inanimate source of pleasure; and to account for this he suggests, curiously enough, "the primary and independent pleasure of the animal embrace"-although embrace even as an outward expression of affection plays a very insignificant part in the social relations of gregarious animals. It might as well be asked why there should be a more lively feeling towards a sentient creature which inflicts pain than towards an inanimate cause of pain. Both cases call for a similar explanation. The animal distinguishes between a living being and a lifeless thing, and affection proper, like anger proper, is according to its very nature felt towards the former only. The object of anger is normally an enemy, the object of social affection is normally a friend. Social affection is not only greatly increased by reciprocity of feeling, but could never have come into existence without such reciprocity. The being to which an animal attaches itself is conceived of as kindly disposed towards it; hence among wild animals social affection is found only in connection with the gregarious instinct, which is reciprocal in nature. Among men the members of the same social unit are tied to each other with various bonds of a distinctly human character the same customs, laws, institutions, magic or religious ceremonies and beliefs, or notions of a common descent. As men generally are fond of that to which they are used or which is their own, they are also naturally apt to have likings for other individuals whose habits or ideas are similar to theirs. The intensity and extensiveness of social affection thus in the first place depend upon the coherence and size of the social aggregate, and its development must consequently be studied in connection with the evolution of such aggregates. This evolution is largely influenced by economic conditions. Savages who know neither cattle-rearing nor agriculture, but subsist on what nature gives them—game, fish, fruit, roots, and so forth-mostly live in single families consisting of parents and children, or in larger 1 Bain, op. cit. p. 132. 2 family groups including in addition a few other individuals closely allied.' But even among these savages the isolation of the families is not complete. Persons of the same stock inhabiting neighbouring districts hold friendly relations with one another, and unite for the purpose of common defence. When the younger branches of a family are obliged to disperse in search of food, at least some of them remain in the neighbourhood of the parent family, preserve their language, and never quite lose the idea of belonging to one and the same social group. And in some cases we find that people in the hunting or fishing stage actually live in larger communities, and have a well-developed social organisation. This is the case with many or most of the Australian aborigines. Though in Australia, also, isolated families are often met with, the rule seems to be that the blacks live in hordes. Thus the Arunta of Central Australia are distributed in a large number of small local groups, each of which occupies a given area of country and has its own headman.3 Every family, consisting of a man and one or more wives and children, has a separate lean-to of shrubs; but clusters of these shelters are always found in spots where food is more or less easily obtainable, and the members of each group are bound together by a strong "local feeling." The local influence makes itself felt even outside the horde. "Without belonging to the same group," say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "men who inhabit localities close to one another are more closely associated than men living at a distance from one another, and, as a matter of fact, this local bond is strongly marked. . . . Groups which are contiguous locally are constantly meeting to perform ceremonies. At the time when the series of initiation ceremonies called the Engwura are performed, men and women gather together from all parts of the tribe, councils of the elder 5 1 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 43 sqq. Hildebrand, Recht und Sitte, p. I sqq. "Westermarck, op. cit. p. 45. 3 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 8 sqq. 4 Ibid. P. 18. 7 Ibid. p. 14. 2 men are held day by day, the old traditions of the tribe are repeated and discussed, and "it is by means of meetings such as this, that a knowledge of the unwritten history of the tribe and of its leading members is passed on from generation to generation." I Nay, even members of different tribes often have friendly intercourse with each other; in Central Australia, when two tribes come into contact with one another on the border-land of their respective territories, the same amicable feelings as prevail within the tribe are maintained between the members of the two. Now it seems extremely probable that Australian blacks are so much more sociable than most other hunting people because the food-supply of their country is naturally more plentiful, or, partly thanks to their boomerangs, more easily attainable. A Central Australian native is, as a general rule, well nourished; "kangaroo, rockwallabies, emus, and other forms of game are not scarce, and often fall a prey to his spear and boomerang, while smaller animals, such as rats and lizards, are constantly caught without any difficulty by the women." " Circumstances of an economic character also account for the gregariousness of the various peoples on the north-west coast of North America who are neither pastoral nor agricultural-the Thlinkets, Haidas, Nootkas, and others. On the shore of the sea or some river they have permanent houses, each of which is inhabited by a number of families; + the houses are grouped in villages, some of which are very populous; and though the tribal bond is not conspicuous for its strength, there are councils which discuss and decide. all important questions concerning the tribe." The territory inhabited by these peoples, with its bays, sounds, and rivers, supplies them with food in abundance; “its enormous wealth of fish allows its inhabitants to enjoy a pampered existence." 