, that a debtor has used another man's product and is bound to replace it. He therefore falls into servitude to his creditor in fact, whether it is so expressed or not. He must live on and work for the creditor. Another case in which slavery was introduced was that of crime. The criminal fell under obligations of restitution of value to an individual or to the whole (chief). Other cases of extension of slavery will appear below. We have many cases of groups exploited by other groups. The former are then inferior and despised groups who are tyrannized over by others who have beaten them in war or easily could do so.

272. Servitude of group to group. Agriculture is a peaceful occupation, the pursuit of which breeds out the physical strength of nomadism. The cases in which nomads rule over tillers belong, in general, under this head, more especially because such a difference in the economy of life produces mutual contempt and hatred. The Israelites entered Canaan as nomads, [264] and their relation to the Canaanites was that which is here described. Another case is presented by the smiths, who generally appear as the earliest handicraftsmen, but are regarded with doubt and suspicion. They are not slaves, but they are treated as outcasts. Very often, in case of conquest by an invading tribe, the smiths remain under the invaders as a subject and despised caste. The Masarva are descendants of Betchuanas and Bushmen. They stand in a relation of slaves to the Betchuanas, Matabele, and Marutse, in whose land they dwell, except that they may not be sold.631 The Vaganda are subject to the Vahuma.632 The latter keep out of sight, being inferior in civilization but greater in power. Von Götzen also met with the Vahuma as rulers over the Vahuta, i.e. "belongers," as they called them.633 The Arabs hold the negroes of Borku in subjection and rob them of the date harvest.634 In other parts of the same district a nomad section rules over a settled section of the same population.635 Nomads hold themselves to be the proper ones to rule.636 The Hyksos's invasion of Egypt is a case of the subjection of tillers by nomads, attended by all the contempt of men on one grade of civilized effort for those on another.637 The combination of the two, the nomads forming the ruling caste of military nobles, forms a strong state.638 The Tuaregs of the Sahara do not allow the inhabitants of Kauar to raise vegetables or grains, but force them to buy the same of them (the Tuaregs), which they bring to them from the Sudan to buy salt, which the Kauar dwellers must have ready.639 The Akarnanians, in 1350, sold themselves to the barbarians, in a body, in order to escape want.640 The Masai are another group of warriors and raiders. The Varombutta do their hunting and tilling for them.641 The Makololo hold the Makalaka in similar serfdom, but the subjection is easy and the servitude light, because the subject individuals can easily run away.642 The Hupa of California hold their neighbors in similar subjection and in tributary servitude.643 Other cases are furnished by the Vanyambo, west of the Victoria Nyassa,644 and the Djur, who long served the Nubians as smiths.645 It gives us pleasure to learn that, about sixty years ago, the inferior tribes on Uvea (Tai), of the Loyalty group, revolted against the dominant tribe and nearly exterminated it.646

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[265] 273. Slavery and polygamy. Such instances show us the existence in human nature of a tendency of stronger groups to exploit weaker ones in the struggle for existence; in other words, slavery or forced labor is one way in which, in elementary civilization, the survival of the fittest group is brought about. The slavery of individuals has not the same definite result on the competition of life. "We find polygamy and slavery continually at work dissolving the cohesion of old political institutions in the old civilized races of Asia and Africa. In an uncivilized society, like that of Zululand, they prevent such cohesion ever taking place. They help to keep the Kaffir tribes in perpetual unrest and barbarism, by destroying the germs of civilization and preventing its growth."647 That the two have this effect in common may very probably be true, but in many respects they are antagonistic to each other. Slavery meets the necessity for many laborers which may otherwise be a cause for polygamy. Wherever slavery exists it affords striking illustrations of the tendency of the mores towards consistency with each other, and that means, of course, their tendency to cluster around some one or two leading ones. Africa now furnishes the leading proofs of this. The negro society is one in which physical force is the chief deciding element. The negroes have enslaved each other for thousands of years. Very few of them have ever become slaves to whites without having been previously slaves to other negroes. In 1875 it was reckoned that twenty thousand persons, chiefly women and children whose male relatives had generally been killed, were taken into slavery from around Lake Nyassa. The difficulties and expense of the slave trade in that region became so great that it could not be carried on except by alliance with one tribe which defeated and enslaved another and sold the survivors. The Arabs opened paths for ivory hunting. The slave dealers used these means of communication. They established garrisons in order to exploit the territory, and ended by depopulating it.648 Junker argues earnestly against the impression which has been established in Europe that Arabs are chiefly to blame for slavery. "There are places in Africa where [266] three men cannot be sent on a journey together for fear two of them may combine and sell the third."649

274. Some men serving others. Freedom and equality. Figurative use of "slavery." Must we infer, then, that there is a social necessity that some men must serve others? In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service of others is the highest duty and glory of human life. If one man's strength is spent on another man's struggle for existence, the survival of the former in the competition of life is impaired. The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. The whole problem of mutual service is the great problem of societal organization. Is it a dream, then, that all men should ever be free and equal? It is at least evident that here ethical notions have been interjected into social relations, with the result that we have been taught to think of free and equal units willingly serving each other. That, at least, is an idealistic dream. Yet it no more follows from the fact that slavery has done good work in the history of civilization that slavery should forever endure than it follows from the fact that war has done good work in the history of civilization that war is, in itself, a good thing. Slavery alleviated the status of women; the domestication of beasts of draft and burden alleviated the status of slaves; we shall see below that serfs got freedom when wind, falling water, and steam were loaded with the heavy tasks. Just now the heavy burdens are borne by steam; electricity is just coming into use to help bear them. Steam and electricity at last mean coal, and the amount of coal in the globe is an arithmetical fact. When the coal is used up will slavery once more begin? One thing only can be affirmed with confidence; that is, that as no philosophical dogmas caused slavery to be abolished, so no philosophical dogmas can prevent its reintroduction if economic changes should make it fit and suitable again. As steam has had [267] put upon it the hard work of life during the last two hundred years, the men have been emancipated from ancient hard conditions and burdens, and the generalities of the philosophers about liberty have easily won greater and greater faith and currency. However, the mass of mankind, taught to believe that they ought to have easy and pleasant times here, begin to complain again about "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "rent slavery," "sin slavery," "war slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. What men do not like they call "slavery," and so prove that it ought not to be. It appears to be still in their experience that a free man is oppressed by contracts of wages, debt, rent, and marriage, and that the cost of making ready for war and of warding off sin are very heavy. Political institutions readjust and redistribute the burdens of life over a population, and they change the form of the same perhaps, but the burdens are in the conditions of human life. They are always present, and political institutions never can do away with them at all. Therefore slavery, if we mean by it subjection to the conditions of human life, never can be abolished.

275. Ethnographical illustrations of slavery. In Togo male slaves work in the fields where yams are cultivated. Each carries a basket in which he has a chicken, which will live on worms and insects in the field. The slave is soon married. He has two days in the week to work for himself. One of his grown boys can replace him on the other four. He can buy a slave to replace him. Thus they often attain to wealth, freedom, and power. A female slave, if married to a free man, becomes free. This form of slavery is only a mode of service. The slave lives with the family, and enjoys domestic consideration. There is also debt slavery, the whole family being responsible for the debt of a member.650 Klose, however, describes the ruin wrought by slave raids. "Murder and incendiarism are the orders in this business. Great villages and districts are made deserts and are depopulated by the raids." "It is not in negro nature to subject one's self voluntarily to labor. The negro wants to be compelled to work." The fetich priest gives him a harmless drink, which is to be fatal to him if he tries to run away.651 The Ngumba in south Kamerun hold their slaves in huts near their own houses. A mishandled slave can leave his master and demand the protection of another. A debtor who cannot pay becomes slave of his creditor until the debt is paid in value, but this does not free [ 268] him. He can pay also by his wife or daughter.652 Amongst the Ewe-speaking tribes a woman who is condemned to a fine may sell or pawn her children, if her husband will not give her the amount to be paid. The husbands often hold back until the women pawn the children to them, whereby they obtain complete control of the children.653 Their slaves are criminals and debtors, or, if foreigners, are victims of war or of kidnapping. They are not regarded with contempt, are well treated, do not have as hard a lot as an English agricultural laborer, and often attain to wealth and honor. The master-owner may not kill a slave.654 In Bornu the women slaves find favor in the eyes of their masters, and by amiability win affection. If they have children they win a firm position, "for only the most stringent circumstances could compel a Moslem, whose ideas are reasonably correct, to sell the mother of his children."655 The Somal and Afar do not deal much in slaves. They use women and a pariah class. A Somal is never slave to a Somal, and war captives are not made slaves. Also amongst the Galla it appears that debtor slavery does not exist. Criminal slavery does, however, exist, and is used by the chiefs. It is honorable to treat slaves well. In Kaffa the slaves are lazy and pretentious, because they know that their owners do not look to them for labor, but speculate on their children, whom they will sell.656 In general, in East Africa, the master-owner has not the power of life and death, and the slave has a right of property. "A headman (of a village) in debt sells first his slaves, then his sisters, then his mother, and lastly his free wives, after which he has nothing left."657 Stuhlmann658 says that slaves in Uganda are well treated, as members of the family. Brunache659 says the same of the Congo tribes so far as they have not been contaminated by contact with whites. This may be regarded as characteristic of African slavery. The Vanika of eastern Africa are herding nomads. They cannot use slaves, and make war only to steal cattle.660 Bushmen love liberty. They submit to no slavery. They are hunters of a low grade. They hate cattle, as the basis of a life which is different from (higher than) their own. They massacre cattle which they cannot steal or carry away.661 Mungo Park described free negroes reduced to slavery by famine.662 In Ashanti a man and a woman discovered in the act in the bush, or in the open air, are slaves of him who discovered them, but they are redeemable by their families.663 Ashanti slavery is domestic and very mild. The slave marries his master's daughter and plays with the master. He also eats from the same dish.664 Slavery [269] of this form is never cruel or harsh. Debt slavery is harder, for the services of the pawn count for nothing on the debt.665 The effect of the abolition of slavery in Algeria was stupor amongst master-owners and grief amongst slaves. The former wondered how it could be wrong to care for persons who would have been eaten by their fellow-countrymen if they had succumbed to the hard struggle for existence at home. The latter saw themselves free—really free—in the desert, with no supply of food, clothing, or other supplies, and no human ties.666 In all families of well-to-do people little negroes are found. The author saw one who told her that the lady of the house had suckled him.667 It is reported from eastern Borneo that a white man could hire no natives for wages. They thought it degrading to work for wages, but if he would buy them they would work for him.668 In spite of what has been said above about slavery on the west coast of Africa it is to be remembered that the master-owner has the power of life and death and that he often uses it. If he is condemned to death for a crime, he can give a slave to be executed in his place.669 In eastern Angola, if a woman dies in childbirth, her husband has to pay her parents. If he cannot, he becomes their slave.670 In South Africa Holub found that the fiercest slave chasers were blacks, who had slaves at home and treated them worse than Mohammedans ever did.671 Formerly a Kaffir would work in the diamond mines for three marks a day until he got money enough to buy cattle and to buy a woman at home, a European suit, a kettle, and a rifle. Then he went home and set up an establishment. Then he would return to earn more and buy more wives, who would support him to his life's end.672 The stronger Hottentot tribes hold classes of their own population, or mountain Damara and Bushmen, in servitude, although no law defines a "slave." Those people hold the treatment they receive to be due to their origin. Amongst all South African tribes the rich exert their power to subjugate the poor, who hang upon them in a kind of clientage, hoping to receive something. Cruelty and even murder are not punished by the judges.673

