ON
THE PLURALITY
OF
CIVILISATIONS
by
FELIKS KONECZNY
Translated from the Polish
Introduction
by
ANTON HILCKMAN
Professor at the University of Mainz (Germany)
Preface
by
ARNOLD TOYNBEE
First Published 1962
Originally published in Polish in 1935 in
Cracow
by Gebethner i Wolf under the title "O
wielości cywilizacyj"
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE by Jędrzej Giertych
INTRODUCTION by Anton Hilckman
FELIKS KONECZNY AND THE
COMPARATIVE SCIENCE OF CIVILISATION by Anton Hilckman
THE MODERN ROAD OF PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
ON WHAT IS CIVILISATION BASED? — THE QUINCUNX OF EXISTENTIAL VALUES
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: WHERE
DOES THE DIFFERENCE OF CIVILISATIONS COME FROM?
CIVILISATIONS AND RELIGIONS. ARE THE CIVILISATIONS PRODUCTS OF
RELIGIONS?
THE POSITIVE ANSWER: THE PRINCIPAL FACTORS OF DIFFERENTIATION OF
CIVILISATIONS
THE ONLY LAW OF HISTORY: CAUSALITY AND FINALITY
EAST, WEST. ROME AND BYZANTIUM. TURAN. THE PRESSURE OF THE EAST UPON THE
WEST GERMANY
CHAPTER I FROM
BACON TO MAJEWSKI
II A NOTE ON KOŁŁĄTAJ (Substantially abridged)
CHAPTER II NUCLEI OF
ALL CULTURE
CHAPTER IV ASSOCIATIONS
AND SYSTEMS
I SYSTEM IN THE QUINCUNX OF
SOCIETY
III THE CONDITION OF
COMM.ENSURABILITY
CHAPTER V CIVILISATION
AND RACE
III THE SO-CALLED SOCIOLOGICAL
RACES
IV PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS OF
CROSSING
V THE SO-CALLED HIERARCHY OF
RACES
CHAPTER VI CIVILISATION AND LANGUAGE
II MULTIPLICITY AND
DISAPPEARANCE OF LANGUAGES
V RELATIONSHIP TO COMMUNAL
MENTALITY
CHAPTER VII CIVILISATION
AND RELIGION
CHAPTER VIII ATTEMPTED
SYSTEMATIZATION
Polonica Publications have done a service to
the study of human affairs in publishing the
resent English translation of Feliks Koneczny's greatest work. It is one
of several mutually independent studies of the structure of human affairs on
the largest scale that have appeared in different parts of the Western World
within the last two generations. Koneczny published the original Polish edition
of this book after he had turned seventy, and he had the leisure to write it
because he had been compulsorily retired from his chair as a penalty for having
been outspoken in the cause of civic freedom. In short compass, Koneczny has
discussed the fundamental questions raised by the study of civilizations, and
he arrives at definite and valuable conclusions. After sketching the structure
of society, (he considers and rejects the thesis that differences in
civilization are byproducts of differences in physical race. Indeed, he rejects
the suggestion that these physical differences are in any way correlated with
the spiritual ones. Turning to language, he does conclude that different languages
are of unequal value for serving as vehicles for civilisations, but he refrains
from taking these qualitative differences between different languages as being
the explanation of the differences that he finds in the spiritual value of
different civilizations. Turning to religion, he insists on the mutual
independence of the "higher" religions and the civilizations.
Koneczny believed in the possibility, and
value, of a general study of human affairs. His own important contribution to
this was the crown of his life-work as an historian. He approached his
generalisations from the four standpoints of a student of East European and
Central Asian history, a Pole. A Roman Catholic Christian, and a Westerner.
Since the tenth century, Poland has been one of the eastern marches of the
Western World. Koneczny's specialist studies as an historian worked together
with his national heritage as a Pole to make him sensitive to the differences
between civilizations, and this inspired him to study the sum of human history
from the standpoint of the plurality of civilizations. It also made him an
ardent patriot of the Western World. This did not prevent Koneczny from being
also a patriotic Pole and a devout Roman Catholic Christian. But, for him,
Poland's national culture has value as one of a number of national versions of
a common Western or» as he prefers to call it, Latin culture; and Roman
Catholic Christianity has value as being the Western form of Christianity par
excellence.
This has made Koneczny generous-minded towards
Protestants. He sees in them, not dissenters from the Catholic fold but Western
Christians who, in ceasing to be Catholics, have continued to be Western,
fortunately for the West and for themselves. The same standpoint has made it
difficult for Koneczny to appreciate Eastern Orthodox, Monophysite, and
Nestorian Christianity and the non-Christian higher religions. He appreciates
Ancient Rome perhaps excessively, to the detriment of Ancient Greece. And he is
hard on both the Byzantine and the Turanian (i.e. the Eurasian nomad)
civilization. He classifies the civilization of Muscovite Russia as being
Turanian; but, if Russia had been classified by him as being Byzantine, she
probably would not have fared much better.
Every student of human affairs, however eminent,
is a child of his own social and cultural environment, besides being a unique
personality with his own individual outlook on the Universe. He is limited,
besides being stimulated, by his own particular historical standing-ground,
which has been imposed on him by the accident that he has been born at a
particular date in a particular place. Naturally, Koneczny's highly individual
approach to his work is partly conditioned — like^ for instance, Danilevsky's
and Spengler's and Vico's — by his cultural environment. It is fortunate that
there should have been a number of thinkers wrestling with the same problem
from different standing-grounds in time and space. It is also fortunate that
one of these voices should have been a Polish voice, since Poland has a word to
say to the present-day West, as Mr. Giertych points out in the Publisher's
Preface to the present English translation of Koneczny's major work.
Koneczny achieved all that he did achieve in a
life that was stormy and tragic yet long. This Polish thinker's personal
history is an epitome of the Polish nation's history. 'Indomitable' is the
adjective that the name 'Poland' calls up in non-Polish minds.
This foreword can, and should, be brief,
because the Publisher's Preface, together with the illuminating introduction by
my friend and colleague Professor Anton Hilckman, are all that is required for
introducing Koneczny's work to the English-reading public.
The publishers of "Polonica Series"
have decided to publish an English translation of the present book, because
they believe that Koneczny's investigations of the problem of civilisation are
important and relevant to the crisis of the Western world: also that his
principal work may prove useful and stimulating to the Western reader looking
for spiritual and moral orientation.
For two reasons the whole heritage of the
Western civilization is now endangered. First at all, the life of the Western
world itself las become transformed by becoming more and more materialist. All
the traditional spiritual values of the old Western civilization are now put in
doubt and the illusory, external brilliance of Western life cannot conceal the
restlessness, discontent and even despair of numerous and ^creasing sections of
Western society; they "never had it so good" in a material sense, but
are perfectly aware that this is insufficient and is sometimes even destructive
to happiness. Clearly, the Western world now treads the path towards
disintegration: ultimately it is impossible to live only for material aims, and
a hedonistic society no longer aware of its spiritual foundations. cannot last.
Secondly, Western civilisation has taken and is
still taking a wrong turn in directing the fate of European expansion through
out the globe. The colonial empires and the political influence of Europe in
other parts of the world are rapidly breaking down, and this breeds in many
strata of Western public opinion the suspicion that something was wrong with
the basic political and cultural ideas of the West: that the comfortable belief
of a historical mission and of a cultural superiority was mistaken, and that
Europe did not perform the role of a civil user and educator of the world, but
on the contrary, only exploited it. This means a breakdown of faith in Western
civilisation, its. Uniqueness and its universal value.
On the other hand. the whole world has been
conquered and continues to be conquered by cultural forms which come either
from Europe, or from other parts of the world inhabited by descendants of
European colonists; though these forms are quite different from what for
centuries was considered to be the essence of European civilisation. Throughout
the whole world people now use the same or almost the same cars, telephones,
television sets, machine guns, watches and fountain pens as are used in Europe.
They wear the same clothes, sit and sleep on the same furniture, cook and eat
the same food. They read the same news in similar newspapers, read also the
same books, see the same plays and films, listen to the same music, paint
similar pictures and construct similar buildings. They learn the same subjects
in similar schools. They have the same manners and customs and often the same
morality. They recognise to some extent the same basic principles of law,
order, decency and politics. Often, even such things as the Christian era and
calendar, the Christian week, the Christian Sunday are accepted in countries,
which are otherwise quite opposed to Christianity. European ideas are thriving
throughout the world. Communism is no exception here: this doctrine which is
being so widely used as a tool for the destruction of European political and
cultural influence, is in fact a product of Europe.
But in this cosmopolitan uniformity of material
existence, of social life and even of intellectual trends moral ideas, the
separateness of Western civilisation is being effaced. It is only the
superficial side of Western culture, which has spread over the world. In consequence, even the notion of what
really is and what in fact is not Western is beginning to be lost. There are
many people nowadays who are inclined to consider Ankara and Tel-Aviv as belonging
to the West. but at the same time to doubt if a poor and backward, but
traditionally moral and orderly mountain village in Calabria or even in Old
Castile can really be considered as Western.
For many people — those who speak about the
."post-Christian era" and who view mankind in a biologistic manner as
anincessant flow of change, in which there is nothing permanent and/enduring —
the civilisation of old Europe is a thing of me past, or at the best. of a
present time which is quickly coming to an end. They have lost faith in Western
civilisation; they accept its decline, and even more: they do not regret it.
They believe in the advent of a new civilisation, materialist and cosmopolitan,
which will be as different from the old civilisation of the Christian West as
the Christian West was different from the antique world, or as the
civilisations of Arab Islam are different from old Babylonia, Assyria and
Egypt.
We do not share their views. And we are sure
that millions of people in every country think as we do. We believe that the
fundamental values of the Christian West have not lost and will not loose their
validity. We believe that the Christian West need not die and we hope that it
never will die. We believe that the material achievements of the Western
civilisation are not its principal element but are only accessory, and that the
real substance of this civilization consists in spiritual and moral
principles. We believe, that the
uniqueness of Western Christian civilisation is not an illusion or a lie, and
that this civilisation has truly achieved a height not yet reached by other
civilisations; the disintegration, which is now destroying its foundations in
many places, does not affect this truth. (Feliks Koneczny said: "do not
let us suppose that Latin — or Western Christian — civilisation will fall; we
shall fall"). We believe that the Christian West has not lost its
historical mission in the world: it still has the duty to spread Christianity
among other peoples, to disseminate Christian moral ideals and principles, and
to help other civilisations to rise to a higher moral level and to become
fundamentally transformed thereby. We believe in all this perhaps more firmly
than others — because we are Poles. We did not share in the centuries of
Western pride and wealth and we are not guilty of the Western sins towards the
rest of the world. which were born from an abandonment of Christian moral
principles. We knew only misfortunes, sacrifice and effort. But this allows us
to see more acutely the essentials: we are not affected by the disappointment
of the present Western political decline; we see nothing new and unusual in
disasters and ruins. But we know that life continues to flow after the
earthquakes, that moral and cultural values do not cease to be valid, and that
we still have to perform our duties. We do not despair of Western Christian
civilisation; on the contrary we believe that the West, purified by misfortune
and repentant of its sins. will raise its forces for new efforts and will
become more faithful than before to its obligations, and will again achieve
great things.
Koneczny is a thinker who analyses the merits
of existing civilisations and who rates Western Christian civilisation very
high: -— not in what is accidental in its achievements, but in what essential
in its foundations. During his long lifetime he studied the problem of
civilisations in all its aspects, and arrived by inductive, objective
investigation to conclusions, which allow us to understand better what are the
essential elements of the Western Christian, or, as he calls it, the Latin*) civilisation: what makes this
civilisation to differ, not superficially, but organically from other
civilisations, and what is indispensable to its survival, health, and strength.
Koneczny's work is interesting for two reasons. First, he invented a new method
of investigating the life of human societies. He is an opponent of a priori
judgements about civilisation an believes that problems connected with it
should be weighed on the ground of accumulated facts taken from historical and
social experience with the same impartiality and minuteness as in the problems
of natural sciences. By the way. this inductive method, similar to the methods
of investigation in natural sciences, has lead him to the rejection of some
social theories drawn by other thinkers by analogy from those sciences.
Secondly, he arrived at the conclusions which
we mentioned above. He sees in the Latin (Western Christian) civilisation the
highest achievement so far of the historical development of humanity; he states
what are the essential elements of this civilization and he teaches us a lot
about what we should do to protect this civilisation from disintegration or
decline. His practical lessons — intended by himself for the Polish nation
which was and is permanently endangered by disintegrating influences from alien
spiritual and cultural worlds — are similarly valid and useful for the nations
of Western Europe or of America, which are subject, sometimes in lesser,
sometimes even in greater degree, to the same disintegrating influences and
pressures as Poland is.
We hope that English and American readers will
find Koneczny's work interesting and valuable, and with this hope we hand this
book in to them. We asked a Western European admirer of Feliks Koneczny's
thought. Professor Anton Hilckman of the Mainz University in Western Germany,
to be so kind as to introduce the present book to the English-speaking reader
by evaluating Koneczny's contribution to modern thought, and by summarizing his
main ideas. We hope that Professor Hilckman's introduction will stimulate the
reader and attract him to read Koneczny's book itself — and perhaps in future
also other Koneczny's books.