7 5 1 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 272. 2 Ibid. p. 32. 3 Ibid. pp. 7, 44., Boas, in Fifth Report on the NorthWestern Tribes of Canada, p. 22. 5 Krause (Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 100) speaks of a Thlinket village which consisted of sixty-five houses and five or six hundred inhabitants. 6 Boas, loc. cit. p. 36 sq. 7 Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 92. To pastoral people sociality, up to a certain degree, is of great importance. They have not only to defend their own persons against their enemies, but they have also to protect valuable property, their cattle. Moreover, they are often anxious to increase their wealth by robbing their neighbours of cattle, and this is best done in company. But at the same time a pastoral community is never large, and, though cohesive so long as it exists, it is liable to break up into sections. The reason for this is that a certain spot can pasture only a limited stock of cattle. The thirteenth chapter of Genesis well illustrates the social difficulties experienced by pastoral peoples. Abraham went up out of Egypt together with his wife and all that he had, and Lot went with him. Abraham was very rich in cattle, and Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents. But "the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together "; they were obliged to separate.1 ture. The case is different with people subsisting on agriculA certain piece of land can support a much larger number of persons when it is cultivated than when it consists merely of pasture ground. Its resources largely depend on the labour bestowed on it, and the more people the more labour. The soil also constitutes a tie which cannot be loosened. It is a kind of property which, unlike cattle, is immovable; hence even where individual ownership in land prevails, the heirs to an estate have to remain together. As a matter of fact, the social union of agricultural communities is very close, and the households are often enormous.2 But living together is not the only factor which, among savages, establishes a social unit. Such a unit may be based not only on local proximity, but on marriage or a common descent; it may consist not only of persons who live together in the same district, but of persons who are of the same family, or who are, or consider themselves to be, 1 Genesis, xiii. 1 sqq. See Hildebrand, op. cit. p. 29 sq.; Grosse, Die Formen der Familie, pp. 99, 100, 124 sq. 2 See Grosse, op. cit. p. 136 sqq. of the same kin. These different modes of organisation often, in a large measure, coincide. The family is a social unit made up of persons who are either married or related by blood, and at the same time, in normal cases, live together. The tribe is a social unit, though often a very incoherent one,' consisting of persons who inhabit the same district and also, at least in many cases, regard themselves as descendants of some common ancestor. The clan, which is essentially a body of kindred having a common name, may likewise on the whole coincide with the population of a certain territory, with the members of one or more hordes or villages. This is the case where the husband takes his wife to his own community and descent is reckoned through the father, or where he goes to live in his wife's community and descent is reckoned through the mother. But frequently the system of maternal descent is combined with the custom of the husband taking his wife to his own home, and this, in connection with the rule of clan-exogamy, occasions a great discrepancy between the horde and the clan. The local group is then by no means a group of clansmen; the children live in their father's community, but belong to their mother's clan, whilst the next generation of children within the community must belong to another clan.2 Kinship certainly gives rise to special rights and duties, but when unsupported by local proximity it loses much of its social force. Among the Australian natives, for instance, the clan rules seem generally to be concerned with little or nothing else than marriage, sexual intercourse, and, perhaps, blood-revenge." "The object of caste" (clan), says Mr. Curr, "is not to create or define a bond of union, but to secure the absence of any blood relationship between per 1 See Cunow, Die VerwandtschaftsOrganisationen der Australneger, p. 121, n. I. 2 Cf. Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 259. 3 Cunow, op. cit. pp. 97, 136. Dr. Stirling says (Report of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, ‘An thropology,' p. 43) that the laws arising out of the "class" (clan) divisions "have extraordinary force and are, in general, implicitly obeyed whether in respect of actual marriage, illicit connections, or social relations"; but I find no further reference to these "social relations." |