276. Family slavery. The savage form of slavery in Africa furnishes us one generalization which may be adopted with confidence. Whenever slaves live in a family, sharing in the family [270] life and associating freely with the male members of it in work, religion, play, etc., the slavery is of a very light type and implies no hardship for the slave.

277. Slavery in North America among savages. Slavery is believed to have existed amongst the Indians of Virginia. "They made war, not for land or goods, but for women and children, whom they put not to death, but made them do service."674 The young men and slaves worked in the fields of the Mississippi valley. The latter were not overworked.675 The Algonquins made slaves of their prisoners, especially of the women and children.676 The Illinois are represented as an intermediate party who got slaves in the South and sold them in the West.677 The Wisconsin tribes used to make captives of Pawnees, Osages, Missouris, and Mandans. When Pawnees were such captives (slaves) they were treated with severity.678 In the Gulf region of North America slavery was common from the earliest times. That slaves might not escape, a sinew in the leg was cut, by the Six Nations.679 On the northwestern coast of North America slavery was far more developed than east of the Rocky Mountains. In Oregon and Washington slavery was interwoven with the social polity. Slaves were also harshly treated, as property, not within the limits of humanity. For a man to kill a half dozen of his own slaves was a sign of generous magnanimity on his part. One tribe stole captives from its weaker neighbors. Hence the slave trade is an important part of the commerce of all the tribes up to Alaska.680 In 1841 it was reckoned that one third of the entire population from northern British Columbia to southern Alaska were "slaves of the most helpless and abject description." "The great supply was obtained by trade with the southern Indians, in which the Tsimshian acted as middlemen. They were kidnapped or captured by the southern Indians from their own adjacent tribes and sold to the Tsimshian, who traded them to the northern Thlinkit and interior Tinné tribes for furs." "Slaves did all the drudgery, fished for their owner, strengthened his force in war, were not allowed to hold property or to marry, and when old and worthless were killed. The master's power was unlimited." The slave must commit any crime at the command of the master. The slaves were set free at some ceremonies, but they were put to death at the funerals of chiefs, or as foundation sacrifices, or in reparation for insults or wrongs. The northern Indians were more warlike and would not make good slaves. The Oregon flatheads were docile and industrious.681 The Chinooks became the wealthiest tribe in the region by acting as middlemen to sell war captives taken inland as far from home [271] as possible.682 Amongst the Thlinkits slaves are forbidden to wear the labret, and sex intercourse with a slave woman disgraces a free man.683 "Amongst the early Central Americans the slave who achieved any feat of valor in war received his liberty and was adopted by the Capulli, or clan."684 In Mexico there were slaves of three classes,—criminals, war captives, and persons who had voluntarily sold themselves or had been sold by their parents. The captor generally sacrificed a prisoner, but might hold him as a slave. Those who sold themselves did so to get a fund for gambling. There was a public slave mart at Azcapuzalco. The system is described as kind, but slaves might lose their lives through the act of the master at feasts or funerals.685 "Actual slavery of the Indians in Mexico continued as late as the middle of the seventeenth century."686 It is evident that slavery existed all over North and Central America, but was more developed on the Pacific coast than in the Mississippi valley. The meat eaters of the buffalo region had less opportunity to use the institution.687

278. Slavery in South America. In South America we also meet with at least one case of a tribe, or part of a tribe, which is in clientage to another tribe. This is a subdivision of the third rank of the Mbaya, who voluntarily entered into a relation of clientage to the Mbaya, giving them service under arms, and in house and field, without being their slaves, being protected in return by the powerful and feared tribe.688 The Guykurus carry on frequent wars to get captives, whom they keep in stringent servitude. "There is, perhaps, no tribe of South American Indians, among whom the state of slavery is so distinctly marked as among them." Slaves and free do not intermarry, lest marriage be profaned. There is no way in which a slave may become free.689 The Guykurus are the strongest tribe in the valley of the Paraguay. They have horses and were called by the Portuguese Cavalleiros.690 In Brazil it was thought that the cultivation of the country was impossible unless the Indians were made slaves. The early laws and orders of the kings of Portugal seem to reveal a sincere desire to control greed and cruelty. In 1570 private slave raids were forbidden and slavery was confined to those captured in public and just war. Lisbon, however, became a great slave mart by the law that slaves passing from one colony (Africa) to another (America) must pass through Lisbon and pay a tax there. Peter Martyr is quoted that slavery was necessary for Indians who, if they had no master, would go on with their old customs and idolatry. Slavery killed [272] them, however. It did not make them laborers.691 In general, in the valley of the Yapura, in the first half of the nineteenth century, slaves were war captives who were very unkindly treated.692 The aborigines began to sell their war captives to Europeans soon after the latter arrived. They wanted rosewood especially, and they took Indians to Africa as slaves.693 Boggiani694 expresses the opinion in regard to the savages of the Chaco, as the meadow region on the Paraguay river is called, that slavery amongst a people of more civilized mores, is, for them, "an incalculable benefit," and that "to hinder slavery, in such circumstances, would be a capital error." "It is necessary to force them to come out of their brutelike condition, and to awaken their intelligence, which is not wanting, if they receive practical and energetic direction." Bridges695 says that one Fuegian is thrown into clientage to another by their mode of life. "For a young man, with no wife and few relatives, must live with some one who can protect him, and with whom he can live in comfort, whose wife or wives can catch fish for him, etc."

279. Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia. Polynesia, Melanesia, and the East Indies, especially the last, present us pictures of a society which is old and whose mores have been worn threadbare, while their stage of civilization is still very low. Codrington696 says: "There is no such thing as slavery, properly so called. In head-hunting expeditions prisoners are made for the sake of their heads, to be used when occasion requires, and such persons live with their captors in a condition very different from that of freedom, but they are not taken or maintained for the purposes of slaves." Ratzel697 says: "Slavery prevailed everywhere in Melanesia, originating either in war or debt. Sometimes it was hard; sometimes not." Somerville says that "slaves are kept chiefly for their heads, which are demanded whenever any occasion necessitates them, such as the death of the owner." He is speaking of the Solomon Islands.698 What Finsch says of the Melanesians may be extended to all the inhabitants of the South Sea islands.699 They will not work because they do not need to. They have few wants. Pfeil wants to make the people of German Melanesia work, in order that they may contribute to the tasks of the human race. The problem presents one of the great reasons for slavery in history.