Ph.D. (Milan), Rerum Pol.D. (Freiburg in Br.)
Professor ai the University of Mainz (Germany).
One of the great spiritual aims of our time is
the endeavour to understand history as a whole; several attempts have been made
to achieve a universal historical synthesis, a general survey of universal
history. This did not seem so pressing and urgent a task to the people of
previous centuries as it does to us. of today. (This "today" we may
understand as the period from the beginning of the present century.)
Oswald Spengler's theory of history and culture
was an attempt of this kind: planned on the grand scale and in parts splendid
even if in detail it was vulnerable to criticism and if as a whole it was a
miscarriage. There was no humanity for
Spengler: bunwity, was for him only an abstract notion, something non-existent,
void of reality: and in consequence, neither was there any history of humanity.
Not only had there been no such history in the past, but there could not
possibly be such a history in the future. All that is historically relevant,
says Spengler. has taken place within the compass of eight high civilisations,
of which our own, the Western, is the latest; everything else is
"non-historical being" and superlatively irrelevant. Spengler, whose historical thought is
orientated by the biological sciences, considers the civilisations themselves
as a sort of great mysterious organisms. They come to life, they blossom like
flowers of the field; they are indeed a species of blossom, great, mysterious
and wonderful; they bring their fruits to ripeness, and they wither and die
because these miraculous organisms of the highest existing rank, like
everything alive also are subject to the laws of life which are in their final
aim the laws of death. An air of pessimism breathes through Spengler's
learning. This is undeniable, although Spengler repeatedly and most
energetically defends himself against the charge of pessimism.
Today it is the historical doctrine of Toynbee,
which stands in the forefront of discussion. Interest has been evoked among the
educated public of the whole world by the extensive and deeply solid work of
this author: a proof that the effort to understand history as a whole—to seize,
one is almost inclined to say. Its innermost laws—has become one of the great
longings, perhaps even the greatest longing of our day.
Toynbee's doctrine represents in many respects
an advance upon Spengler's historical picture. We do not find in Toynbee's work
the dogmatic utterances of a speculative thinker who, believing himself to have
discovered the essence of historical truth, tolerates no opposition to his
theses; but rather the cautious formulations of an empiricist, who tries again
and again to elucidate and to strengthen each of his opinions in the light of
the facts.
Again, in Toynbee's doctrine, we find place in
history for the element of freedom; again, with him. man learns that in spite
of all the powerful determining factors his fate is still put into his own
hands, and he can create in liberty the future of his race.
Philosophers of universal history are trying
everywhere to comprehend the meaning of this age, to "lake the bearings of
the present time” (Ortsbestimmung der
Geenwart," the location of the present, is the title of a work by
Alexander Ruestow.) New paths are being explored. All these thinkers share a conviction
that by examining historical facts in their entirety, judgments of general
validity may be reached, even if nobody dare nowadays speak about "laws of
history" in a strict sense. And this very hesitation seems to us to
represent an advance from the attitude of the previous century, when there was
so strong a tendency to judge the value of a discipline in the field of the
humanities, like one in the field of natural science, by its ability to produce
its own system of laws.
The teachings, which emerge from history as a
whole, are quite obviously of great practical value. From the experience and
the understanding of history, politics take their orientation for good or evil,
to be a curse or a blessing to the nations. That the nations could learn from history
is generally recognised: whether in fact they have learnt much from history is
another question. Can the nations then learn from each other?—can this nation
learn from that? We believe it possible. It is quite certainly possible within
the sphere of one single civilisation, a circle of nations, which have much in
common. Had the Germans known in 1933 a little more of the history of England
or of Switzerland, and had they made practical deductions from that knowledge,
it would not have been possible for a Hitler to become a dictator of Germany, a
demon to Europe and the bringer of such immeasurable sufferings upon Western
humanity.
We believe that the doctrine of a Polish
thinker of our times, on history and on civilisation, can be of great
importance to the general historical thought of the Western European nations as
well as in the practical political shaping of their fates: provided, of course,
that this doctrine becomes known. This statement of ours should not cause
astonishment: Poland is the most easterly portion of Western Europe, the
outpost of the West so to speak. For a thousand years the Poles were to the
West a protecting wall against the East: against all that swelling flood which
threatened Europe from an alien world that was arrayed more than once against
our own world in hostility. A sentinel on a wall, a guard on an outpost,
acquires an acute perception and recognition of what is foreign, what is alien,
menacing and dangerous. It may therefore be of quite particular interest to
make the doctrine of a Polish historical thinker accessible to the public of
Western Europe.
To the English-speaking public we present in
this volume a translation of one of the major works of the Polish historical
thinker, Feliks Koneczny. We believe that this historical doctrine can count on
their interest, loo ; because we are fully convinced that this way of seeing
history, with the consequent political ideas, is of the utmost importance for
the community of Western peoples. Koneczny shares with most of the historical
thinkers of our times the fundamental view of the plurality of civilisations.
Historically speaking, there is no such thing as "humanity," or at
least it does not yet exist; consequently there is no history of humanity as
such, but only historical currents within each of the separate great human
circles, which we now call civilisations. And these currents are at least to
some extent, if not completely, independent of one another. This idea is not
new: we meet with it in Vico, already in all its clarity, and today it is one
of the fundamental assumptions of all historical thought. Unfortunately in the
course of the history of ideas, this idea has suffered a great but accidental
misfortune. The undoubtedly correct perception of the plurality of civilisations
has become tied almost always to a completely different idea with which it has
intrinsically no connection that the separate human civilisations are entities
comparable with organisms, big creatures of semi-organic character upon which
laws of life are binding, analogous to the laws of organic life. Already in
Vico this idea is ringing; .we find it again and again throughout the more
modern study of civilisations, in almost every one of its representatives no
matter how they may differ otherwise in their points of departure and in their
general views. We find this "biologic" treatment of civilisations in
its most radical form represented by Oswald Spengler whom we mentioned above.
We believe that this "biologic" way
of seeing the civilizations brings no benefit to universal history: nor does it
benefit the study of civilisations, since the association of a correct
fundamental perception—that of the plurality of civilisations—with an arbitrary
and quite unproved additional assumption can only do harm. Had the study of
civilisations held to the doctrine of Francis Bacon, who four hundred years ago
created with his inductive method an instrument of progress for the natural
sciences, this study would have avoided much error. But it has not done so.
Only a very few of the great historical philosophers, who can be counted as
precursors of the modern study of civilisations, have resisted the temptation
of misusing the speculative method. In fact, besides the great Montesquieu, as
forerunner of a science of civilisations based on empiricism and employing the
inductive method, we can mention only the Polish thinker Hugo Kołłątaj, whom
Koneczny explicitly mentions. Otherwise, it is precisely the "great
names" among the philosophers of history who swear allegiance to the
speculative method, even in respect of the very problems whose solution by the
speculative method is quite impossible.
Feliks Koneczny, so far as it is at all
possible in the field of humanities, is a thinker without preconceived ideas.
His study of history begins from no postulates, except those, which he
expressly mentions as such. We must acknowledge this as rather a great merit in
him when we think how many preconceptions, mostly unacknowledged, load the
historical philosophy of such a man as Spengler for instance. Koneczny
absolutely accepts the principle that in comparing civilisations, and in
considering history as a whole, the answers can only be obtained a posteriori;
this means a complete renunciation of any a priori treatment. And a science which
emerges when one keeps scrupulously and con sciensciously to the inductive
method is a strict science, at least insofar as in the sphere of humanities
there can be such a thing as a strict science.
Koneczny calls his study the science of
civilisations. That science which
gathers together the whole result of all historical disciplines must
necessarily become a science of civilisations, because the civilisations are
the final spiritual units and the final moving forces of the course of
historical events. Universal history becomes comprehensible only under the
aspect of civilisations differing from one another and struggling against one
another. We have already arrived at a situation in the history of ideas when
the final constitution of a science of civilisations, as a separate discipline
with its own foundations, can no longer be postponed.
The last century saw the birth of many new
scientific disciplines which dealt in part with problems which the science of
civilisations must also encounter. Sociology
in particular has been, and is. in fashion so to say: many people consider it
as a sort of universal discipline, which contains general prescriptions for all
other possible scientific disciplines in the sphere of humanities. Koneczny is
not of this opinion and we agree with him. If we define sociology as the
science of the ways and forms of social life—both of man and of animal—it
becomes apparent that this does not embrace the whole complex of culture. There
is still a gap in the system of humanistic sciences, which can be filled only
by a new and specialised science; and this new science is the science of
civilisations, for which no other discipline can be substituted. To this
science we believe that Koneczny has made an altogether decisive contribution;
and when in the future men will treat scientifically of civilisations, the name
of Koneczny will occupy a place of honour. This opinion of ours will be
accepted to by everybody who tries to gain a closer acquaintance with
Koneczny's science, everybody especially who will follow him to an
understanding of the particular way in which the Western civilisation differs
from all others.
That a civilisation is a scientifically
definable notion and not only a convenient collective denomination for disparate
things could be easily proved. Every civilisation is a coherent system of
values, and of judgments on values; of moral distinctions and social precepts,
which point to each other and depend upon each other. Putting it briefly, a
civilisation is a general way of life. When we say that an Indian is culturally
different from us. We mean by this that the relation of man to man, the
relation of different social factors to each other, are not the same in India
as in Western Europe; different civilisations mean different ways of seeing
values, and different ways of resultant behaviour. Differences of civilisation
are differences too in personal life-aims, as well as in the consequent
differences in attitude and conduct towards others. Clearly these differences are
of the utmost importance, since the civilisations are the highest subdivisions
of humanity under its spiritual aspects. It is impossible to turn to humanity
and to pass silently over the differences of civilisation, as if these did not
exist or as if they were of secondary importance. Only in the light of a
science of civilisations is it possible to understand the present antinomy of
East and West. Only a science of civilisations is able to point out to Western
man his highest aims, which at the same time mean a duty towards the whole
world. Again and again Koneczny indicates that every political theory and every
political praxis which disregards the differences of civilisations within
humanity, or which does not reckon with those to a sufficient degree, is doomed
to total sterility and in consequence must come to nothing.
The science of civilisations, as thought of by
Koneczny — as a science concerning the unfolding of the humanifas within time—
must be self-transformed into a central science among the humanities; and it is
also easy to see that the insights and conclusions of such a science, embracing
the totality of what is human, must be of the utmost practical importance.
We do not hesitate to consider the doctrine of
Koneczny to be one of the sharpest weapons which can serve in the struggle for
the defence of the West. His view of the differences between the basic forms of
civilisations allow him to interpret the history of the Western nations in many
respects quite otherwise than has usually been done before. It is not the
Imperial idea, of which the Germans felt themselves to be the bearers, which
now appears as the truly Western idea: but something quite different, the idea
of a federal Europe conceived as a brotherhood of nations, equally free and
with equal rights. The Imperial idea, on the other hand, originated much more
in the Byzantine world; and during the whole of the Middle Ages the role of the
Byzantine world was to the Western world rather that of a temptation. In view
of this, the Ghibellinism of the Middle Ages appears in quite a different
light. The peculiar phenomenon of Prussianism obtains only thanks to Koneczny's
doctrine of civilisations a true explanation. What is the essence of this
extraordinary phenomenon?—Prussia, which was something like a permanent
provincial rebellion against all that was generally European? To this question
too we find in Koneczny an answer which is basically accurate.
But it is his explanation of Russianism which
we consider to be, above all, one of the greatest merits of Koneczny. Exactly
in the present situation of the world, a clear comprehension of the spiritual
roots of this phenomenon with which we are so ill at ease is of the utmost
importance. Unfortunately, even the leading intellectual personages of Western
Europe are inclined in a vast childlike innocence to believe that the whole of
the present state of affairs in Russia is only transitory, and therefore to
underestimate the menacing reality of modern Communist-led Russia. To shock the
optimists into wakefulness is not a pleasant duty. but it is a duty none the
less, and Koneczny does not evade it. Today Western civilisation stands in face
of the gravest and most dangerous crisis in her whole history. She stands
confronted by a menace which comes not only from outside but also from within,
since for many people within the domain of the Western world itself the
traditional values of its civilisation no longer present a living spiritual
obligation. In the circumstances, everybody who sharpens our awareness of this
obligation is welcome to us.
We believe that Koneczny's doctrine is the
concern of the whole of Western European society. Even if this or that detail
of his words will not pass the test of time, the essence of his doctrine seems
to us unassailable. Everyone to whom the fate of his own country, as well as that of Western society,
is dear, can learn much from Koneczny.
At the request of the Editors of "Polonica
Publications", I give with pleasure my permission to reprint the following
abridged and slightly modified English translation of my remarks on Koneczny's
work and importance. Which have previously been published in Germany.
Whether a name is known or unknown is not
always a reliable criterion of the importance of the spiritual facts which it
personifies. At the time when Kierkegaard was alive his name too, outside
Denmark. was practically unknown, and even in his native country only few
people knew him and even fewer recognised him. But in spite of this, what he
had to say was of Western and European importance; it is true that decades were
needed before it was universally understood.
Anyone who knows of the Polish historical thinker Feliks Koneczny and is
acquainted even if only superficially with his doctrine, is involuntarily
reminded of the destiny of Kierkegaard in spite of all the differences between
these two men.