280. Slavery in the East Indies. The chief of Chittagong700 wrote to the English governor, in 1774, that slavery in his district was due to the sale of himself by any person who was destitute, and had no friends or position. He and his wife must serve the master and his wife in any desired [273] way, including services which a free servant would not perform, "through fear of demeaning himself and disgracing his family." Abolition of this slavery would produce complaints by the masters, and would not please the servants who are used to it. "Until lately the universal custom prevailed in the hills of having debtor slaves." The debtor gave one of his children or a female relative to serve as a menial until the debt should be paid. The pawned persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."701 "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,—men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and sold from master to master. The origin of this custom was the want of women."702 In the Chin hills there are slaves who are war captives, or criminals, or debtors, and others who are voluntary slaves, or slaves by birth. The master had full power of life and death, but, in fact, slaves were well treated. The people made raids on the Burmese lowlands and seized captives who were held for ransom. A slave man cohabits with a slave woman and brings up his children with affection "in the same humble, but not necessarily unhappy, position as his own."703 In Ceylon there were slave persons of all ranks. Those of royal rank were princes who were prisoners or criminals. Any one might obtain slaves by purchase, or accept voluntary slaves who looked to him for good support.704 A Malay will buy of a chief a number of war captives whom he takes to an island. Then he goes to a Chinaman and tells him that the slaves want to work on that island, but still owe the speaker the cost of transportation. The Chinaman pays this and gives to the slaves, on credit, clothes, etc., including money with which to gamble. Wages are low and interest high. They never can pay their debts and get their freedom again. This kind of slave trade has depopulated northern Nias.705 On Sumatra, when a debtor is called upon to pay and cannot, or when he dies and does not leave enough property to pay his debts, his children fall into semi-slavery. They can perhaps persuade some one to pay their debts and accept their services. If their master formally three times demands payment of them which they cannot give, they fall into full slavery. Slavery exists in the Malay seaport towns, but not in the rural districts, where life is too simple.706 In times of famine and want parents sell their children into slavery for a little rice. Children, especially daughters, constitute a large part of the fortune of a house father.707

[274] At Koetei, on the Mahakkam in Borneo, all well-to-do people have debtors in pawn, whose position is somewhat better than that of slaves. The debtors seem content and submissive. Captives taken on head-hunting expeditions are held as slaves until human sacrifices are wanted.708 The souls of all those who are put to death at the death of a Dyak rajah become his servants in the other world. In this world the killer can command, as his fetich, the soul of the killed. On the death of a great man his debtor slaves are bound to the carved village post, which indicates the glory of head-hunting, and are tortured to death.709 "Slavery is greatly practiced" on Timorlaut. A thief, debtor, slanderer, or defamer may become the slave of the one he has wronged. The slave trade is also active between the islands.710 The slaves of the sea Dyaks adopt their customs and become contented. Sometimes they win affection and are adopted, freed, and married to free women. Slaves and masters eat together the same food in the rural villages.711 Among the land Dyaks slaves, by destitution and debt, "are just as happy as if perfectly free, enjoying all the liberty of their masters, who never think of ill-using them."712 In old times one who set a house on fire was liable to become the slave of any one who was burned out.713 Slaves on Timor do not seem to care for liberty. Their livelihood would not be so certain. There is a kind of slavery to the kingdom, not to any individual, but the slave cannot be sold by the king.714 In the Barito valley a debtor slave has to do any kind of work. He may be punished by blows, or fines added to his debt, which may also be increased by any breaches of customs, or by the value of broken tools or vessels. A month after a child is born to him ten gulden are added, also expenses of education when the child is ready to go to work. He may be slain at a feast of the dead by his master. The owner can torment the debtor by new fines, and keep up the debt or even increase it.715 In the Katingan valley there are no debtor slaves, because after three years a debtor who cannot pay becomes an hereditary slave, and cannot get his liberty even if he should get the means to pay his debt.716 If he ever gets the means to pay and attempts to free himself he is compelled to pay fees, taxes, and customary dues to the "spirits of the house," etc. When he leaves his master's house he must not return to it for a year or two, nor eat anything brought from it—"to prove his independence." Then he gives a feast and becomes free.717 "Slavery and pawnship are, in the nature of the case, the same."718 The Dyaks put their Eden on a cloud [275] island. They have a myth that the daughters of the great Being let down seven times seven hundred cords of gold thread in order to lower mortals upon a mountain, but the mortals were overhasty and tried to lower themselves by bamboos and rattans. The god, angry at this, condemned them to slavery. The myth, therefore, accounts for a caste of slaves. Formerly also war captives and criminals who could not pay fines became slaves. Debts cause men to fall into pawnship. Extravagant living, and gambling, lead to this condition. If a man becomes pawn for a debt his whole household goes with him. All have to work very hard to try to satisfy a greedy master. The pawn is entitled to one tenth of the harvest, or of the gain by trade. Free men despise pawns.719 Wilken720 says of the Bataks that a slave, by diligence and thrift, can always buy himself. In addition to all the ill chances of gambling, extravagance, making love to another man's wife, etc., by which a man may become a debtor slave, customs exist which are traps for the unwary. Sago and rice are left in the woods, in some islands, until wanted. If a man passes the store, he is supposed to take away the spirit of the goods. If caught, he and all his family become slaves. If a man dies who was wont to fish at a certain place, the place becomes taboo to his ghost. Any one who fishes there becomes a slave to his family. Also, if a district is in mourning, any one who breaks the mourning customs is made a slave.721 The education of the Chinese in ethical doctrines has made slavery amongst them slight and mild. It is attributed to poverty, which forces parents to sell their daughters.722 The owners must provide female slaves with husbands, and the law forbids the separation of husband and wife, or of parents and little children.723 It appears that slavery is forbidden by law, but is tolerated in the case where the parents are poor. Boys once enslaved continue in bondage and their children follow them, but there is no legal possession. Girls become free at marriage.724

281. Slavery in Asia. Slavery in Asia is of a kind which puts the slave largely at the mercy of his owner, but the mores have taught the slave owner to use his power with consideration. This is generally, not universally, true. Nivedita says725 that "slavery in Asia, under the régime of great religious systems, has never meant what Europe and America have made of it.... It is a curious consequence of this humanity of custom [or rather, of the judgment in the mores as to the wisest course of conduct in a [276] class of cases] that the word 'slave' cannot be made to sting the Asiatic consciousness as it does the European."

282. Slavery in Japan. In Japan slavery was a common punishment, in early times, for crime. Debtors unable to pay became slaves of their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed. The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,—a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records." Their sex unions were not recognized. "In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state property, and great numbers were then emancipated, including nearly all,—probably all, who were artisans, or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence, but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom."726

283. Slavery in higher civilization. It appears quite clear that men in savagery and barbarism used each other, if they could, to serve their interests, and slavery resulted. The hardships of life caused it. The rules of war were "Woe to the vanquished!" and "To the victors the spoils." Debt was a relation which might come about between two men from incidents in the struggle for existence, or from loans of money and goods. All mischance might be converted into lack of resources (money and goods), and he who borrowed fell into dependence and servitude. All violations of custom and law led to fines; all need of civil authority made it necessary to pay fees. The debtor pledged his future working time. His relation to his creditor was personal. That he was a borrower proved that he had nothing which could form a property security. The laws of Hammurabi provide that a debtor may give his wife and children as pawn slaves, but only for three years. In the fourth year the creditor was to set them free. The pawn persons were to be well treated. A slave given [277] in pawn might be sold, but not if it was a female slave with children.727 To aid or conceal a fugitive slave was a capital offense.728 Many Chaldean contracts have been found in which the debtor bound himself to work for the creditor until he should pay the debt.729 It appears that the Babylonian slaves could form a peculium and carry on business with it as a capital, paying their owners a tax upon it.730

284. Slavery amongst Jews. The Jewish law had a provision like that in the law of Hammurabi, except that the limit was six years instead of three. A debtor was not to be a slave, but to give service until the year of jubilee.731 In 2 Kings iv. 1 the widow tells Elisha that her husband's creditors will come and take her two sons to be bondmen. The creditors of some of the Jews who returned from exile threatened to make them debtor slaves. Nehemiah appealed to them not to do so.732 In Matt. xviii. 25 the man who could not pay was to be sold with his wife and children. Kidnapping was punishable by death.733 In Job xxxi. 15 we find the ultimate philosophico-religious reason for repudiating slavery: "Has not He who made me made him [the slave] also in his mother's womb?" The laws of the "Book of Covenants" begin with laws about slaves.734 A male slave, with his wife, is to be freed in the seventh year, unless he prefers to remain a slave. A man may sell his daughter into slavery, i.e. to be a concubine. There was no difference in principle between a daughter given to wife and one sold to be a concubine. In Deut. xv. 12 the female slave is also set free in the seventh year, and persons so freed are to be given gifts when they depart. The slaves were war captives, or bought persons, or criminals.735 The lot of slaves was not hard. The owners had not the power of life and death. The slave could acquire property.736 If the slave was an Israelite he was protected by especial restrictions on the master in behalf of fellow-countrymen.737

[278] 285. Slavery in the classical states. Slavery came to the two great classical states from the antecedent facts of savage and barbaric life. When Aristotle came to study slavery he could not find a time when it was not. We have seen how it had become one of the leading institutions of uncivilized society, and how it had been developed in different forms and degrees. The two great classical states, more especially Rome, built their power on slavery. Both states pursued their interests with little care for the pain they might inflict on others, or the cost in the happiness of others. The Roman state began by subjugating its nearest neighbors. It used its war captives as slaves, increased its power, conquered more, and repeated the process until it used up all the known world. The Phœnicians were merchants, who kidnapped men, women, and children, if they found opportunity, and sold them into slavery far from home. The Ionians, who grew rich by commerce, bought slaves and organized states in which slaves did all the productive work. In both Greece and Rome productive work came to be despised. One is amazed to find how easily any one who went on a journey might fall into slavery, or how recklessly the democracy of one city voted to sell the people of a defeated city into slavery, yet how unhesitatingly everybody accepted and repeated the current opinions about the baseness of slave character. Homer says that a slave has only half the soul of a man.738 The love stories in the Scriptores Erotici very often contain an incident of kidnapping. The story of Eumæus must have been that of many a slave.739 It is also only rarely and very incidentally that the classical writers show any pity for slaves, although they often speak of the sadness of slavery.740 If any man, especially a merchant, who went on a journey incurred a great risk of slavery, why was not slavery a familiar danger of every man, and therefore a matter for pity and sympathy? In the great tragedies the woes of slavery, especially the contrasts for princes and princesses, heroes and heroines, are often presented. Polyxena, in Euripides's Hekuba, 360, bewails her anticipated lot as a slave. A fierce master will buy her. She will have to [279] knead bread for him, to sweep and weave, leading a miserable life, given as wife to some base slave. She prefers to be sacrificed at Achilles's tomb. When the Greeks were going to kill her, she asked them to keep their hands off. She would submit. Let her die free. "It would be a shame to me, royal, to be called a slave amongst the dead." In the Trojan Women the screams of the Trojan women are heard, as they are distributed by lot to their new Greek masters. The play is full of the woes of slavery. At Athens slaves enjoyed great freedom of manners and conduct. They dressed like the poorest freedmen. No one dare misuse the slave of another simply because he was a slave. If the master abused a slave, the latter had an asylum in the temple and could demand to be sold. Slaves could pursue any trade which they knew, paying a stipulated sum to their owners, and could thus buy their manumission. Their happiness, however, depended on the will of another.741 In the law they were owned as things were, and could be given, lent, sold, and bequeathed. They could not possess property, nor have wives in assured exclusive possession against masters. Their children belonged to their masters. Plato thought that nature had made some to command, others to serve.742 He thought the soul of a slave base, incapable of good, unworthy of confidence.743 Aristotle thought that every well-appointed house needs animate and inanimate tools. The animate tools are slaves, who have souls, but not like those of their masters. They lack will. Slaves are like members of the master, ruled by his will. Their virtue is obedience.744 He says that there were men in his time who said that slavery was an injustice due to violence and established by law.745

286. Slavery at Rome. It is in ancient Rome that we find slavery most thoroughly developed. Any civilization which accomplishes any great results must do so by virtue of force which it has at its disposal. The Romans conquered and enslaved their nearest neighbors. By virtue of their increased power they extended their conquests. They repeated this process until they had consumed all the known world. The city of Rome was a center [ 280] towards which all the wealth of the world was drawn. There was no reverse current of goods. What went out from Rome was government,—peace, order, and security. The provinces probably for a time made a good bargain, although the price was high. In the earliest times slaves were used for housework, but were few in number per household. In 150 B.C. a patrician left to his son only ten. Crassus had more than five hundred. C. Caec. Claudius, in the time of Augustus, had 4116.746 In the early days a father and his sons cultivated a holding together. Slaves were used when more help was needed. There was one slave to three sons and they lived in constant association of work and play. When conquest rendered slaves numerous and cheap, free laborers disappeared.747 Ti. Semp. Gracchus, in 177 B.C., after the war in Sardinia, sold so many Sardinian slaves that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb.748 His son Tiberius is reported to have been led into his agrarian enterprise by noticing that the lands of Etruria were populated only by a few slaves of foreign birth.749 Bücher750 puts together the following statistics of persons reduced to slavery about 200 B.C.: after the capture of Tarentum (209 B.C.), 30,000; in 207 B.C., 5400; in 200 B.C., 15,000.751 Roman slaves were not allowed to marry until a late date. They were systematically worked as hard as it was possible to make them work, and were sold or exposed to perish when too old to work. Such was the policy taught by the older Cato.752 The number on the market was always great; the price was low; it was more advantageous to work them so hard that they had no time or strength to plot revolts. This is the most cynical refusal to regard slaves as human beings which can be found in history. They were liable to be tortured in their owners' cases in court. They might be given over to the gladiatorial shows and set to fight each other, or wild beasts. Seventy-eight gladiators condemned to fight to the death revolted in 74 B.C. under Spartacus, [281] who defeated five armies. Crassus was sent against him with eight legions. Lucullus was recalled from Thrace and Pompey from Spain. Spartacus was cut to pieces in his last battle. Crassus crucified six thousand prisoners along the road from Capua to Rome.753

287. Slave revolts. The severity of the Roman system of slavery is shown by the number of revolts and the severe proceedings in each of them. There was such a revolt in 499 B.C. The guilty were crucified. The following year there was another.754 In 416 there was another. The aim always was to take the citadel and burn the city.755 Sicily was covered with a swarm of slaves at the beginning of the second century B.C. They were especially Syrians, very tough and patient. They were managed under Cato's plan: "Work or sleep!" In 196 B.C. the slaves in Etruria revolted and were suppressed with great severity.756 In 104 those of Sicily revolted. They were subdued four years later and the last remnant were sent to Rome to fight beasts. They killed themselves in the arena.757 The later Roman system was that the mob of the city put the world in the hands of one or another, and he gave them bread and games as their part of the plunder. The frumentaria were the permanent and steady pay of the "world conquerors." They made herding the best use of Italian land. "Where before industrious peasants prospered in glad contentment, now unfree herdsmen, in wide wastes, drove the immense herds of Roman senators and knights."758 The Sicilian landowners left their shepherds to steal what they needed, so that they were educated to brigandage. The greatest sufferer was the small freeman.759 There is a story in Diodorus,760 of Damophilos, an owner of great latifundia, whose slaves came to him to beg clothes. He replied: "Do the travelers, then, go naked through the country? Are they not bound to pay toll to him who needs clothes?" He caused them to be flogged and sent them back to work. The misery of the slave population seems to have reached its acme at Enna where two roads across the island cross each other. The town lies 3000 feet high. It was a great fortress down into the Middle Ages.761 At this place began a slave revolt, led by a Syrian skilled in sorcery. The slaves took the city and engaged in rapine and murder. A band was sent to capture Damophilos. The men killed him, and the women his wife. Their daughter was sent in security to her relatives.762 It was ten years before peace was restored to the island.

[282] 288. Later Roman slavery. Slaves in the civil wars. Clientage. Down to about 200 B.C. slavery, although mechanical and cruel, was domestic. The slave was a member of the household, on intimate terms with the master or his children, shared in the religious exercises, and the graves of slaves were under religious protection.763 In the second century B.C. Roman expansion gained momentum and produced power and wealth. The factions of the city were fighting for control of the booty. Roman character became mechanical and hard. This affected the type of slavery. By 100 B.C. Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had developed a system of holding slaves which was cruel and reckless, and slaves had acquired a character of hatred, venom, and desire for revenge. They were malignant, cunning, and hypocritical.764 In the civil wars each leader sought the help of slaves. Sulla set free 10,000 of them, whom he put in the tribes of the city.765 After the battle of Cannæ the Romans armed 8000 slaves whom they enfranchised.766 Æmilius Paulus sold 15,000 Epirotes. Marius made 90,000 Teutons captives at Aquæ Sextiæ and 60,000 Cimbrians at Vercellæ. When Marius offered liberty to slaves only three followed him.767 Sulla promised liberty to the slaves of the proscribed, if they would bear testimony against their masters. One did so. Sulla freed him, but then put him to death. Thus the slaves were the sport of political factions and leaders. The Roman conquests caused everywhere a certain servile temper. All conquered people were depressed into quasi-slavery. All had to pay a head tax, which was a mark of servitude. The Roman system reduced all to servitude. A late emperor called the senators "slaves in the toga." When all were rendered nil under the emperor the slaves gained. They were not in worse case than the rest.768 During the conquests entire peoples became clients. If any one did not attach himself as client to a great family he was lost. Freed women, for this reason, almost always fell into vice.769 Clientage became the [283] refuge of loafers. "Romans did not give anything gratis." All who were outside the social system had to seek the patronage of a great man. For his protection he took pay in money or service. The status was a modified slavery.

289. Manumission. Natural liberty. The slave dealers developed tricks far surpassing those of horse dealers in modern times.770 By enfranchisement the owner got rid of the worst worry of slavery, and tied the freedman to himself by a contract which it was for the interest of the freedman to fulfill. The owner made a crafty gain.771 Tacitus772 says that, in his time, the Roman people was almost entirely freedmen. If that is so, we must notice that the "people," under the empire, are a different set from what they were under the republic. When the Romans got an educated artisan as a slave they set him to teach a number of others. When no more outsiders were conquered and enslaved the slaves taught each other. The work then became gross and ran down.773 This was another of the ways in which Rome consumed the products and culture of the world. Very few instances, real or fictitious, of sympathy with slaves can be cited. In the story of Trimalchio, Encolpius and his friends beg off a slave who is to be whipped for losing the garment of another slave in the bath. At a supper at which Augustus was present a slave broke a vase. His master ordered him cast to the murenae in a tank. The slave begged Augustus to obtain for him an easier death, which Augustus tried to do. The master refused. Augustus then gave the slave complete grace, broke the host's other vases himself, and ordered the tank filled up.774 Under Nero, Pedanius having been murdered, his slaves, four hundred in number, were all condemned to death, according to law. The populace rose against this sentence, which was fulfilled, but it shows that there was a popular judgment which would respond upon occasion.775 "Not once, in all antiquity, does a serious thought about the abolition of slavery arise."776 [284] It was the basis of the entire social and political order. They were in terror of the slaves and despised them, but could not conceive of a world without them. Probably we could not either, if we had not machines by means of which we make steam and electricity work for us. Individuals were manumitted on account of the gain to the master. The owner said, in the presence of a magistrate, "I will that this man be free, after the manner of the Quirites." The magistrate touched the head of the slave with his rod, the master boxed his ears, and he was a free man.777 The law provided a writ, "resembling in some respects the writ of habeas corpus, to compel any one who detained an alleged freedman to present him before a judge."778 The Roman lawyers also, if they could find a moment during gestation when the mother had been free, employed legal fiction to assume that the child had been born at that moment.779 Florentinus defined slavery as "a custom of the law of nations by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected to the dominion of another."780 Ulpian likewise said that, "as far as natural law is concerned, all men are equal."781