After several decades probably also the name of
Feliks Koneczny. although today known to few outside his native country, will
be known to every educated European. If official Poland took little or no
notice of her most important contemporary thinker, at least he was not unknown
there; and there existed circles from the beginning which declared themselves
as his followers, notwithstanding the fact that at times also rancorous
opposition and malicious abuse were not lacking; again, things which we know
already from Kierkegaard's life.
Koneczny is a historical thinker. We believe we are right in saying that a
comparison of his doctrine with all the previous philosophy of history, makes
it quite clear that it is only with him that the science of civilisations, a
science based on the study of history, becomes a special science—one is almost
tempted to say an exact science—of the same level and rank as the other special
philosophical disciplines. It is only
with Koneczny that this science appears in fact for the first time as a branch
of learning with a strictly characterised autonomy, with a sphere of tasks
delimited with precision and with an own method which can be verified in every
detail and applied generally and from many points of view; thus he is successful in overcoming
apriorism and biologism in every form, and at the same time in shaping a new
concept of the finality of history. His
brand of philosophy of history becomes in consequence at the same time a
knowledge and an imperative; and is— in a quite different and much deeper sense
than could be expected before—giving a
norm for the future in the spheres of thought and of life alike.
To the phrase "philosophy of history"
we are still unaccustomed to give another meaning than that of a more or less
speculative interpretation. The historical philosophies of Hegel and Schlegel
have in spile of all the difference of their basic conceptions this in common,
that they are both wholly speculative. In fact, all the bestknown
representatives of the more recent philosophy of history are entirely
speculative thinkers. Spengler likewise
does not at all break with the tradition of this course.
There has been. however, another sort of
philosophy of history besides the speculative: an empirical or inductive
philosophy of history, which has not been so well known, only because its
representatives have walked more humbly and their doctrines have appealed less
to the existing intellectual fashions.
A historical philosopher should approach
history as an empiricist. without any preconceived opinions about the result of
historical investigation; nothing can be introduced into it as an assumption or
an inclination.. This is not to say that a philosopher cannot approach history
from the ethical side, having standards of moral values: the comprehending
interpretation of historical event must be arrived at purely a posteriori, by
sifting and ordering the facts. The results of the examination of facts must
depend only on the method, and not on
any ideological views which he may otherwise have.
It had already become clear to Koneczny, thanks
to his specialised investigations as a professional historian, that a deeper
understanding of history is possible only when history is seen as a conflict of
different civilisations. Already in the nineties—when writing his earlier works
on the history of this Eastern European area in which during the centuries
three civilisations had clashed—Koneczny came upon the idea which Oswald
Spengler proclaimed some two or three decades later. Spengler presented it as an
apparently completely new achievement, in opposition to the "tapeworm
scheme" of a single historical development of humanity: he too showed that
a single straightlined history of humanity did not exist, but only a multitude
of isolated developments which went their course separated in time and space.
Koneczny, however, as an aposterionst and empiricist, desisted at any cost from
giving a common ruling principle to these separate lines. If such a principle
exists, it cannot be laid down in
advance, as Spengler did.
The diversity of these civilisations consists
in a manifold structure of the social life in the different human groups.
The definition which Koneczny gives to describe
this central and basic notion of his. is that civilisation is a structural method*) of human common life. This definition
is on one hand very wide; it embraces the whole moral, intellectual and
material being of man; it embraces
family, society, state, nation, art, learning, politics and economy. On the
other hand. this sharp and clear definition is intended also to narrow the
vague and featureless notions of culture. on the basis of which the philosophy
of history has often worked; but this
narrowing is indispensable if one will not renounce a solution of the central
historical-philosophical problem as Spengler does who in his two volumes never
defines what civilisation in fact is.
So there exists, as even a most superficial
observation can recognise, not only one structural method of human social life,
but an infinite plurality of forms which differ very much among themselves.
Ethnology is still discovering new ones. Not every civilisation embraces all
spheres of life. Only the so-called great civilisations are of special interest
from the point of view of history.
In face of this plurality and diversity of
civilisations, two questions emerge:
1.
On
what is this diversity based and in what does it consist?
2.
Where
does it come from and by what factors of differentiation has it been brought
about?
The reply to the first question consists in a
detailed development
of the notion of civilisation.
The second question, however, is the true
central problem of the
philosophy of history.
Already his earlier historical investigations
had led Koneczny to devote special attention to the comparative study of law;
he recognised very early the great importance of the diversity of law for the
differentiation of social forms. Seen from outside, the diversity civilisations
has a root in the diversity of law; the inner aspect consists in the different
attitudes of man towards values. Two notions of Koneczny are here of
fundamental importance: the "trójprawo". the "triple
law"—and the existential categories or existential values.
The "'triple law" embraces three
spheres: family law. property law and inheritance law. The structure of the
family is of central importance. Monogamy, polygamy, semi-polygamy and other
forms of the constitution of the family influence in the deepest way the whole
consciousness of society. The form of the family and the whole spiritual
attitude of man stand in the closest mutual relationship. Polygamy, as
experience teaches, influences in a most unfavourable way the spirit and the
character not only of the woman. but also of the man; even the dissolubility of
matrimony exercises an influence of a similar sort; it is a fact of great
importance that not one polygamous society has been able to overcome the clan
system. The spheres of the "triple law" arc closely mutually
interrelated. To a given family law belongs also a corresponding property law
and inheritance law. Not everything can be combined here with everything, but
strict correspondences are in force, e.g. a mutual connection of monogamous matrimony
with private property, and of polygamy with clan despotism.
The "quincunx of existential values"
or "categories of being" conducts us into the true, innermost essence
of civilisation. These are: health, economic wellbeing. the true, the good and
the beautiful. Two of these values belong to the material order, two to the
spiritual; the value of beauty belongs at the same time to the two orders.
The attitude towards these values, the
valuation of them and the determination of the relation between them can be
very different. The understanding of these differences gives a key which opens
the riddle of the diversity of civilisations. Humanity, as a whole, has not
much in common; but it is true that the common ground increases when we narrow
the circles, and limit ourselves to those societies which have risen above the
more primitive grades of material cultural possession to what we popularly call
higher culture.
A hierarchical order exists among the values;
this is a hierarchy of values as well as a hierarchy of sociological
importance. Fundamentally. the spiritual categories have precedence over the
material. But none of the five spheres is superfluous. Only where all five
categories are fully developed is the "wholeness of life" achieved:
where this is not the case, the civilisation is incomplete,
"defective". Sociologically the most important is the value of the
good, the sphere of morality. But it is in strictest connection with the sphere
of truth. Here belong the wide, penetrating and subtle investigations of
Koneczny into the relation between religion and morality. — Until today not
even one case has been known of a wholly areligious civilisation. There have
existed only societies with particularly great numbers of areligious
individuals (e.g. Japan). No new civilisation has emerged from such societies
until today, only cultural chaos. An areligious or even more an antireligious
life leads towards a narrowing of life, towards a mutilation of the categories
of being: the civilisation becomes again defective. Historical induction
teaches with compelling inevitability that without religion there can be no
cultural progress.
Not only the sphere of the beautiful, but also
the two spheres of material values are internally strictly connected with the religious
and moral order; a neglect of these harms also the physical and moral life.
Every insufficiency in one sphere brings necessarily a corresponding
insufficiency in the others. — Also the material spheres have their
indestructible place in the hierarchy of values. Neglect of the body and
contempt for the things of this earth harm the spirit and morality. "A law
in some way inevitable brings it about that man, being composed of body and
soul. has only the choice either to strive towards perfection in both spheres,
or to sink in both." A popularisation of asceticism, if going too far,
leads unavoidably to caricature. In the dirt even holiness ceases, although
some parts of the Eastern Church may sometimes have thought otherwise. — The
category of beauty has on its part a closest connection with all the categories
of being. Koneczny grants great praise to the Renaissance because it liberated
us definitely from the prejudice that moral accomplishment can only find proper
expression in a body which is free from external beauty.
All spheres of life without exception should be
developed equally and in proper proportion to each other. This is not always
the case in fact; often whole categories are lacking; such
"sub-developed" societies have a "defective civilisation". The civilisation is "one-sided"
when one category shoots up exuberantly and narrows the others by overgrowing
them; primitive societies in particular sometimes form specimens of curious distortion;
but also in historical civilisations examples of such a kind of
"elephantiasis" could be found. "Fullness of life" is the
real ideal. The nearer a society is to
the ideal of all-roundness, the higher it stands; no one of the Asiatic
civilisations fulfils this demand of completeness completely. In many of them
the sphere of natural truth is missing.
A fundamental postulate for every civilisation
is the following: between the
categories of the triple law and between all the categories of the quincunx a
harmony and congruity must reign. This postulate means that a given solution in
the sphere of one of the five values provides immanently and necessarily also
guiding lines for solutions
in all the other spheres.
Civilisation is a "method" und not a
chaos. A society whose attitude towards the five values, which are in the
closest way interconnected, is not harmonious, is not flowing from one basic
principle. is not forming a logical and compact system, but bears in itself the
seeds of self-destruction. Only such societies which satisfy this fundamental
requirement arc capable of life and progress.
Old Hellas did not satisfy this demand; this is the innermost reason why
she could not survive; old Rome, with her iron compactness was the direct
opposite; the Roman world empire was anything but a simple produce of chance:
it was a logical consequence of the compactness of the legal and social Roman
structure, or. in other words. of the Roman superiority in civilisation over
all the other societies of the ancient
world.
It follows from this high estimate of material
categories that Koneczny does not adhere to a principle of division between the
spiritual, and the exteriorly technical culture which is so beloved especially
by the German philosophers of history. The ons cannot be separated from the
other. The same principle of life finds expression in the external,
technico-economico-legal organisation of a society, as in the highest spiritual
manifestations; the external aspect of a civilisation and its spiritual and
moral content are mutually in the most intimate way interdependent. Koneczny's
rejection of this division into two spheres is linked with his conception of
the struggle for existence. The previous century, with its predominantly
materialistic notion of the struggle for existence, has greatly sinned in this
matter. The struggle for existence has a triple character: moral, intellectual
and material. Only rather deformed individuals conduct an exclusively material
struggle for existence. It would have been possible already for the Darwinists
to see—had they wished to see— that even on the most primitive level of culture
wars are conducted not only for cattle and for hunting grounds, but also for
"prestige".
What factors caused the spiritual
differentiation into these highest groups of fundamentally different attitudes
and social self-consciousness which we call civilisations?
Very different answers have been given to this
question. Koneczny deals with it in his major works extensively and with
precision.
NEGATIVE ANSWERS Not only the materialistic
doctrine of history, which becam; the central dogma of Marxist Socialism, but
also other opinions, which merit to be treated more seriously, consider
technics and economy as decisive; according to L. H. Morgan and the Marxist
school the whole of culture is only a function of given conditions of
production. and the different civilisations are only expressions of different
degrees of ergological development. Koneczny's answer is negative; the
inductive examination of historical facts proves that technics determines only
the cultural grade within one given civilisation, but not the kind of
civilisation. Quantitative degrees are
something quite different than qualitative, essential differences.
Koneczny rejects also the anthropological view
of history as to the decisive importance of race.
He treats much more seriously the view of the
dependence of civilisation on language: he agrees that languages differ very
much in their usefulness as tools of the expression of the life of the human
spirit. There are languages of good and of bad "method", practical
and unpractical languages; languages which are an obstacle or a stimulus to
spiritual progress. It is possible to speak of a hierarchy of languages. But
language does not compel. So in conclusion, the answer is also here a negative
one.
The question concerning the relation between
civilisation and religion is of central importance. Are 'the civilisations
created by religions? Is a civilisation a thing, produced somehow by religious
collective experiences and living thenceforward its own life and following its
puzzling, inner laws of existence? Such was more or less Spengler's view of the
matter.
Koneczny, through his sharp definition of the
element of civilisation as something quite distinct from the sphere of religion
(in spite of multiple overlappings which make the recognition of the true
content of the problems here particularly difficult), has extricated the
history of ideas from a deviation which seemed almost inevitable. To this
deviation Spengler easily succumbed, although none of his critics to our
knowledge has noted this as an error. Koneczny had supplied a solution already,
when Spengler's books were not yet
written.
The current linguistical usage speaks without
differentiation about Christian, Islamitic or Buddhist civilisation. That close relations between religion and
civilisation exist, is certain: they are manifold and often not without
contradictions. The inductive method,
with which Koneczny examined the entangled complex of facts and questions,
conducted him first to the important distinction between sacral, semi-sacral
and non-sacral civilisations. A religion creates a civilisation when, and only
when, the spheres of all five existential categories are embraced by the sacral
legislation, and when the religion as such gives normative rules which embrace
also hygiene, economy, art and science. There are only two such sacral
civilisations: the Jewish and the Braminical. In these two cases religion and
civilisation overlap: the problem of
relationship between religion and civilisation is solved: in all other cases this relationship has yet
to be examined.