290. Slavery as represented in the inscriptions. "The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities." They show cases of strong conjugal affection between slave spouses, and of affection between master and slave.782 In the first century the waste of the fortunes won by extortion from the provinces, and the opening of industrial opportunities by commerce, with security, gave great stimulus to free industry. The inscriptions "show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts," with minute specialization. "The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light." The time was then past when Roman society depended entirely on slave labor for the supply of all its wants.783 Dill thinks that "the new class of free [ 285] artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence."784 The slave acted only under two motives, fear and sensuality. Both made him cowardly, cringing, cunning, and false, and at the same time fond of good eating and drinking and of sensual indulgence. As he was subject to the orders of others, he lacked character, and this suited his master all the better. The morality of slaves extended in the society, and the society was guided by the views of freedmen in its intellectual activity. The strongest symptom of this was the prevalence of a morality of tips, which put on the forms of liberality. It was no more disgrace to take gifts than to give them. Senators took gifts from the emperor, and all, including the emperor, reckoned on legacies. Thus the lack of character spread.785 Slavery proved a great corrupter of both slaves and owners. It was the chief cause of the downfall of the state which had been created by it. It made cowards of both owners and slaves. "The woes of negro slaves were insignificant, like a drop to an ocean, in comparison with the sufferings of ancient slaves, for the latter generally belonged to civilized peoples."786

291. Rise of the freedmen in industry. The freedmen were the ones who were free from the old Roman contempt for productive labor. They seized the chances for industry and commerce and amassed wealth. "Not only are they crowding all the meaner trades [in the first and second centuries of the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."787 "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honorable."788 "After all reservations, the ascent of the freedmen remains a great and beneficent [286] revolution. The very reasons which made Juvenal hate it most are its best justification to a modern mind. It gave hope of a future to the slave. By creating a free industrial class it helped to break down the cramped social ideal of the slave owner and the soldier. It planted in every municipality a vigorous mercantile class, who were often excellent and generous citizens. Above all, it asserted the dignity of man."789 But for the freedmen the society seems to have contained but two classes,—"a small class of immensely wealthy people, and an almost starving proletariat."790

292. The freedmen in the state. Every despot needs ministers. The history of all despotisms shows that they find those best suited to their purpose in persons of humble rank. They can use such ministers against nobles or other great men, and can command their complete loyalty. Julius Cæsar made some of his freedmen officers of the mint. It was simply an extension of the usage of aristocratic households. The emperor employed freedmen to write letters and administer the finances of the empire as he would have used them to manage his private estate. "Under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the imperial freedmen attained their greatest ascendancy. Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas rose to the rank of great ministers, and, in the reign of Claudius, were practically masters of the world. They accumulated enormous wealth by abusing their power, and making a traffic in civic rights, in places, or pardons."791 The freedmen favorites carried the evil effects of slavery on character to another stage and were agents of the corruption of the new form of the state by the inheritance of slavery. "The women of the freedmen class, for generations, wielded, in their own way, a power which sometimes rivaled that of the men." They often had great charms of person and mind. "Their morals were the result of an uncertain social position, combined with personal attractions, and education." Some of them did great mischief. Panthea, mistress of Lucius Verus, is celebrated as one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. She had a lovely voice, was fond of music and poetry, and had a very [287] superior mind. She "never lost her natural modesty and simple sweetness."792 In the first century some freedmen married daughters of senatorial houses. They were very able men. No others could have performed the duties of the three great secretaryships,—appeals, petitions, and correspondence. The fortunes of these men were often adventurous in the extreme, like those of the ministers of sultans in the Arabian Nights. A slave, advanced to a higher position in a household, then to a position of confidence, where he proved his ability and devotion, got a great office and became master of the world. Men of this kind have always been refused social status.793 In the second century the system was changed, and knights became the great officers of administration.

293. Philosophers opponents of slavery. The great neostoics of the first century first denounced slavery and uttered the great humanitarian doctrines. The real question in regard to Roman slavery was this: Is a slave not a man? If he was one, he was either the victim of misfortune or the inheritor of the misfortune of an ancestor. If he did not thereby lose human status as a member of the race he deserved pity and help. The humanitarian philosophy, therefore, had the simplest task and the most direct application. Dio Chrysostom declared the evil effects of slavery on the masters, sensuality, languor, and dependence. He pointed out the wide difference between personal status and character,—the possible nobility of a slave and the possible servility of a freeman.794 Seneca especially taught the abstract philosophy of liberalism, kindness, and humanity. He represented a movement in public opinion. Pliny cultivated all the graces of the debonair gentleman. Dill compares him to a "kindly English squire." The inscriptions show that "his household was by no means a rare exception."795 Slaves had such perquisites and chances that "the slave could easily purchase his own freedom." "The trusted slave was often actually a partner, with a share of the profits of an estate, or he had a commission on the returns."796 Plutarch's whole philosophy of life is gentle [288] and kindly. It is unemotional and nonstimulating. The neostoics had the character of an esoteric sect. We never are sure that their writings are any more than rhetorical exercises, or that they act or expect others to act by their precepts. Slavery was such a fact in the social order that no one could conceive of the abolition of it, or propose abolition as a thing within the scope of statesmanship.

294. The industrial colleges. The Romans had a genius for association and organization. Under the republic artisans began to unite in colleges. In the last century of the republic the political leaders took alarm at these unions and forbade them. Cæsar and Augustus abolished the right of association. In the second century a certain number of societies existed, in spite of prohibitions,—miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen. Until Justinian all such unions were carefully watched as dangerous to public peace and order. In the civil law they were authorized, and made like natural persons.797 The fashion of them became very popular. "The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry, or special skill, or social service."798 "Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter and often met. From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure."799 "And yet, many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of gentle charities and brotherliness."800 They had many honorary members from among the richer classes. Wandering merchants and military veterans, as well as young men fond of sport, formed clubs on the same type. Alexander Severus organized all the industrial colleges and assigned them defensores. In the colleges all were equal, so that they were educational in effect. "But these instances [ 289] cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. Therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave, or of his poor plebeian brother, by the theoretical equality in the colleges may be easily exaggerated."801 The statesmen had feared that the artisans might use their organization to interfere in politics. What happened in the fourth century was that the state used the organizations to reduce the artisans to servitude, and to subject them to heavy social obligations by law.

295. Laws changed in favor of slaves. When the conquests ceased and the supply of new slaves was reduced those slaves who were born in the households or on the estates came into gentler relations to their owners. Slaves rose in value and were worth more care. The old plan of Cato became uneconomical. All sentiments were softened in the first century as war became less constant, less important, and more remote. The empire was an assumption by the state of functions and powers which had been family powers and functions, and part of the patria potestas. Women, children, and slaves shared in emancipation until the state made laws to execute its jurisdiction over them. Hadrian took from masters the power of life and death over slaves. Antoninus Pius confirmed this, and provided that he who killed his own slave should suffer the same penalty as he who killed the slave of another.802 This brought the life of every slave into the protection of the state. Under Nero a judge was appointed to hear the complaints of slaves and to punish owners who misused them. Domitian forbade castration. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. The right to sell female slaves into brothels was also abolished.803

296. Christianity and slavery. In 1853 C. Schmidt published an essay on the "Civil Society of the Roman World and its Transformation by Christianity," in which he thought it right to attribute all the softening of the mores in the first three Christian centuries to Christianity. Lecky, on the other hand, says: "Slavery was distinctly and formally recognized by Christianity, [290] and no religion ever labored more to encourage a habit of docility and passive obedience."804 Schmidt is obliged to take the ground that Christianity received and accepted slavery as a current institution, in which property rights existed, and that it suffered these to stand. If that is true, then Christianity could not exert much influence on civil society. What Christianity did was to counteract to a great extent the sentiment of contempt for slaves and for work. It did this ritually, because in the church, and especially in the Lord's Supper, all participated alike and equally in the rites. The doctrine that Christ died for all alike combined with the philosophical and humanitarian doctrine that men are of the same constitution and physique to produce a state of mind hostile to slavery. In the fourth century the church began to own great possessions, including slaves, and it accepted the standpoint of the property owner.805 In the Saturnalia of Macrobius (fl. 400 A.D.) Prætextatus reaffirms the old neostoic doctrine about slavery, of Seneca and Dio Chrysostom. Dill806 takes the doctrine to be the expression of the convictions of the best and most thoughtful men of that time. It is not to be found in Jerome, Augustine, or Chrysostom. Nevertheless the church favored manumission and took charge of the ceremony. It especially favored it when the manumitted would become priests or monks. The church came nearest to the realization of its own doctrines when it refused to consider slave birth a barrier to priesthood. In all the penitential discipline of the church also bond and free were on an equality. The intermarriage of slave and free was still forbidden. Constantine ordered that if a free woman had intercourse with her slave she should be executed and he should be burned alive.807 The pagan law only ordered that she should be reduced to slavery. The manumissions under Constantine were believed, in the sixteenth century, to have caused almshouses and hospitals to [291] be built, on account of the great numbers of helpless persons set adrift.808 Basil the Macedonian (♰ 886) first enacted that slaves might have an ecclesiastical marriage, but the prejudice of centuries made this enactment vain.809 The abolition of crucifixion had special value to the slave class. There was no longer a special and most infamous mode of execution for them. A law of Constantine forbade the separation of members of a family of slaves.810 These are the most important changes in the law of slavery until the time of the codex of Justinian. Lecky thinks that Justinian advanced the law beyond what his predecessors had done more in regard to slavery than on any other point. His changes touched three points: (1) He abolished all the restrictions on enfranchisement which remained from the old pagan laws, and encouraged it. (2) He abolished the freedmen as an intermediate class, so that there remained only slave and free, and a senator could marry a freed woman, i.e. a slave whom he had already freed. (3) A slave might marry a free woman, if his master consented, and her children, born in slavery, became free if the father was enfranchised. The punishment for the rape of a slave woman was made death, the same as for the rape of a free woman.811 Isidore of Seville (♰ 636) said: "A just God alloted life to men, making some slaves and some lords, that the liberty of ill-doing on the part of slaves might be restrained by the authority of rulers." Still he says that all men are equal before God, and that Christ's redemption has wiped away original sin, which was the cause of slavery.812