For the Christian part of humanity the thesis
of coincidence of religion and civilisation is hardly applicable. The current
expression of "Christian civilisation" is in the highest degree
misleading: there is neither a unique Christian civilisation whose subdivisions
would correspond to the different Christian denominations, nor are there
borderlines between civilisations within the Christian sphere, identical with
the borderlines of denominations. The Byzantine world, which stands
dogmatically very close to Catholicism, is in the sphere of civilisation
fundamentally different from the West, and on the other hand Protestantism,
which rejects a substantial part of Catholic dogma and does not recognise the
Catholic notion of Church, has not transformed in any fundamental way the
civilisation which the Protestant nations inherited from their Catholic past.
It is so because civilisation and religion are, despite the manifold connection
between them. two distinct orders: and a solution of the basic problem of the
science of civilisations is not possible without keeping the notions of them
strictly apart.
Christianity refused to create a sacral
civilisation. It made sacral only one institution of human social life:
matrimony. The Gospels deal only with one of the categories of the Quincunx of
existencial values: with the category of the morally good. But in spite of
this. the influence of Christianity, or to speak more strictly, of Catholic
Christianity, upon the entire civilisation of the Catholic, or formerly
Catholic nations is an undeniable fact.
At her entry into the cultural world of the
antique Mediterranean the young Church found herself in face of a highly
developed civilisation. The temptation arose to take a hostile attitude towards
this civilisation, which was in the closest way connected with paganism. But
the Church did not succumb to this temptation. On the contrary. she took
towards the antique civilisation the attitude which has been taken by the
Christian mission during the whole of her history towards every civilisation
which she meets, the lowest as well as the highest. She approached and
approaches every civilisation with four indexible moral demands. These four
moral postulates of Christendom are:
Koneczny calls these four postulates quite
simply the "four wedges" which Christianity drives into every
civilisation. The first and fourth
postulates are unconditional; with the second and third Christianity allows a
gradual state of transition. Everything which doss not oppose any of these four
Christian demands, can remain.
By the introduction of the third postulate the
Church also became a political educator of nations, and sometimes even the
creator of the State.
Thus also was the mutual interpenetration of
Christianity and of antique civilisation created. Christianity became
impregnated with antique civilisation; this was permissible and possible to
Christianity without in he least degree influencing its own religious essence;
it was quite enough to dismiss from earthly civilisation everything which
contradicted the morality of the Gospel. And in this way Christian Rome became
the preserver and continuator of the old classical civilisation, from which,
through long centuries of educative work by the Catholic Church, Western
civilisation emerged. The seeming paradox that just this religion which makes
nothing sacral excepting matrimony, which does not identify itself with any
single civilisation, not even with the
one which was formed by it, has exerted the greatest cultural influence and
transformed to the greatest extent the whole existence of the peoples which
embraced it. Christianity is according to Koneczny the opposite pole to
Buddhism: this religion (as also Islam,
in part), allows itself to be transformed by civilisation and submits to it,
whereas Christianity forms civilisation and conquers it. For Buddhism the world
is radically wicked, because every earthly being is to it essentially unholy;
in opposition to it. Christianity, in spite of its rejection of sacralisation.
teaches that every step in life can and even should be sanctified: the Gospel
contains no private law and no public law, but it has transformed the face of the earth.
But not all forms of Christianity have influenced
civilisation in an equal way. There is a fundamental difference which separates
Western Christendom from Eastern. The difference consists in this: that only
Catholicism has treated the fourth basic postulate with complete and
uncompromising preremptoriness. The different forms of Eastern Christendom have
done otherwise. Koneczny (to whom his precise knowledge of East-European and
Asiatic history in those centuries which correspond to the Western middle ages
supplied an enormous store of facts), consecrated very detailed studies also to
Byzantine Christianity. He gave similar attention to Nestorianism. which had in
Central Asia during long centuries an importance not remotely suspected by the
general body of European historians, in spite of a number of special
monographs. Koneczny's works contain collections of an enormous wealth of
highly interesting facts, which Should lay claim to the highest attention since
they throw an unexpectedly clear light not only upon the history of Asia. but
also upon the whole history of mankind.
Very few among us know how deeply the Nestorian
missionary activity progressed in Central Asia; in fact, a very substantial
part of the Ural-Altaic peoples of Central Asia, to which the Turkic group and
the Mongols belong, were in early and high middle ages converted to the
Nestorian form of Christendom. There
was in Mongol history a real Christian period. Koneczny even believes he can
rightly speak of "Mongol crusades".[1]
Undertaken with well disciplined super-armies, they had far greater penetrating
force than had the European crusades and were much more dangerous to the
Islamic states than those; the European expeditions were not in the military
sense at all "modern" as was the then highly progressive military force
of the Mongols.
All this once vast Nestorian Christendom of
Central Asia has ceased to exist: Mongol Christianity has disappeared from
history without trace. Kipchak became Moslem, and in Mongolia proper Buddhism
became overwhelmingly dominant. It is only with difficulty that we find here
and there a few effaced traces of the lost Christian communities in the ruins
of old Mongol cities.
The answer to the disquieting question as to
how all this could have happened, lies. according to Koncczny. in this: lhal
this Central Asiatic Christianity was only a "defective" form. a
Christianity which did not dare to change radically a society whose whole
structure ignored the most fundamental demands of the Christian religion. The
civilisation which Christianity here encountered was the Turanian. with which a
conflict of quite other dimensions was necessary than had been the case with
the classical-antique. Nestorian Christendom neglected to undertake this
conflict; it simplified its task by minimising it and by taking an opportunist
attitude. It embarked upon impracticable compromises, it weakened its own
fundamental moral demands in adaptation to the non-Christian environment, the
Christianisation ofwhich was anything but an easy task. It renounced the
radical adoption of its own fundamental postulates and submitted completely to
a civilisation which contained quite irreconciliable elements. The result was a
self-disintegration of this defective Christianity: in its inconsistent
compromise it was right from the beginning doomed to defeat and absorption by
the rigorous compactness of the Turanian civilisation.
It seems to be Koneczny's principal aim to show
the Turanian civilisation as the opposite pole of the Western civilisation,
moulded by Rome. We consider the introduction of the notion of Turanian
civilisation as one of his greatest merits. Spongier did not notice this
civilisation at all. Perhaps he did not know it. Perhaps he did not want to see
it and neglected it because it did not do him the favour of fitting into his
aprioristic scheme of biological cultural developments.
According to Koneczny a low estimate of the
element of religion and in general of the spiritual element is typical for the
Turanian civilisation; the central value in the sphere of Turanian civilisation
is the political element: everything has to be subordinated to it. The
religious ingenium is missing in the Turanian civilisation; in essence, the
Turanian man is a-religious, what does not necessarily mean that he is hostile
towards religion. On the contrary, the Mongol political power was quite
tolerant in religious matters. The
Mongols established the first real totalitarian state in history; but this
state differed from the modern ones in its tolerance in religious matters. This
"liberalism" in matters of ideology and almost absolute religious
tolerance were very much to its advantage. However. this did not flow from
respect for the sphere of conscience, nor for human liberty of thought, but can
rather be simply explained by the lack of importance which the religious
element had for Turanian man. In fact. all the religions which penetrated into
the sphere of Turanian civilisation became degenerated and in part corrupted;
and even Christianity did not prove an exception from this.
A quite typical representative of the Turanian
civilisation is Temudzhin, the last of the Genghis Khans. [2]
Byzantine Christianity, again, is according to
Koncczny slightly defecttive; it did not treat seriously the fourth of the
fundamental Christian postulates. The consequence was a Church subjected to the
State, the using of religion for worldly and political purposes. a stagnation,
a stiffening, a decline.
The Western Church, on the contrary,
facilitated and supported the development of a "society" whose
possibilities of development everywhere in the East were supressed.
The final result of the investigation of the
problem of relation between religion and civilisation is in consequence rather
negative:
there is no general parallelism between
civilisations and religions. The problem of the origin of civilisations is
solved only for the sacral civilisations. It still remains open for the
non-sacral ones. Only one provisional conclusion has been arrived at, namely
that the final solution of the problem can only lie in the spiritual sphere,
because the spiritual factors are incomparably more decisive than the
material.
Four factors before all, according to Koneczny.
determine the cultural differentiation of humanity:
1. The relation of man towards time: the
measuring of time. the reckoning of time and the mastery of time:
2. the relation between public and private
law;
3. the sources of law:
3. the existence or non-existence of national
consciousness.
1. Everything which is connected with the
relation of man towards lime has for his whole spiritual development an
importance which we only begin to guess. —.Whole peoples are without any
relationship to time; others have achieved only the knowledge of measuring
time. The achievement of a calendar is not necessarily a suflicient criterion
of a higher cultural grade; because it does not necessarily lead to the
reckoning of time from one era; Egyptians and Chinese did not have an era; the
Jews began only in Roman times their dating in years from the creation of the
world. The highest grade in the
relation of man towards time is the power over time. Contrary to the power over
space which develops only the intellect, the progress in having power over time
goes hand in hand with a simultaneous moral advance; by establishing and
accomplishing aims in time man voluntarily limits his freedom: but this
selflimitation is a great step towards an important element of true freedom,
which is man's independence from exterior circumstances: an important condition
for the unfolding of social virtues. Of all the civilised peoples of antiquity
only the Romans, according to Koneczny, achieved this degree; only they, and
the filial cultures of Roman civilisation possessed what Koneczny calls
"historism". the living tie and awareness of the presence of this tie
between present time and the past with all its inheritance, as well as the
feeling of responsibility for the future and for those who will follow.
2. The greater part of humanity knows even
today no public law fundamentally separated from the private law. The State's
law of large political formations is often nothing but an extended private law;
so in the Turanian civilisation, the ruler is owner of the State, of the whole
territory of the State with all the inhabitants and their property, and he can
exercise his power over them according to his will, or whim; in the Russian
world, too, one finds again and again this Turanian notion of law. For the
development of a "society" (i.e. a differentiated society: Koneczny
employs here the Polish term "społeczeństwo" in opposition to
"społeczność". the ordinary, nondifferentiated human aggregate),
there are here no conditions, no possibilities of development.
Rome was the first to create a public law
sharply and fundamentally separated from private law: only here the conditions
for the development of a "society" became present. From Rome. this
achievement passed to Western civilisation, in which the inalienable rights of
the human person with its inherent dignity thus found a lasting abode.
In Byzantium this sharp division became effaced
again; a "society" could unfold itself here only so far as a
benevolent slate allowed it. (The society is here underdeveloped: in its place
flourish the Stalemaintained Church: uniformity and standardisation: spiritual
stagnation and degeneration; bureaucracy and servility: herd humanity and herd
psychology; Asiatic structural elements received in the epoch of the decadence
of the Roman Empire, and which had destroyed old Rome.)
3. The difference in the sources of law is in
fact the deepest root of differentiation of civilisations. Here again, it was
old Rome who for the first time and quite unequivocally[3]
considered law as a consequence of morality and as its application to concrete
cases. With this recognition of natural law also the first complete release of
law from sacrality took place in Rome Organs of "society". not of
State, issued laws in Rome; during centuries the State as such did not issue in
Rome even a single law. but accepted laws born in the citizen's assemblies of
the curiae at comitiae.
Unfortunately, the picture of ancient Rome does
not stand sufficiently clearly and unequivocally before our eyes, the eyes of
posterity; in late antique times the East already influenced the West. Even
antiquity knew already the temptation of the East. There was a time when even
in Rome one started to declare that quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem,
what pleases the ruler has the force of law. The sources of Roman law which we,
posterity, have inherited—the Pandecta and the Codex—reflect the struggle of
two different ethics, the Western and the Eastern, a struggle which we can
observe very clearly although the Eastern ethic sometimes wears a borrowed
Western and Roman cloak.
Thus, a cultural split ran in later times right
through the innermost structure of the Roman Empire. Two fundamentally
different. two diametrically opposed views struggled with each other, two
principles between which there could be no synthesis.
The fundamental achievement of Rome could
survive the period of the ruin of the Roman Empire and of the accompanying
chaos. thanks to the Catholic Church which introduced this achievement into
Western civilisation. The middle ages. in spite of occasional relapses, show
the history of a constant penetration into European secular laws of the
principles of Catholic morality. At the same time, in the conflicts between
saccrdolium and impcrium which took such a dramatic aspect from the penetration
of certain Byzantine legul views into the West, an increasingly sharp
distinction between secular and religious authority look place, with an
increasingly clear separation of their spheres of influence. It was quite the
other way in the East. where the State attributed to itself the position of the
only interpreter of law. The consequence of it was the amorality —which meant
in practice the immorality—of public life.
4. The nations arc the ethical superstructure
of society, of which they form the highest grade of development.[4]
For the idea of a nation, the presence of aims exceeding the simple struggle
for existence is essential. The
nations are not at all something a priori necessary; they are all aposteriori,
products of history; they grow together from tribes and peoples. The conditions
for the birth of a national consciousness are: the emancipation of the family
from the clan, the existence of a public law, as well as a certain level of
intellectual development. One can under compulsion belong to a State: but a
compulsory belonging to a nation would be a contradiction in itself.
The conditions for the emergence of a national
consciousness appeared for the first time not even in Old Hellas, but in Old
Italy at the time of the Roman Republic; it was proved there already quite
clearly that the nations are not something physiological-racial. but belong to
the cultural, i.e. to ths moral order.
Nations in this meaning exist only, until now.
within the sphere of the Latin civilisation, because only here the conditions
for their development have been present. Even peoples of alien cultural
spheres, which became embraced by the West and in consequence fell under the
influence of the formative forces of Latin civilisation e.s. the Finns and the
Hungarians—became nations.
A nation must as a cultural entity belong only
to one civilisation; it cannot belong to two different civilisations.
We can now define what Koneczny's doctrine
means in comparison with the previous[5]
doctrines of philosophy of history. We would be inclined to ascribe to Koneczny
the following, merits.
Koneczny's doctrine means a renunciation of any
purely speculative philosophy of history; when the philosophy of history becomes
a science of civilisations, it has to be an inductive science founded on the
study of facts.
This is perhaps the only possible way to rescue
the philosophy of history; to make it a philosophical science of history. Not
only to rescue, but also to consolidate, by giving it a strictly defined sphere
from which it cannot be expelled, and at the same time by giving it strong
foundations. Otherwise, it would be quite a doubtful undertaking, to base the
philosophy of history in such a way that its validity and even its right to
exist could not be put in question. But it is not our purpose to investigate
here whether the eternal question of the sense of history can receive at all a
philosophical answer, or whether it be not answerable, or can find an answer only
within the limits of a theology of history—if we are prepared to admit the
possibility of such a science.
A clear application of the principle of
induction involves a break with ominous apriorism; it means before all a
decisive overcoming of aprioristic biologism in every form.
An impression became slowly established in the
philosophy of history that the recognition of a plurality of civilisations is
inseparably connected with a biologic and biologising view on these civilisations.[6]
It is Koneczny's merit to have destroyed this illusion and to have separated
from each other the two ideas, which for centuries had been continually treated
as interconnected.
At the same time, the refreshing all-sided
general examination of civilisations demonstrates the specific character of
them as a spiritual domain; put by induction again and again into new light, it
proves to be a kingdom of freedom. And in consequence, every possible form of
determinism is for the philosophy of history fundamentally overcome.
Hence comes a conclusion that laws of history
as previously conceived, laws of history which would somehow be analogous to
the laws of nature, to the laws of physics or biological laws of organic life,
cannot exist at all.
If there can be laws in history—they must be of
a completely different nature.
It is true that in consequence of this the
tasks of philosophy of history become much more complicated; but historical
reality is complicated. It is impossible to say anything about it a priori; and
in spite of Spengler's great display of apparent refutation, induction shows
undeniably that civilisations have each a different history. There is no
compelling reason to believe that a civilisation must die and why she must die;
the belief in such a necessity was only a biological apriorism. There is no
"rhythm" in history. There are no cycles: there is no foundation for
believing in these a priori, and induction shows decisively their
non-existence. But all these disillusionments clear, a free field for a
philosophy of history, consistently conceived as a discipline in
humanities.
The civilisations struggle against each other.
Each tries to dislodge the other. Only
the understanding of the conflicts and rivalries between civilisations—and this
is Koneczny's principal thesis—gives a clue to universal history. There is,
according to Koneczny, only one law of history in the sense of a general rule
concerning historical facts and this is: "every civilisation, so long as
it is viable, tries to expand; wherever there meet two civilisations which are
able to live. they must struggle against each other. Every civilisation is on
the offensive, so long as it is not dying.
The struggle lasts until one of the two civilisations is destroyed; the
mere occupation of a dominating position by one of the civilisations does not
end the struggle"[7].
A synthesis of civilisations does not exist and
is not possible. The only thing which is possible—and history is rich in
examples of it—is only a mechanical mixture of two or more civilisations, but
its result is only chaos, barbarity, disintegration and cultural decadence,
because such mixtures are a sin against the fundamental condition of the
vitality of every civilisation, which is the law of harmony of existential
categories. The norms which rule the life of a human group have to form a
unity, they cannot contradict each other.
Only syntheses between subdivisions of the same
civilisation are possible.
All so-called syntheses of civilisations are
illusions. Again and again, from antiquity till the present time, have
"syntheses of East and West" been tried in history; they were always
unsuccessful. because their success was impossible. Because unavoidably the
"law of laws" finds application in which Koneczny gathers together
the final result of his studies: "one cannot be civilised in two different
ways".
This is nothing else but the practical
application of the principle of harmony: one cannot detach elements from one
civilisation and introduce them into a society belonging to a different
civilisation. One can be civilised for instance in a Turanian way; but it is
impossible to introduce principles and forms of Turanian civilisation into the
Latin civilisation; they do not fit in here. in the same way as forms and
principles of the West, introduced into the domains of other civilisations, act
as elements of decomposition.
There is then also in Koneczny a principle of
closedness or self-conlainedness of civilisations; but this is something quite
different rrom the mechanical, strictly exteriorly considered scparatcnes.s of
the civilisations of Spengler. The compactness of Koneczny's civilisation is
something logical: it expresses the all-embracing character of a civilisation:
each civilisation is a sum of forms and principles which are harmoniously
combined and which form a system, and which cannot be separated from each other
nor appear separately.
The cultural death which is caused by cultural
mixture however is not a fatalistically unavoidable fate: there is no such fate
for human communities, just as there is no such fate for individual men. There
are only consequences of human acts. The decline of a civilisation is always
possible, because at any time the causes can appear which bring it about. But
even a civilisation's decline. when already in full progress, can at any time
be stopped: swuibiles Deus fecit nationes! Because — and this is the final
meaning of Koneczny's philosophy of history —the laws which rule history are, seen
from the point of view of man placed in history, moral imperatives of duty and
freedom. And the final solution of the riddle of history lies not in a law of
necessity imposed by Nature, but in the law of moral freedom. And so, there is
also progress in history; because morality is capable of progress. For the
Latin civilisation this progress means a progressive widening of the spheres in
which morality finds practical application: further and further new branches of
morality become law.
In the light of these fundamental views
Koneczny sees history and the present time. The chaotic condition of the
humanity of times is for him a consequence of all the syntheses of incompatible
civilisations which have been undertaken, in which mixtures were tried of elements
of ethics, sociology, politics and
spiritual life which were by nature incapable of mixing.
The West and Turan are absolute, contrary
poles. The deepest root of this opposition is a fundamentally different
attitude towards man and towards the position of an individual in the human
group. Turan does not know man as a person; it docs not know any dignity of a
person; the individual has value and importance only is his role of a component
part of the State's organisation. In the Turanian civilisation and in its
descendant. Muscovy-Russia, there is, legally, no such a thing as a
"society" in existence: the Slate is everything. The European lives
also in the Stale, the Turanian lives exclusively in it. Koneczny speaks of an
"elephantiasis" of politics in the Turanian civilisation. Therein the
whole social structure is directed purely towards the military factor.
Such were the Mongolian States of the middle
ages; and through such a school Moscow has gone.
On the contrary, in the West, primacy belongs
to the spirit, to the spiritual power.
Man as an individual, as a person, has his
unalienable dignity. In the dignity of the person lies the root of freedom, and
with it the demand for citizen's freedoms; and correlated with freedom, as its
source and as its consequence — both, because in the Western system of values
both are organically interwoven — is the feeling
of responsibility.
No other civilisation knows the notion of
freedom, because no other has this high notion of human dignity. Even the most
highly developed subdivision of Arabic civilisation, the one of Cordova. did
not arrive as far. This Western principle of primacy of the spiritual element
obtained the farthest formulation in the school of Cluny: the Pope as highest
guardian of the Christian order, even in the political sphere. He had the right
to watch the kings and to remove bad Christians from their thrones.
Such a thesis, in presence of the absolute
subordination of the spiritual power below the temporal in the East, show the
whole contrast between Rome and Turan.
The teaching of the potestas directa in
temporalibus (direct authority in temporal matters) is for the men of other
civilisations a revolutionary monstrosity; but its foundation is simply the
conviction that there cannot be a double morality and that also public life,
the relation between one State to another, and that between every State and its
citizens, are not subordinated to other moral commandments as private life;
because the State is in the Western view not an aim in itself; it does not
stand outside the notions of good and evil, but it is subject to natural law
and has to serve Ihe moral aims of humanity.
From all this flows the possibility, present
only in the West. of the highest form of cultural progress: namely the
possibility of raising from generation to generation the level of ethics in
private as well as in public life: according to Koneczny this is the only real
and true progress; it consists in this, that more and more portions of morality
become transformed into law.
Byzantium stands exactly half way between the
West and Turan, but it is nowhere — even if here and there it may show some
Turanian features — so extreme as Turan. Also in Byzantium, form has priority
over content. The mission of Byzantium was the introduction and spreading of
uniformity. And the maintaining of uniformity demands compulsion, an external
pressure. To exercise this pressure is the function of the State. The
individual, the family, every social institution, is here strangled by the
omnipotent state. A "society", independent from the State and from
the sphere of politics, does exist here. but is underdeveloped.
The tendency towards formality and uniformity
can be found in Byzantium in all domains of culture, from the rigid rules in
art, forbidding any novelties, down to the ceremonies of the court etiquette.
Byzantium does not tolerate any. individualism; neither does Byzantine Church
approve of it.
Byzantium is always uniformist and centralist;
because it cannot imagine any other unity except uniformity. That unity can
also be articulate and multiform, without thereby losing its compactness and
energy, this is according to Koneczny not a Byzantine, but a Western idea;
Byzantium, or a State influenced by the Byzantine spirit, would not be able to
conceive of it. A political conception such as federalism was unthinkable in
Byzantium; whence derives the inability, until to-day, of all Byzantium-trained
peoples to see the State^ otherwise as a centralistic unitarist body; whence
also the tendency of the Byzantine Serbs to impose upon the Croats belonging to
the Western civilisation, a centralist rule; the Serb wants to assimilate the
Croat, and does not understand the desire of the latter to enjoy equality and
freedom in a federation.
Byzantium took over from Rome the notion of a
public law separate and different from the private one; but the sphere of the
private law has become more and more limited because of the encroachments of
the State, i.e. of bureaucracy. Byzantium is the home of State socialism, of
State taxes and of State omnipotence.
In all that concerns the exterior cultural
level. Byzantium stood. it is true, for centuries high above the West:—an
admired, envied and imitated model. Paris was only a village when Byzantium
glittered with gold and purple and put Western travellers into mute wonder by
its splendours. It was the kingdom of elegant etiquette. of fashion and of good
taste for the barbarians from the West;
But all this is not the most important; the
important thing is thai Byzantium is an alien and a substantially different
cultural world from ours. Yet precisely the fact that Byzantium was superior to
the West in external culture was the source of an immence danger for all the
Western European peoples. All of them fell under the spell of the Byzantine
temptation — and this temptation meant the danger of a very harmful
influence.
For those who know with Koneczny, how in the
middle ages Byzantine form-principles and legal views were penetrating into
Europe and what far-reaching influence they were exercising, medieval history
takes the shape of a dramatic struggle, conducted by the Western, the Roman
spirit against the foreign, Byzantine forms and principles which were
incessantly infiltrating.
Again, the medieval idea of the Sacrum Imperium
appears according to Koneczny's teaching no longer as the final crystallization
of medieval Western thinking, but quite on the contrary, as something
completely alien, as a "Byzantine" foreign body. Only through
liquidating and overcoming the medieval imperial idea could Europe truly find
herself.
The question had to emerge in the West again
and again, why it was that—at least since Prussia took over the leading role in
Germany — Germany represented a permanent, provincial rebellion against the
Western world. It is true, it is impossible to say that it was all Germany. But
if we think of the most recent history, it was from Germany that the most
dangerous inward threats to the Western world came, even if on the other hand
on other levels European consciousness of Germany remained quite alert.
Whenever we wish to answer this question, we must go back quite far in time:
the roots which we seek are to be found in the Middle Ages.
It is a mistake to see in the medieval imperial
idea, of which medieval Germany was the bearer, a genuinely Western, or even
the supremely Western idea. From the point of view of the history of ideas,
this idea is without any doubt of Byzantine origin. It represented the
endeavour — never put more than partially into practice — to introduce into the
West the imperial idea of Byzantium. Genuinly Western was the self-defence of
European peoples against every attempt to organise Europe on the basis of a
hegemony.
It was not the imperial idea and the imperial
mystique, but their complete opposite, the idea of a family of free and equal
nations, which was really Western. At the Council of Constance these two ideas
clashed with each other in a dramatic way: and it was there that one of the
most genial forerunners of the idea of a federal Europe appeared. Paulus a
Vladimiri (Pawel Wlodkowic of Brudzeri). It is Koneczny who notes the permanent
importance of this truly epoch-making political thinker.
It meant the end of the political Middle Ages
when the Catholic Church dissociated itself in due form from the imperial
mystique. It is true, the latter was not yet dead in consequence of the
separation: political ideas are able to persist in an amazing way. they may
even change their exterior appearance, their motivation and their apparent
aims, and yet remain essentially the same. What dangers were brought into
Europe by the secularised imperial idea. incorporated in Germany under Prussian
leadership, we have all been able to learn sufficiently by now.