297. The colonate. At the end of the empire population was declining, land was going out of use and returning to wilderness, the petty grandees in towns were crushed by taxes into poverty, artisans were running away and becoming brigands because the state was immobilizing them, and peasants were changed into colons. The imperial system went on until the man, the emperor, was above all laws, the senate were slaves, and the provinces were the booty of the emperor. The whole system then became [ 292] immobilized. What the colons were and how they came into existence has been much disputed. They were immobilized peasants. We find them an object of legislation in the codex Theodosianus in the fourth century. They were personally free (they could marry, own property, could not be sold), but they were bound to the soil by birth and passed with it. They cultivated the land of a lord, and paid part of the crops or money.813 Marquardt thinks that they arose from barbarians quartered in the Roman empire.814 Heisterbergk815 thinks that there are three possible sources, between which he does not decide,—impoverished freemen, emancipated slaves, barbarian prisoners. Wallon816 ascribes the colonate to the administration. As society degenerated it became harder and harder to get the revenue, and the state adopted administrative measures to get the property of any one who had any. This system impoverished everybody. To carry it out it was necessary to immobilize everybody, to force each one to accept the conditions of his birth as a status from which he could not escape. What made the colonate, then, was misery.817 Emancipated slaves and impoverished peasants met in the class of colons, in state servitude. The proprietors were only farmers for the state. The tribute was the due of the state. Laborers were enrolled in the census and held for the state. The interest of the fiscus held the colon to the soil.818 The words "colon" and "slave" are used interchangeably in the codex Justinianus.

298. Depopulation. The depopulation of Italy under the empire is amply proved. Vespasian moved population from Umbria and the Sabine territory to the plain of Rome.819 Marcus Aurelius established the Marcomanni in Italy.820 Pertinax offered land in Italy and the provinces to any one who would cultivate it.821 Aurelian tried to get land occupied.822 He sent barbarians to settle in Tuscany.823 As time went on more and more land [293] was abandoned and greater efforts were made to secure settlers. Valentinian settled German prisoners in the valley of the Po.824 In the time of Honorius, in Campania five hundred thousand arpents were discharged from the fiscus as deserted and waste. In the third century, if the colon ran away from land which no one would take he was pursued by all the agencies of the law and brought back like a criminal.825 The colons ran away because the curiales, their masters, put on them the taxes which the state levied first on the curiales.826 What was wanted was men. The Roman imperial system had made men scarce by making life hard. Pliny said that the latifundia destroyed Italy. The saying has been often quoted in modern times as if it had some unquestionable authority. It is a case of the common error of confusing cause and consequence. The latifundia were a consequence and a symptom. Heisterbergk827 thinks that the latifundia were not produced by economic causes, but by vanity and ostentation. The owners did not look to the land for revenue. He asks828 how a strictly scientific system of grand culture with plenty of labor could ruin any country. Rodbertus829 thinks that the latifundia went from a grand system to a petty system between the times of the elder and the younger Pliny by the operation of the law of rent. He thinks that there must have been garden culture in Italy at the beginning of the empire, and that the colonate arose from big estates with petty industry and from the law of mortgage. He thinks, further, that the colons, until the fourth century, were slaves, and that their status was softened by the legislation of the fourth century. Heisterbergk thinks that the colonate began in the corn provinces, and that it was, at the beginning of the fourth century, on the point of passing away, but the legislation of the fourth century perpetuated it. He thinks that it was injured, as an institution, by the great increase of taxation after Diocletian. Then legislation was necessary to keep the colons on the land.830

[294] 299. Summary on Roman slavery. Chrysostom describes the misbehavior of all classes, about 400 A.D.831 The colons were overburdened. When they could not pay they were tortured. A colon was flogged, chained, and thrown into prison, where he was forgotten. His wife and child were left in misery to support themselves, and get something for him if they could. The Roman system, after consuming all the rest of the world, began to consume itself. The Roman empire at last had only substituted one kind of slaves for another. Artisans and peasants were now slaves of the state. Slavery was at first a means. By it the subjugated countries were organized into a great state. Then it developed its corruption. It was made to furnish gladiators and harlots. Nowhere else do we see how slavery makes cowards of both slaves and owners as we see it at Rome in the days of glory. Slavery rose to control of the mores. The free men who discussed contemporary civilization groaned over the effects of slavery on the family and on private interests, but they did not see any chance of otherwise getting the work done. Then all the other social institutions and arrangements had to conform to slavery. It controlled the mores, prescribed the ethics, and made the character. In the last century of the Western empire the protest against it ceased. It seemed to be accepted as inevitable, and one of the unavoidable ills of life. It ruled society. Scarcely a man represented the old civilization who can command our respect. The social and civic virtues were dead.

300. In all the ancient world we meet with distinct repudiation of slavery only amongst the Therapeuts, a communistic association amongst the Jews in the last century before Christ. They were ascetics, each of whom lived in a cell. We first hear of them through Philo Judæus (The Contemplative Life) about the time of the birth of Christ. They had no slaves. They regarded slavery as absolutely contrary to nature. Nature produced all in a state of freedom, but the greed of some had vested some with power over others.832 The Therapeuts, who included women, did their own work. They carried on no [295] productive industry the products of which they could give in exchange. Their system could not endure without an endowment.833 Bousset834 thinks that, "if they ever existed, they can never have had more than a limited and ephemeral significance." Their central home was on a hill near lake Marea. Their place of meeting, on the seventh day, was divided by a wall, three or four cubits high, into two compartments, one for the women, the other for the men. They reduced the consumption of food and drink as much as possible. Sometimes they abstained for three or four days. They had a very simple feast on the forty-ninth day, the men and women sitting separately on coarse mattresses.835

301. Slavery amongst the Germanic nations. According to the most primary view, the one which we might call natural, a war captive's due fate was to be killed in sacrifice to the god of the victor. During some interval of time before his public execution he was set at work, and the convenience of his services was learned. He was kept alive in order to be employed in the labors which were the most irksome and disagreeable. The joke of letting him live on to perform these tasks was not lost. When, now, we turn our attention to the Germanic invaders of the Roman empire, we are carried back to primitive barbarism. In the heroic age of Scandinavia we find that thralls are sacrificed at Upsala at solemn feasts in honor of the heathen gods. They were thrown from the cliffs, or into a hole in the ground, or tortured and hung up in the clear air, or the spine was broken.836 In the prehistoric period of German history the unfree were tenderly handled. "A well-born youth, who grew up amongst the same herds and on the same land with an unfree youth, eating and drinking together, and sharing joy and sorrow, could not handle shamefully the comrades of the unfree man."837 In the Scandinavian Rigsmal, Rig, the hero, begets a representative of each of three ranks,—noble, yeoman, laborer,—the first with the mother, the second with the grandmother, and the third with the great-grandmother, as if they had come from later and later [ 296] strata of population.838 Rig slept between man and wife when he begot the yeoman and thrall, but not when he begot the noble. The thrall has no marriage ceremony. The food, dwelling, dress, furniture, occupations, and manners of the three classes are carefully distinguished, also the physique, as if they were racially different, and the names of the children are in each case characteristic epithets. The great-grandfather wears the most ancient dress; his wife provides an ash-baked loaf, flat, heavy, mixed with bran. She bore Thrall, who was swarthy, had callous hands, bent knuckles, thick fingers, an ugly face, a broad back, long heels. Toddle-shankie also came sunburnt, having scarred feet, a broken nose, called Theow. Their children were named: the boys,—Sooty, Cowherd, Clumsy, Clod, Bastard, Mud, Log, Thickard, Laggard, Grey Coat, Lout, and Stumpy; the girls,—Loggie, Cloggie, Lumpy [= Leggie], Snub-nosie, Cinders, Bond-maid, Woody [= Peggy], Tatter-coatie, Crane-shankie. The story seems to present the three classes or ranks as founded in natural facts. Slaves were such by birth, by sale of themselves to get maintenance (esteemed the worst of all, debtors, war captives, perhaps victims of shipwreck), and free women who committed fornication with slave men.839 If a debtor would not pay he was brought into court, and the creditor might cut off a piece [of his body] above or below.840 A free man would not allow his slave to be buried by his side, even if the slave had lost his life in loyalty to his master. Slaves, criminals, and outlaws were buried dishonorably in a place by themselves on one side. They were harnessed to plows when there were no oxen at hand. When Eisten, king of Opland, wanted to annihilate the Ernds, he gave them their choice of his slave or his dog for a king. They chose the dog.841 The sister of King Canute bought in England most beautiful slave men and women, who were sent to Denmark, and were sold for use chiefly in vice.842 Here we see again the great contempt for slaves. It was a proverb in Scandinavia: "Put no trust in the friendship of a thrall,"843 although in the sagas there are many cases in which [297] the heroes profited by trusting them. Yet the sagas are also full of stories of persons who fell into slavery, e.g. Astrid, widow of King Trygve Olafson, who was found by a merchant in the slave market of Esthonia and redeemed.844 A thrall was despised because he feared death, and when it impended over him hid, whimpered, begged, wept, lamented to leave his swine and good fare, and offered to do the meanest work if he might live. A hero bore torture bravely and met death laughing.845 When hero children and thrall children were changed at birth, the fraud was discovered by the cowardice of the latter and the courage of the former, when grown.846 In the heroic age a conqueror could set a princess to work at the qvern. In Valhalla the hero set thralls to work for his conquered victim, to give him footbath, light fire, bind dogs, groom horses, and feed swine. Thrall women became concubines. They worked at the qvern, and wove. Love could raise them to pets. Thralls were obtained in the lands raided, but even after they became Christians the Scandinavians raided and enslaved each other. The Roman law system, as the church employed it, and especially tithes, were means of reducing the masses to servitude.847 Beggars could be arrested and taken before the Thing, where, if they were not ransomed by their relatives, they were at the mercy of the captor.848 Magnus Erikson ascended the throne of Sweden, Norway, and Skona in 1333. Two years later he decreed that no one born of Christian parents should thereafter be, or be called, a thrall.849