In Germany also warning voices were not
lacking; unfortunately they were not as well heeded as they merited. I would
like to mention here two men who already about forty years ago perceived the
general shape of the contrast between a Western and antiWestern Germany: Herman
Hefele and Hugo Ball. To-day, a whole chorus of voices can be heard in Germany,
who with refreshing clarity utter all that is necessary on the theme Prussia-GermanyEurope-The
West; I will only mention the "Leidensgeschichte des zivilen Geistes in
Deutschland" by Karl Buchhsim. It is a pity that all these men did not
know the teaching of Feliks Koneczny:
they would have found in his works a precise
historical analysis and an explanation of what they already discerned in their
acute minds for themselves. The
teaching of Koneczny puts the importance of the Catholic Church in the whole
complex of Western history in a light, which will disperse many prejudices also
among non-Catholics. Every Westerner, in whatever ideological or political camp
he stands to-day, is obliged to be thankful to the Catholic Church of the
Middle Ages for having undertaken a struggle against the all-powerful Empire.
and for having conducted this struggle until the end. Nothing is more typical
than the alliance of the Lombard League of cities with Papacy against the
Empire of the Hohenstaufen. which was equally menacing to both: religious and
civic liberty had to be defended together. If the Catholic Church had not
conducted a fight against the all-powerful Empire, which did not tolerate any
sphere of liberty. so sphere of spiritual freedom would exist in which
"free thought" in the modern sense could unfold itself: "free"
thought, in the positive as well as in the slightly suspect sense, would never
have been possible if Latin Church of the Middle Ages had not in the fight
against the Empire, secured originally at least one sphere, to be in principle
free from the grip and control of the State.
To such thoughts Koneczny conducts us. Even if
the science of civilisations, as shaped by him. is yet to a great extent only a
programme and a task. we can certainly say at least this: — that what he has
already established and said is of such importance that no experiment in a
universal historical synthesis, and no explanation of history, undertaken in
future will be able to pass it by.
Koneczny was himself fully conscious that his
experiment of a general survey of civilisations was not yet anything final and
that it needed in many points completion, widening and correction:
notwithstanding his conviction that a universal
history has meaning only under the aspect of a history of civilisations
struggling with each other. He regretted the decline of humanistic thinking at
the transitional period from the 19th to the 20th century; but he saw many
signs of a new revival and was convinced that the permeation of the humanities
by the ways and methods of thinking of the natural sciences would not be of long
duration. In the final words of his principal work he spoke out his strong
faith in the revival of humanistic studies. He knew that he himself had
penetrated into a new scientific field in humanities, and that he explored
paths of which perhaps not all would lead to the end. Every overestimation of
self was far from him; he wrote literally: "I console myself with the hope
that the question which I put in this book. will be studied by Polish
scholarship. I shall not only be satisfied, but I shall be happy, if this will
be so; without regarding how much of my own work will remain and how much. on
the basis of the more accurate studies of my successors, will have to be
withdraw."
ON
THE PLURALITY
OF
CIVILISATIONS
by
FELIKS KONECZNY
The publishers abridged Koneczny's work slightly. The Polish original was published u quarter of u century ago — in 1935 — but the publishers resisted the temptation to modernise it.
History grows increasingly general. Events in
the Far East produce rapid, and increasingly rapidly felt, effects in the
European power system. Even African affairs assume increasing importance in the
political and economic balance. Thus the study of, exotic peoples and lands is
increasingly necessary for public life not merely in England, but in all the
countries of the European continent without exception. These studies are in
fact making considerable progress; it is enough to say that there is no lack of
authors writing in Polish from whom much can be learned about peoples of otner
civilisations.
There is also an increasingly conscious
objectivity in face of the exotic. The legion of those men who recognise only
One civilisation. i.e. their own. and regard people of other civilisations as
uncivilised, is visibly diminishing. Acknowledgment that difference does not
mean some basic inferiority is increasigly frequently met with. We try to enter
into the spirit of these differences; the old Roman nil humani a me alienum
puto has been extended geografically beyond expectation.
So too textbooks of general history
increasingly readily take the whole world into account, thus acquiring whole
chapters. A great but laudable enthusiasm is to be remarked in this direction.
We are also becoming increasingly aware that this movement is leading to new
conceptions of general history as a whole, with its divisions, motives,
difficulties, sacrifices and illusions. Against an enormously enlarged
background, there is more than one change in perspective, problems assume other
forms.
Having increasingly to do with the variety of
civilisations, it must seem the more astonishing that we do not ask ourselves
whence comes this variety, what is its origin? Why do a Japanese and a Swede,
although they telephone in the same way, think and act differently? Why do not
all peoples belong to one civilisation?
Why do
they differ not only in the stages but in the kinds of their different
civilisations?
The naive period of the economic school of
historical writing has passed, when social systems and the differences in human
ways of thinking were deduced from kinds of food. We have also got rid of the
superstition about the omnipotence of geographical conditions. and rejected the
hypothesis of the formation of the human spirit exclusively by nature. But what
stands in place of them?
So far—nothing.
In modern and very recent times there has been
no lack of the urge to create great historical syntheses, with a distinct
emphasis on humanity in its entirety. The question of the cause of human
variety has also appeared from time to time on learned agenda. Is it
permissible to attempt a new working-out of the problem. particularly by a new
method, without prior conscientious examination of existing attempts at
synthesis, and of the methods used to this end?
One's own novelties should be advanced with the
utmost caution: the more original the thought the more nonum premutur in annum!
I have, it is true. maintained this caution, but should like to justify trial
of my own method by the fact that this is a case where existing methods fail.
So 1 shall precede my own contribution with a summary review (as concise as
possible) of historiosophical syntheses based on all the methods so far used.[8]
The inductive method—for history the most
appropriate—is the work of an historian. Lord Bacon of Verulam (1561-1626) who
worked long on the history of England from the reconciliation of the two Roses
to the Union of the Kingdoms under James I, but who reached no further than a
history of Henry VII (1621). He did not finish because he was absorbed in the
vastness of his Instauratio magna, of which he likewise managed to complete
only fragments. He was interested in the problem of synthesis, and as an
historian with history as his starting-point covered wide areas of knowledge.
His method was to serve equally the humanist and the natural sciences.
In humanist learning there nevertheless came a
halt, while the natural sciences began a rapid development, so that it seemed
as if the method inaugurated by Bacon was proper to them alone.
Moreover it appeared after a certain time as if
only the natural sciences constituted learning. The two delusions thus created
grew blatant, but possessed men's minds to such an extent as finally to pass
for indubitable scientific facts.
The order and content of knowledge was
encroached upon by two factors least suited to do so—mathematics and
literature—alike in this that by the nature of their existence they can
determine form only. So that it is strange when it falls to be recorded that
the first historical work appealing to Bacon did not come out until more than a
century after his death.
Meanwhile weighing upon the development of
history (although not himself engaging in history) was the discoverer of
analytical geometry Rene Descartes (1596 1650). younger than Bacon by a
generation. He possessed in high degree' a feeling for universality. The course
of his life presented him with many opportunities for contact with people of
varied customs— from which he drew the following conclusion:
"I have noticed how much the same man,
with the same intelligence, educated from childhood among the French or
Germans, differs from what he would have been if he had always lived among
Chinese or cannibals."
And he admits that "as sensible people may
perhaps be found among Persians or Chinese as among us".[9]
But the Cartesian method itself, requiring
everywhere a certain general formula and single-mindedness in the handling of
phenomena, was not merely unsuited to the development of history, but became a
real drag upon Cartesian historians.
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) thought of
himself as a pupil of Descartes. From Malebranche dates that abstract
deduction, which appeals not to the facts of history but to a chain of
reasoning, and groups and interprets facts in accordance with the bent of the
individual's apriori thought. In his chief work De la recherche de la verite
(1674), Malebranche discerns in history the operation of Providence, without
going more closely into the problem presented by its paths.
The method here consists in reflection itself,
in rational meditation. I call it meditative, because in the subsequent
development of this branch of deduction its most outstanding representatives
themselves appealed simply to meditation. Then in 1793 Condorcet
was to
define humanist learning as that "Ou les decouvertes sont Ie prix de Ja
seule meditation"—while in Wronski's opinion "Ie savoir, considere en
lui-meme, est d'abord puremeni contemplate on speculatif".[10]
After Malebranche, the meditative method was
continued by the famous "last Father of the Church", Jacques Bcnigne
Bossuet (1627-1704) who, in his Discours sur I'histoire univcrselle jusqui 'a
I'empire de Charlemagne invented so-called Judaeocentricity as the axis of the
general history of antiquity. The work is regarded as the first attempt at a
philosophical treatment of history.
Catholic scholars then carried the meditative
method to an historical synthesis. It was only later that the method came to be
used against the Church.
Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) was an historian,
co-inventor of the calculus, dreaming in extended meditations how to attain
universal knowledge with the help of a universal "logical key";
author of Monadologia Sy sterna Theoloycurn and of specialised historical
treatises, publisher of sources. Not even he returned to induction.
It was left to Gian Battista Vico (1668-1744),
opponent of Descartes and admirer of Bacon, to exalt induction. His Cinque
libri de principi di una scienza nuova (1730) were to uncover the basic law of
history. Here are his words:
"Our intention to formulate... a
conception of ideal, eternal history which embraces the separate histories of
the various nations within given epochs of time"... "This same
science simultaneously builds ideal, eternal history across which flow in time
the histories of all the nations in their birth, progress, stagnation, decline
and ruin... "A science whose purpose is to discover the plan of ideal,
eternal history, on whose canvas the histories of all nations unfold in time"...
"This science ought to be, if we may express it so, proof of Providence as
an historical fact, for it will be the history of the laws which she, without
any kind of human cooperation or counsel and often contrary to human
expectations, has developed in the great community of human kind."
It was a question, therefore, of uncovering a
scheme of history binding once for all by the will of Providence on all times
and all peoples; for abstracted from ths external garb of events, the
movements of history are basically the same.
Vico discerned everywhere three phases of development: the phases of
imagination, of will and of intellect—and a succession of States corresponding
to this development. Attached to the work is a "chronological table drawn
up according to the three epochs of time". They form the corso, and when
it is exhauseted, the ricorso begins. Vico is the originator of the theory of
recurrent cycles in history, professed even in our days.
Vico covered all branches of humanist learning
and served each of them well. Specialists have counted fifteen instances in
which later scholars were open to a charge of plagiarism committed on Vico's
"New Science". The study of civilisation also exists in nuce in his
writings.
The list of historical discoveries made, by
Vico by means of inductive studies would indeed be long. but his synthesis docs
not satisfy the demands of the method; with him generalisation was premature.
Having established the pattern of his "eternal history" repeating
itself in cycles, he drew into it facts and whole groups of facts. He is the
father of patterns in historical synthesis. At any rate he proclaimed to the
learned world a new problem: that of laws of history.[11]
Vico remained unknown until more or less the
middle of the nineteenth century. Without knowing him. in the first half of the
eighteen century Montesquieu stepped on to the firm ground of induction, so
saving himself from hasty generalisation. Unlike Vico. bitten by the rust of
adversity, Charles de Secondat. Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
was able to say of himself that in his whole life he never had a worry which
could not be blotted out by an hour's reading. Fulfilling all the demands of
his generation, he was both scientist and litterateur; studying kidney glands,
the causes of echoes and the conditions for transparency in bodies, and publishing literary works in
prose and verse. He became celebrated through the Lettres Persanes (1721), then
threw it all up and turned to history, relying not on meditation but on
laborious inductive investigation.
Montesquieu wanted to find out why there is so
much variety in social and political systems and on what this depends. Having
collected materials for thirty years, and realising that a certain part of his
intended work was growing too large in relation to the whole, he detached and
published it separately in 1734 as Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur
et de la decadence des Remains, an outstanding work. Fourteen years later he
managed to publish his fundamental Esprit des Lois, which in two years had
twenty-two editions. He was already over-worked. He remarked that he had grown
grey over the writing of a book which could be read in three hours, and would
now have to rest and work no longer. He published no other work of great
significance—and seven years after publication of the first edition of the Lois
his life, one of the purest and most useful known to history, came to an end.
Montesquieu's achievement might be summarised
in a sentence: the character of a society is decided by three groups of
phenomena. social, political and moral, whose differing relationship produces
historical diversity and so unavoidable diversity in the arrangements of public
life; this diversity is regular, springing from causes, which can be
scientifically defined. How near he came to noticing that the question is one
of differing methods of collective life! One frequently gets the impression
from his expositions that only the appropriate expression is lacking for him to
have become aware of the whole essence of the history of civilisation.
Montesquieu discovered the proper method for
historical studies. discarding all speculation and search for design, arriving
at more general concepts by induction. His work possesses the enormous merit of
coupling law and history. He is besides the founder of modern teaching about
the State; from him derives the three-fold division of authority and many other
truths in the field of the art of govemement.
He did not found a school.
Mathematical-literary rationalism condemned his work, and of the original
popularity there soon remained nothing more than the appreciation of true
scholars whom nobody listened to, and who, cried down by the
"reformers" did not know of each other's existence. If a Montesquieu
school had emerged, would it have been possible for political history and legal
history to have gone their separate ways to confusion? Might not rationalism
have produced somewhat fewer wlll-o'-the-wisps? But chronologically the nearest
"pupil" of Montesquieu is Guizot, whose "History of Civilisation
in Europe" appeared seventy-three years after the master's death. Only
then did a whole school of law historians and modern philosophers of history
arise on the work of Montesquieu.