302. The sale of children. In the Germanic states it remained lawful until far down in the Middle Ages for a man to sell his wife or child into servitude, or into adoption in another family in time of famine or distress. The right fell into disuse.850

303. Slavery and the state. The reason why there was little slavery in the Middle Ages is that slavery needs a great state to return fugitives or hold slaves to work. The feudal lord was [298] at odds with such a state as existed, and could not get its aid to restore his slaves. Hence the extension of the state made the slaves worse off, e.g. in Russia and parts of Germany.851 Amongst the Franks "slavery took many forms." The vicissitudes of life produced the strongest contrasts of fortune. Freeman852 mentions a case in which a boy king reigned, but his mother, formerly a slave woman, reigned as queen in rank and authority, and the power was really exercised by the man who was once her owner. "In the system of a Frankish kingdom a slave-born queen could play, with more of legal sanction, the part often played in Mohammedan courts by the mother of the sultan, son of a slave." The Franks had a peculiar ceremony of manumission. The lord struck a coin from the hand of his slave to the ground, and the slave became free.853 Philippe le Bel, enfranchising the serfs of Valois, in the interest of the Fiscus, uttered a generality which Louis le Hutin reiterated: "Seeing that every human creature who is formed in the image of our Lord, ought, generally speaking, to be free by natural right,—no one ought to be a serf in France." In the eighth and ninth centuries serfs were sold to Jews who sold them to Mohammedans. Montpelier carried on a slave trade with the Saracens. The clergy joined in this trade in the twelfth century, and it is said to have lasted until the fifteenth century.854 The Romance of Hervis (of about the beginning of the thirteenth century) turns on the story of a youth who ransomed a girl who had been kidnapped by some soldiers. They proposed to take her to Paris and sell her at the fair there. The Parliament of Bordeaux, in 1571, granted liberty to Ethiopians and other slaves, "since France cannot admit any servitude." Still slavery existed in the southern provinces, including persons of every color and nationality.855 Biot856 thinks that the slave trade in the Middle Ages was carried on chiefly by pirates, so that slave markets existed on the coast [299] only, not inland. The Council of Armagh, in 1171, forbade the Irish to hold English slaves and mentions the sale of their children by the English.857 Thomas Aquinas is led by Aristotle to approve of slavery. Like Aristotle he holds it to be in the order of nature.858 A society was founded in Spain at the beginning of the thirteenth century to redeem Christian captives from Moorish slavery. The pious made gifts to this society to be used in its work. Christians sold kidnapped persons to the Moors that they might be redeemed again. In 1322 the Council of Valladolid imposed excommunication on the sale of men. In the fourteenth century the Venetians and Genoese were selling young persons from all countries in Egypt.859 Pope Nicholas V, in 1454, gave Portugal the right to subjugate western Africa, supposed to be lands which belonged to the Saracens, and "to reduce the persons of those lands to perpetual servitude," expressing the hope that the negroes would be thoroughly converted. Margry puts in the year 1444 the first sale of negroes as slaves, under the eyes of Don Enrique of Portugal.860 As early as 1500 Columbus suggested to the king of Spain to use negroes to work the mines of Hispaniola. The king decreed that only such negroes should be taken to Hispaniola as had been Christianized in Spain. In 1508 the Spaniards took negroes to the mines to work with Indian slaves. The slave trade was authorized by Charles V in 1517.861 Christian slaves existed in Spain until the seventeenth, perhaps until the eighteenth, century. If blacks and Moors are included, slavery has existed there until the most recent times.862

304. Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages. Slavery existed in Italy in the thirteenth century, by war, piracy, and religious hatred. The preaching friars, by preaching against all property, helped to break it down, and it began to decline.863 The religious hatred is illustrated by the act of Clement V (♰ 1314). When he excommunicated the Venetians for seizing Ferrara he ordered that wherever they might be caught they [300] should be treated as slaves.864 Not until 1288 was a law passed at Florence forbidding the sale of serfs away from the land. Such a law was passed at Bologna in 1256, and renewed in 1283. Such laws seem to have been democratic measures to lessen the power of nobles in the rural districts.865 A man who made a slave woman a mother must pay damages to her owner. In a contract of 1392 a man in such a case confesses a debt, as for money borrowed. By a statute of Lucca, in 1539, a man so offending must buy the woman at twice her cost and pay to the state a fine of one hundred lire. By a statute of Florence, 1415, it was affirmed that the quality of Christian would not exempt from slavery.866 In a contract of sale of a woman at Venice, 1450, it is specified that the seller sells purum et merum dominium.867 The Italian cities continued to protect the slave trade until the middle of the sixteenth century.868 The Venetians and Genoese carried on the trade actively, except in times of great public or general calamity, when they suspended it to appease the wrath of God.869 The intimate connection of the great commercial republics with the Orient, and hatred for Greek heretics, are charged with causing them to keep up the trade.870 Conjugal life at Venice was undermined by the desire for variety in pleasure, and by the easy opportunity to get beautiful slaves in the markets of the Orient. From the most ancient times laws, as fierce as inefficacious, punished with death merchants who traded in men, but the trade did not cease until the end of the sixteenth century. The national archives contain contracts from the twelfth century to the sixteenth about slaves. Priests were the notaries in these contracts, in spite of the state, the popes, and the councils. Slaves were brought from every country in the Levant, including Circassian and Georgian girls of twelve and fourteen. Slaves passed entirely under the will of the buyer.871 Biot872 finds evidence of slavery in Italy until the middle of the seventeenth century.

[301] 305. Slavery in France. When the Armagnacs captured two men, in 1445, who could not pay ransom, they threatened to sell them to the Spanish Jews.873 Bodin874 admits that it is better to hold captives as slaves than to kill them, but his argument is all against slavery. He mentions cases in which it had been decided, apparently on the ground of the dictum of Philippe le Bel, that slaves who set foot in France became free.

306. Slavery in Islam. Islam is more favorable to the emancipation of slaves than Christianity is, as the Visigothic bishops understood it. Mohammed set free his own slaves and ordered that all slaves should have the right to redeem themselves. He taught that it is a good work to emancipate a slave, which will offset many sins.875 In his last sermon he said: "Know that every Moslem is the brother of every other Moslem. Ye are all a fraternity; all equal."876 The law recognizes only two ways in which a human being may become a slave,—(1) by birth, (2) by war. A debtor cannot become a slave, and parents in distress cannot sell their children. Slaves cannot be so sold that a mother and her child under seven years of age are separated. Any slave woman may be made a concubine, but may not be married. Children of slave women are legitimate and free. A woman who has borne her master a child becomes free at the master's death, and may not be sold or pawned by him while he lives. Slaves are in many respects inferior to free persons as to rights and powers. They have no right of property against their owners. They are under milder criminal law than their owners. All this is to be understood of slaves who are Moslems.877 The Koran often inculcates kindness to slaves.878 Slaves are goods given to the free by the grace of God. Mohammedans would consider the abolition of slavery a triumph of Christianity over Islam.879 An unbelieving slave has no guarantees at all against the will of his owner. In the eighth century the serfs in the Asturias rose en masse against their Mohammedan lords, and we are told [302] that under the wealth and glory of Grenada the peasants hated the lords with great intensity.880 In the great days of Abdurrahman III slaves were very numerous. They possessed land and slaves and the sultan charged them with "important military and civil functions, and pursued the policy of all despots in making them his ministers and favorites, in order to humiliate the aristocrats."881 They were also armed. The late Romans put colons in the army. The Visigoths inherited the usage, although the lords would not give them up. At last the levy arose to one half of the serfs and they became a majority of the army.882 Schweinfurth883 says that "wherever Islamism has sway in Africa it appears never to be the fashion for any one to allow himself to be carried." "A strict Mohammedan reckons it an actual sin to employ a man as a vehicle, and such a sentiment is very remarkable in a people who set no limits to their spirit of oppression. It is a known fact that a Mohammedan, though he cannot refuse to recognize a negro, denying the faith, as being a man, has not the faintest idea of his being entitled to any rights of humanity." The jurists early set up the doctrine that the life of a Mohammedan slave was worth as much as that of a Mohammedan freeman, but this doctrine rarely was fulfilled in practice, never inside of the harem. The jurists pronounced against the right of life and death on the part of the slave owner, but it was exercised.884 It is not law, but custom, to emancipate an adult slave after from seven to nine years' service. In most Moslem families slaves are well treated, as members of the household. Their children are educated as those of their masters are.885 Pischon says that Moslems cannot live without slavery. No free woman will do the menial housework, and no woman may be seen unveiled by a free man.886 This is a repetition of the opinion of the ancients that slavery was indispensable (sec. 285). If all the women were free, some of them would do the housework. A modern Turk is a tyrant inside his own dwelling. For his wife he has a proverb that she should have "neither mouth nor [303] tongue." The girls are not educated to be such wives. They find some support at home against their husbands. Hence nearly all Turks entertain feelings of dislike and ill will towards their parents-in-law, and prefer slave concubines, whose relatives they welcome, if the wife is pretty, or wins their affection. Great ladies buy promising girls of seven or eight and train them, and sell them again.887

307. Review of slavery in Islam. The injunctions of Mohammedanism sound just and humane; the practice of Mohammedans is cruel and heartless. The slave is not a thing or ware; he is a man entitled to treatment worthy of a man. A man may take his slave as a concubine, but he must not sell her to vice. A free man may marry a slave, if she is not his own. A free woman may marry a slave, with the same restriction. If a slave woman bears a child to her master, the child is free, and the mother cannot be sold or given away. At the death of her owner she becomes free. A slave man and woman may marry, with the consent of the owner, to which they have a claim if they have behaved well. A slave man is limited to two wives. Emancipation is a religious and meritorious act on the part of a slave owner.888 "In general, it must be acknowledged that neither amongst the people of antiquity, nor amongst Christians, have slaves enjoyed such good treatment as amongst Moslems."889 The provision about a slave woman who becomes a mother by her master is the one to arouse most Christian shame. Still, the Moslems have so many special pleas and technical interpretations by which to set aside troublesome laws that we can never infer that the mores conform to the laws. It is against the law for a Moslem to reduce a Moslem to slavery, but the Turks rob the Kurds and other tribes of their women, or buy them from the barbarous Tcherkess.890

308. Slavery in England. Sir Thomas More891 provided for some of the troubles of life by slavery. Slaves were to do "all laborsome toil," "drudging," and "base business." They were to be persons guilty of debt and breakers of [304] marriage.892 Garnier quotes a law of 1547 (I Ed. VI, c. 3), in which a vilein is mentioned as a slave. "Long after this date there are mentioned instances of a slave's emancipation, and such philanthropic writers as Fitzherbert lament the possibility of slavery and its actual existence, as a disgrace both to legislation and religion."893

309. Slavery in America. In the Anglo-American colonies which did not have a plantation system for tobacco or indigo the great reason for slavery was to hold the laborer to the place where the owner wanted him to work. In New England the negro slave lived in close intimacy with his owner and the latter's sons. In Connecticut he was allowed to go to the table with the family, "and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand."894 In that colony the creditor might require the debtor, by a law of 1650, to pay by service, and might sell his due service to any one of the English nation. The law remained in force into the nineteenth century.895

310. Colonial slavery. France reopened the slave trade by a law of May 20, 1802. One of the reasons for this law submitted by Buonaparte to the legislature was: "The commercial prosperity of France renders it necessary that a certain quantity of the produce of the country, in wine and cereals, should be sent to the Antilles for consumption by the blacks. Now these negroes, were they free, would prefer manioc to wheat, and the juice of the sugar cane to our wines. It is, therefore, indispensable that they should be slaves."896

311. Slavery preferred by slaves. It appears, therefore, that the subjection of one man's muscles and nerves to another man's will has been in the mores of all people from the beginning of human societal organization until now. Now it exists, as an institution, only in barbarism and half-civilization. In English North Borneo slavery is traditional. Any slave may be free for £4, "but in most cases they have been brought up as ordinary members of the family, and have no wish to leave [305] their home. Cases of unkind treatment are very few and far between."897 In fact, the purely sentimental objections to slavery have reached, in Africa, many people who are on a grade of civilization where slavery is an advantage to the slave (sec. 275). Schweinfurth tells us, of the Sudanese, that numbers of them often "voluntarily attach themselves to the Nubians, and are highly delighted to get a cotton shirt and a gun of their own. They will gladly surrender themselves to slavery, being attracted also by the hope of finding better food in the seribas than their own native wilderness can produce. The mere offer of these simple inducements in any part of the Niam-niam lands would be sufficient to gather a whole host of followers and vassals."898 He goes on to show how the mode of grinding durra corn used in Africa keeps women in slavery. They pound it on a big stone by means of a little stone. One woman's day's work will grind enough for five or six men. It has been shown above (sec. 275) how badly the abolition of slavery has been received in Algeria and Sahara. Gibson is quoted "that voluntary and hereditary slavery might well be permitted to continue" in West Africa.899 In that region "a slave man could hold property of his own. If he were a worthy, sensible person, he could inherit." He could take part in discussions and the palaver, and could defend himself against abuse. There are now no slaves bought or sold, but there are "pawns" for debt, who are not free.900 On the one hand, the slave trade in Africa has required for its successful prosecution that the slaves should first be war captives or raid captives of other negroes. This has led to the wildest and most cruel devastation of the territory. On the other hand, the question arises whether savages must be left to occupy and use a continent as they choose, or whether they may be compelled to come into coöperation with civilized men to use it so as to carry on the work of the world. Many who think the latter view sound are arrested by the fact that no one has ever been found great or good enough to be a slave owner. On the other hand, a humanitarian doctrine which orders [306] that a slave be turned out of doors, in spite of his own wish, is certainly absurd.

312. Future of slavery. In the eighteenth century, in western Europe, there was a moral revolt against slavery. None of the excuses, or palliatives, were thought to be good. The English, by buying the slaves on their West India islands, took the money loss on themselves, but they threw back the islands to economic decay and uncultivation. When the civilized world sees what its ideas and precepts have made of Hayti, it must be forced to doubt its own philosophy. The same view has spread. Slavery is now considered impossible, socially and politically evil, and so not available for economic gain, even if it could win that. It is the only case in the history of the mores where the so-called moral motive has been made controlling. Whether it will remain in control is a question. The Germans, in the administration of their colonies, sneer at humanitarianism and eighteenth-century social philosophy. They incline to the doctrine that all men must do their share in the world and come into the great modern industrial and commercial organization. They look around for laborers for their islands and seem disposed to seek them in the old way. In South Africa and in our own southern states the question of sanitary and police control is arising to present a new difficulty. Are free men free to endanger peace, order, and health? Is a low and abandoned civilization free to imperil a high civilization, and entitled to freedom to do so? The humanitarians of the nineteenth century did not settle anything. The contact of two races and two civilizations cannot be settled by any dogma. Evidence is presented every day that the problems are not settled and cannot be settled by dogmatic and sentimental generalities. Is not a sentiment made ridiculous when it is offered as a rule of action to a man who does not understand it and does not respond to it? In general, in the whole western Sahara district slaves are as much astonished to be told that their relation to their owners is wrong, and that they ought to break it, as boys amongst us would be to be told that their relation to their fathers was wrong and ought to be broken.

[307] 313. Relation of slavery to the mores and to ethics. Inasmuch as slavery springs from greed and vanity, it appeals to primary motives and is at once intertwined with selfishness and other fundamental vices. It is not, therefore, a cause which gradually produces and molds the mores, nor is it an ethical product of folkways and mores. It is characteral. It rises into an interest which overrules everything else. This appears most clearly in the history of Roman slavery (see sec. 288). The due succession of folkways, mores, character, and ethics is here broken. The motive of slavery is base and cruel from the beginning. Later, there are many people of high character who accept it as an inheritance, and are not corrupted by it. The due societal relation of interests and mores is broken, however. It is an evil thing that that relation should be broken. All which is moral (pertaining to mores) or ethical is thrown out of sequence and relation. The interests normally control life. It is not right that ethical generalizations should get dogmatic authority and be made the rule of life. Ethical generalizations are vague and easy. They satisfy loose thinkers, and it is a matter of regret when, in any society, they get the currency of fashion and are cherished by great numbers. Interests ought to control, being checked and verified by ethical principles of approved validity. Slavery is an interest which is sure to break over all restraints and correctives. It therefore becomes mistress of folkways and dictates the life policy. It is a kind of pitfall for civilization. It seems to be self-evident and successful, but it contains a number of forms of evil which are sure to unfold. The Moslems have suffered from the curse of it, although in entirely other ways than the Christians. It intertwines with any other great social evil which may be present. There it has combined with polygamy. It is, in any case, an institution which radically affects the mores, but it is to be noticed that its effect on them is not normal and not such as belongs to the prosperous development of civilization.

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