When Esprit des Lois appeared, a young man of
exceptional ability, Anne-Robert Jacques Baron de FAulne Turgot (1727-1781),
was studying at the Sorbonne. He seemed destined to continue the thread of
Montesquieu's learning, "created" to be his pupil. Turgot turned his
back on the ideal of equality, for la barbaric egale tons It's hommes. In his
sketch On the Advances of the Human Spirit there are not a few remarks
describing distinctly what later came to be known as the influence of
environment. He nevertheless asserts that "in exactly the same natural
conditions differing peoples are found, while in very dissimilar climates there
is often the same character and the same kind of mentality". And what
credit the observation that analogy does not constitute proof reflects on an
author then twenty-five years old! In his writing there are many quite
astonishing remarks anticipating the triumphs of the inductive method in
historical studies.[12]
Unfortunately Turgot did not become an
historian because he set about making history. He turned away from the writing
of history, and afterwards history turned away from him. Perhaps different
watchwords would have guided the succeeding generation if Turgot had developed
and strengthened Montesquieu's line of thought?
Meanwhile more and more mathematicians, scientists
and literary men were making themselves at home in historiosophy. Never did new
ideas in the field of humanist learning come so thick and fast as in the
Encyclopedic, a monument to the downfall of humanist studies. And there was the
thesis of Edmund Burke (1730-1797) according to which there are no discoveries
in the moral world.
Francois Marie Aroue, known under the pseudonym
Voltaire (1694-1778). scientist turned literary man and literary man turned
historian, was the first to use the expression philosophy of history. In La
Philosophic de I'histoire, published in 1765, there are, however, exactly two
and a half lines at the beginning about philosophy. To present history
"philosophically" simply meant working it out in accordance with the
unaided reason, on condition that credence was never given to church sources [13].
It was
not Voltaire, however, who finally took chief place in "philosophy",
but Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Illiterate by comparison with the other,
he survives precisely because he gives dispensation from learning (for it harms
even morality). Perhaps the wittiest passages in the great fox which was
Voltaire are those in which (without ever mentioning him by name) he engages in
polemics with Rousseau. But he did not survive the competition. Today who has
read Voltaire, and who has not read Rousseau?
Against reason Rousseau advanced .the charge
that development of the arts and sciences lowered the level of morality and
spoiled character. His Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750) ensures the
author a truly fairy-tale career, because of the impression made by the novel
literary expression "state of nature". Subsequently when asked to
elucidate what it actually was and what it meant it caused him not a little
trouble. At the beginning of the eight chapter of the first book of the Control
social (1762), Rousseau listed what he meant by "state of nature",
but in such a way as to permit everybody to devise his own interpretation of
the author's words, not against him although in spite of him. The ocuppation of
commentator-patcher to Rousseau is still open to any who are prepared to put
together from his writings something homogeneous, some "system". A
man who saw himself as philosopher and lawgiver, Rousseau was turned in the end
into a great politician and guide for humanity itself.
Rousseau never distinguished between the
natural and the artificial. With him everything was arranged by whim. dream,
fancy. But humanist studies went into increasing decline, and Rousseau was
taken with a seriousness still operative, through inertia.
Meanwhile the meditative method in
historiosophy had also arrived in Germany. The pioneer was Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) himself. In his Ideen zur allsemeinen Geschichte in
weltburgerlicher Absicht he starts with freedom of the will which does not
prevent its manifestations, and so human actions, from being subject to general
laws. The quintessence is in this that " the history of the human race may
be regarded in general as tlie fulfilment of a hidden plan of nature intended
to lead up to the perfect State". A design therefore, and Kant strained
history heavily and often. Here also is the beginning of the German deification
of the State.
In the same year, 1784, Johann Gottfried von Herder began publishing Ideen
zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit. It is a four-volume collection of prattle.
Herder is unable to say
anything simply, wallows in platitudes and
purple-patches. Kant came out with a cruel review of volume one, the rest he
left undisturbed. In fact the Ideen have little in common with learning— they
are simply insipid literature. From the first two volumes it appeared that true
history is the history of culture, of which the philosophy of history is made,
while the latter is concerned with the tradition of what is called Bildung and
Menschengeist. Thus the issue is that of the continuity of the intellect. But
it gets lost somewhere in the sequel, where we read the following tirade:
"0 great mother nature! to what trifles
have you attached the fate of our kind! With a change in the shape of the human
head and brain, with a small change in the structure of the organism and
nerves, in consequence of climate, race and habits, simultaneously the fate of
the world is changed, the whole sum of what humanity anywhere on earth does and
suffers." [14]
There is real value in another place. Thus the
Hauplgeseiz of history is that everything that can happen on earth depends on
conditions of place and the circumstance of time, as well as on the character,
inborn or acquired, of the people concerned. A pity that Herder barely touched
upon the question in passinsg. paying no further attention to it. At the very
end of volume four. he rejoices that in the history of our part of the world
das Riftertum und Pfaffentum were not unduly prolonged. A strangely small
result of almost twenty years' work".[15]
Humanistic studies declined yet further. Those
who studied seriously were engineers, physicists, some of whom made amateur
excursions into generalisations in the humanistic field. In this state of
affairs. Voltaire's dream that somebody would write a history "of the
human spirit" was fulfilled.
The author who appeared was a learned
mathematician, one of the creators of the integral calculus, creator of a
theory of comets. Encyclopaedist, Girondist and President of th? Constitutive
Assembly of 1792, the Marquis Jean-Antoine de Condorcet (1743-1794). In 1793,
during eight months spent in hiding from Robespierre's thues, he wrote down
almost from memory esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de I'esprit
humain.. In this "sketch" Condorcet always uses the future tense
because he was only outlining, intending to work the thing out properly in the
future. He did not live to do so. Imprisoned in 1794, he was forthwith
poisoned.
From Condorcet dates blind belief in
"progress". Equality—offered by Rousseau as it were in the rough—he
reduced to a system and programme. History was stretched to fit his doctrine.
For us today there is interest only in the last chapter of the 'sketch', in
which he describes what would happen in the period following the French
Revolution, in its time therefore a history of the future: inequality between
nations would be abolished, and the civilisation of the French and
Anglo-Americans—the only civilisation—would embrace all the peoples of the
hemisphere. These new students of our civilisation would make more rapid
progress tlian ourselves, not having to gain experience, which they would take
over from us—if only from our books. The stronger nations would themselves
introduce respect for the rights of the weaker.
Condorcet practised "systematic
meditation". Even so a meditative method for historical sythesis had not
been thought out. The Germans hoped to correct this. Exact philosophic thinking
was to pave the way for historiosophical meditations. Historiosophy in Germany
was included in philosophy, as a department of a fully complete philosophic
system. For history there was again no benefit at all; but it is difficult to
pass over so many famous names—so we shall glance at them also.
Simultaneously with the printing of Condorcet's
Esquisse, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) published a fundamental work
Grundlage und Grundriss der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, from which derives
the threefold pattern which remains a basic feature of German meditation, and
from which present-day German anthroposophy does not depart. Thus in German
thinking everything passes through three phases—thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
This trichotomy was preserved by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831),
except in the case of history, where he adopted a fourfold division : the East,
Hellas, Rome modern times. His
Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophic der Geschichte rest on the following assumption
:
"The only idea which philosophy brings to
historical investigations is the simple idea of reason, that reason rules the
world, so that in history things happen reasonably. The Divine Wisdom, that is
reason, is one and the same in great as in small things, and God should not be
thought too weak to be able to apply his wisdom in great things", (that is
in history). "Universal history is the revelation of the spirit in time.
just as the idea reveals itself in space as nature". Hence conclusions
like : "The German spirit is the spirit of the new world". The three
epochs of the German world (to Charlemagne, to Charles V, from the Reformation
to Hegel's time) " may be distinguished as the realms of the Father, Son
and Spirit". Or "universal history is ... a true theodicy, the
justification of God in history . . . What happened and happens day by day is
not only with God. but in actual fact his work". But the theodicy must be
anti-Catholic, for "no rational State system is possible with the Catholic
religion".[16]
Hegel, without knowing Vico. created his own
theory of historical cycles. The period of Charlemagne represents a return of
the period of the Persian State, the period before Charles V corresponds to the
Greek world, the period of great geographical discoveries is a return of the
age of Pericles. Socrates was renewed in Luther, etc.[17]
Hegel also confirmed deification of the State,
with the German spirit holding first place as a manifestation of Divine wisdom
in history, but Catholicism excluded from it—and with the Prussian State as the
flowering of this Divine wisdom.
Kari Ludwig Michelet (1801-1893) provides us
with a curious example of an historical work both pragmatic and Hegelian. In the years 1859 and 1860 he published a
two-volume Geschichte der Menschheit in ihrem Entwicklungsgange seit dem Jahre
1775 bis auf die neuesten Zeilen—with the sub-title Der Entwicklungsgang der
Weltgeschichle in heiden Halbkugeln. It is an apotheosis of Frederick II
as a "philosopher king" who "in the forefront of the course of
history placed thought", which "has already been accepted more or
less in both hemispheres". And in
America they were setting about creating from a mixture of white, black, red
and yellow (in Alaska) races the ideal race of the future."[18]
Nor did
historical synthesis gain anything from the AustrianCatholic side of German
speculation. Friedrich von Schlegel (17721829), in his Philosophic der
Geschichte, in 18 Vorlesungen gehalten zu Wien i. J. 1828 looked for the
"return of the lost Divine likeness in man", because "to demonstrate
the course of that return historically in the different periods of the world is
the object of the philosophy of history".
In an allusion to Hegelianism. he makes the
reservation that such a philosophy "must spring from real historical
events". He too succumbed to a trichotomy—of three words : word, power,
light—which "consists entirely in historic experience and is based on
reality". Throughout this work. Schlegel is rather the
theologian-dilettante than an historiosopher. For him too "Christianity in its basic, strict essence has
in general agreed well with the customs and arrangements of the Germanic
peoples".[19]
German philosophy turned history into a real
guessing game.
An author from Poland holds a prominent place
among exponents of the speculative method which, with the aid of the French
language, he strove in vain to transform from German into European. He was
Jozef Marya Hoene-Wroriski (1778-1853). The historiosophical side of his works
is without merit, poorest of all his Philosophic absoliie de I'histoire,
dedicated to Nicholas 1 and Napoleon III. since in the author's view Providence
had chosen these two to realise his "Messianic idea". Here too
belongs his characteristically fanciful Developpement progressif et but final
de I'humanite. Humanity passes through seven periods: in the seventh the
absolute will be revealed. But he, Wronski, possessed the secret of the
absolute, although the fifth period had barely begun. Would the absolute agree
to reveal itself and to what extent—that was the problem of his life!
In the second chapter of Part II of the
Developpement there is a review of progress in all branches of learning, and in
the third chapter a review of the philosophy of history to the year 1818. Of
humanist studies Wronski mentions philosophy, law, aesthetics. pedagogy,
grammar, political economy and that is all. There is no history, although the
author—a mathematician by profession— had just written a synthesis of the
history of mankind viewed from the approach to the absolute so prematurely
discovered by himself. In the seventh period autogenia would occur, that is the
creation in man of such qualities as would cause as it were a second creation
of man by himself. Repositories of the sacred secret of the absolute would be
recognised as the lawgivers of mankind, forming a Sacred
Council to whose approval and authority all the
affairs of Earth would be submitted."[20]
Speculative philosophy comes more or less to an
end with Wronski. Philosophy became "positive", although by no means
cured of fantasy. Positivist
historiography begins with the redoubtable physicist and engineer Claude Henri.
comte de Saint-Simon (17601825). He threw at the world socio-political plans,
taught the art of government, reformed mankind, while systematically studying
only physics and physiology. In his view the goal of society is not liberty but
activity. He was no enthusiast for constitutions, expecting more from the Holy
Alliance, regarding it as a prelude to a European association in perpetual
peace. In the development of the human spirit he saw a steady progression
leading from theology through metaphysics increasingly towards
"positive" science, that is based on mathematics or the laboratory.
From him derives the "law of the three states", according to which all
manifestations of intellectual life must pass through theological, metaphysical
and positive stages. He asserted that as a result of this regular sequence the
fuUire could be foreseen in the political field no less well than in the
natural, the future being judged by the past.
Saint-Simon founded his own private scientific
seminary, in which young adepts performed works indicated by him or under his
direction. Among members of this
seminary Isidore Marie Auguste Francois Comte (1798-1857)
distinguished'himself. He carried
forward the work of "positivism" and acquired such fame that the
original discoverer of the new theory was forgotten, or remembered only for
less successful secondary matters. Moreover Saint Simon suffered much from
pupils who reduced points of his teaching to absurdity, twisting them to appear
highly revolutionary:
whereas Comte, who could be reproached with
even more errors and excentricities, had the good fortune to have a pupil like
Littre (the real creator of philosophical positivism), and a long line of other
outstanding scholars.
Comte's dogma is faith in the omnipotence of a
science capable of organising society at will, and he worked it into an exact
system. Following Condorcet (whom he calls his spiritual father), he too drew
up a history of the future—in order to adapt the present to its requirements,
changing and reforming as the approaching future demanded. A truly strange
intellectual circle!
In Comte's lecture-courses on positivist
philosophy (1826, 1829) there were 52 lectures on mathematics and natural
sciences and 15 on natural science and art. In 1830 he began printing Cows de
la philosophic positive, publishing in the course of twelve years six large
volumes. The arts section was expanded to almost half the whole.
This great work is a classic example of the
petrification of youthful ideas. The author gave everything he had in youth
afterwards only chewing it over, with added style and reasoning. For Comte
ceased to learn, neglected serious reading, and having as a result a relatively
decreasing amount of material at his disposal, filled in the gaps with
speculation.
Volumes IV, V and VI concern the historian. In
the introduction to Volume IV, the author claims that it is based "on
first youthful inspirations" augumcnted "by a long scries of methodical
meditations". His object is to provide scientific axioms for political
life. to make an exact science of the whole field of social observation. He
denies the possibility of unlimited progress, which he sees as limited by both
race and geographic conditions. Moreover "civilisation progresses not,
strictly speaking, in a straight line, but in a series of unequal and changing
movements. In every period a
different fundamental condition of progress is more highly developed than the
rest and leaves its imprint. Each of the three intellectual steges is matched
by a certain type of existence: military in the theological stage, then a
transitional social phase "entirely similar to the metaphysical stage in
intellectual development", in which various branches of the law ruled the
political scene in everything, followed by the transition to industrial
existence. Hence the successive hegemony of warriors, lawyers, industrialists.[21]
In Volume V the author argues that the history
of China. India, etc. is "barren erudition" and "radical
confusion": for only after having first investigated that which concerns
the "elite of humanity" is it possible to embark with advantage on
the affairs of civilisations "more or less retarded".[22]
Comte uses the plural, but considers that the differences which occur are only
numerical, of higher and lower levels, that basically there is only one
civilisation at stages differing with local circumstances. This outlook lasted
almost into our own time.
Volume
VI (1842) is chiefly about "humanity", the author considering that
this idea is a peak in the development of the intellect and morality, that it
has done more for the development of morality than the idea of God.[23]
In the preface to Volume VI there is evident the psychosis into which he had
fallen a second time.
His undiminishing fame Comte owes to his
adoption of the expression "sociology", in consequence of which he
passes for founder of that science. But the expression came into being quite by
chance during proof-reading, for which the evidence is the footnote on page 185
of Volume IV where the word appears for the first time.
In historiosophical matters, Comte reveals
complete arbitrariness, absence of method, a typical chaos of speculative fancy
unsupported by professional studies. It
was not until later that there emerged a "positivist method"
consisting in the application of methods used in the natural sciences to
humanist studies, and deriving chiefly from Littre. A common feature of the
whole very extensive school was the theory of evolution and a superstitious
faith that what contemporary positivists proclaimed was certainly and once for
all the last word of science, further advance only being possible with the help
of fresh discoveries in the natural sciences.
The triumph of knowledge thunders in the
preface to Myśl ogólna ftzyologii powszechnej (1860) (General Outline of
Elementary Physiology) of Józef Supiriski (1804-1890). For him the spiritual
world is a part of nature, so that laws of nature and of the spirit are identical,
and everything concerning the intellect and senses has a common
"physiology"; basing himself on this assumption, he aimed at
"general science, learning founded on all the separate individual
sciences", that is he sought fundamental "forces". He found two: the forces of impulsion and of
attraction. In the field of impulsion learning has the highest place. In social
relations, the principle of "exchange" is decisive, with violence as
a sometimes unavoidable factor. He rated Peter the Great and Frederick II
enormously high; rejoiced that Russia, "gathering and gradually assembling
the Slav tribes, saves one from extermination, prepares a new future for
another."[24]
Simultaneously with this spread of
"positivist" meditations. however, induction took a step forward when
Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) changed the "philosophy of
history" into "the history of civilisation", a conclusion he
reached from inductive, specialised studies. A professional historian, he stood
at the head of two great source-publications and wrote a number of constructive
works before turning to the history of civilisation, where his final
achievement is the Histoire generate de la civilisation en Europe depuis la
chute de I'Empire remain jusqu'd la revolution jrancaise (1828). He was the
first carefully to assemble moments decisive in the development "of the
interior man". Both arrangement and interpretation of grouped facts are
totally unlike those in earlier meditative syntheses. More than a century old.
the work is still one of those which cannot be ignored, despite its
obsolescence: a scholar cannot expect greater praise.
The subsequent development of positivist
history was influenced less by Comte than by Guizot; although the positivists
shrugged him off, inductive work was thenceforth obligatory in historical
investigation. Without Guizot, that great discoverer of new themes, there would
have been no Buckle (1821-1862). The famous and erudite History of Civilisation
in England (1857-61). of which he managed to write only an incomplete
introduction, declares in favour of historical determinism and the
unchangeability of moral laws. doctrines which long maintained themselves, and
from which we are only recently emancipated.
Buckle's school was very numerous. although not productive of
distinctively creative works.
The positivists' service was to introduce new
observation posts into history. The more numerous such points, the more
universal the presentation of the subject. But there also may be more points
and the same method, and the same author may change his viewpoints. A new
outlook on a thing is not yet a new method. Discoverers of such points (e.g.
Buckle, Taine) erred in supposing that they had succeeded in discovering some
universal observation point, sufficient for ever and for everything, not
needing to be supplemented by other points of view, for no such universal
method of scientific work is possible. Universality demands precisely that all
known points of view should be taken into account.
Two years after Buckle's death one of the chief
works of French positivism, Hypolite Taine's (1828-1893) Histoire de la
litterature anglaise appeared. There followed a number of works on the history
of art, and in the end Les origines de la France contemporaine, each volume of
which was awaited eagerly throughout Europe. Taine explains every fact by the
race of the agent (origin, genealogy,
hereditary factors), by contemporary arrangements (private and
public relations, education, struggle for survival, etc.), by environment. milieu.
Taine excelled in a minute exactitude and conscienciousness, yet Aulard, a
recent historian of the French revolution, considers that the conclusions Taine
offered are very often at variance with historic truth.
Bucle and Taine fell into onesidedness despite
the inductive metho'J. but their observation points cannot be ignored. A
deepened acquaintance with the sources, an increasingly perfected method often
produce different results just because of the points of view taken into account
(economic, genealogical, environmental), but the very demonstration of such
variety of possible observation represents an enrichment of the historical
method.
On the other hand. alarming damage was done
elsewhere. Positivism shook off speculative meditation, but produced new
variants of historiosophy not in the least historical. It was the beginning of
the historiosophy of the anthropologists who would like to derive from Kant,
but without cause, for the Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. on which he
had lectured for thirty years, was printed a year before his death and was
really psychology, a science for the investigation of what man "as a being
with a will of his own, makes, could and ought to make of himself".[25]
Anthropological historiosophy derives from
Joseph Arthur Gobineau (1816-1882) who, in his most important work Essai sur
I'inegalilL' des races humaines (1853-55) invented the theory of the hierarchy
of races. Civilisation is condemned to decline if races mix. If the highest
race, that of long-headed blondes, had been settled at one of the poles, the
centre of civilisation would have been there. Vacher de Lapouge went even
further, asserting that France declined because the short-headed had seized
power there. In order to preserve a high level of civilisation, it would not be
a bad thing to exterminate "lower" races. Gobineau even considered a
caste system desirable.
The learned Adolf Bastian (1826-1905) widened
the frame of anthropology to include ethnography and collective psychology. Der
Voelkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen (1881) was to be a
synthesis of the labours of his whole long life. From him derives the thesis
that as human intellect, character and emotions are everywhere the same, and
the seeds of culture likewise, manifestations of culture would also be
everywhere the same were it not for the diversity of living conditions;
therefore assimilation of these conditions must assimilate people spiritually
also, according to a basic common Voelkergedanke.
Forgotten today, Bastian was the first to begin
working out a whole Weltanschauung from anthropology. He found thousands of
imitators. Typical was the Viennese professor of medicine Karol Rokitansky.
Presiding over a gathering of anthropologists in 1870. he used these words :
'To investigate in what the essence of modern civilisation, its history and
principles consist, to understand the reasons for inequality in progress and
the causes of local standstill—all these are the tasks of natural
anthropological science".[26]
For Ludwik Gumplowicz (Rassenkampi, 1883) the
whole of history was a "natural process". Man in his essence is
unchanging. and the basic content of historical processes always the same, so
that there is really neither progress nor decline, only various forms of phenomena
against a background of perpetual racial struggle: even different social groups
emerge from different racial origins.
The question of the hierarchy of races assumed
a dominating position in German science, which finally decided in the name of
race to attach leadership in civilisation to Prussia. Anthropological
historiography ended in an apotheosis of the Prussian, full of crazy scientific
fantasies, to which even otherwise respected investigators like Fritz Lenz and
A. Ploetz contributed. The views they proclaimed led inescapably to the
conclusion that the whole civilised world would either submit to the Prussian
or come to an end.[27]
From Oswald Spengler's famous weighty work Der Untergang des Abendlandes we
leam that our civilisation must collapse like every other, but there must first
be a long period of Prussian imperialist hegemony over the whole world. Other
German scholars showed how all the great men of the Renaissance hitherto
regarded as Italians were Germans; in general it was impossible to be great without
being a little German; Christ the Lord was himself German by origin. It must,
however, in fairness be admitted that in Germany there was no lack of scholars
who summoned these crackbrains to order.
And so anthropological historiography lost its
drive. In his Synthese en histoire
Henri Berr justly says: "The anthropological interpretation of history,
more dangerous than all the others, should be submitted to exact
criticism", and in his preface to Pittard's outstanding work Les races et
I'fiistoirc. he roundly asserts that "history makes race to an
incomparably greater degree than race history".[28]
The most serious contemporary anthropologists
confine their science to the somatic-anthropological field. Jacques de Morgan
in Les premieres civilisations (1909). after asserting that all prehistoric
ethnography was at the groping stage, remarks that "anthropology ought to
be satisfied with its zoological role and not claim for itself a significance
which it cannot have".[29]
The best definition of anthropology is Czekanowski's—a science which
"investigates man as the biological base of social phenomena".[30]
With anthropology so restricted, one may agree with the same scholar that an
anthropological education makes possible "objective control of frequently
very far-reaching judgments on social phenomena".[31]
Sociology hastened towards historical synthesis
in the steps of anthropology. It favoured a biological outline of history. Paul Lilienfeld (1829-1903) worked this out
in detail. According to him, victory in the battles of history falls as a rule
to factors of a lower order. Friedrich Ratzcl (1844-1904) in his epoch-making
Anthropogeographie wrote in the exactly opposite sense. In his view, the human
spirit can carry out its designs even despite all geographic conditions.
Then doutbs concerning the relationship of
sociological subjects to the natural sciences moved into first place. In De
I'histoire consideree comme science, published in 1894, Lacombe asserted that
everything which is general in a man's activity comes under ths laws of nature,
and should be treated as such. On the other hand. opposition to the
introduction of the methods of the natural sciences into historical
investigation was voiced by three leading German scholars: Fredrich Goti in Die
Gremen der Geschichte (1904). Heinrich Rickert in Geschichtsphilosophie (second edition 1907) and W.
Dilthey in his chief work Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den
Geisteswissenschaften (1910). An original position was taken up by
Paul Barth in a serious, incredibly laborious work Die Philosophic der
Geschichte als Soziologie 1. Toil. Grundlegung imd kritische Uebersicht (second edition 1915). He did not consider that the
historian must deny himself natural science methods, which arc in any case
frequently used, but care should be taken not to introduce natural science
concepts into historical studies.[32]
Meanwhile other outlines were made in the
search for approaches to a synthesis.
These culminated in the Catholic school which Frederic Lc Play
(1806-1882) founded. His pupil Henri de Tourville distinguished in Nomenclature
on classification des fails sociaux twenty-five "grande's classes de fails
qui composem font I'ordre d'une soci&te", and set them out
systematically as sub-sections of a large table—deceiving himself that with the
help of tabulated numbers and signs a symbolic scientific language for all
historic and sociological factors would in time emerge. Here and there (in
Poland also) Tourville still rouses enthusiasm, but in his thought there is a
basic error, since the classification of social factors can never be complete:
there would be no history if they did not change.
Edmond Demolins, to whom we owe the discovery
of a new observation point, came from the same Le Play school. He showed with
great talent that a decisive influence is exercised on any given people by the
path their ancestors travelled to their later permanent homes. It is the theory
of "historic trails".
Obviously account must be taken of where these travels lay, but as an
explanation of the course of history, it is not worth considering.[33]
It would need a large volume to enumerate all
the new vantage points of the sociologists and the benefits to historical
learning frequently resulting from them. Paul Barth collected quite a long list
and set them out very interestingly in the work quoted. He regards sociology as
the same as so-called philosophy of history.
The American Franklin H. Giddings (The
Principles of Sociology, 1896) drew very wide frontiers for sociology,
including in it both philosophy of history and political economy and even
"comparative philosophy". And so sociology proved no less predatory
than anthropology! Erazm Majewski remarked that: "Synthetising,
philosophic sociology became a skirmishing-ground for the poorest intellects
and the least justified ambitions".[34]
Sociologising historiosophy was dealt a shrewd
blow by the greatest German historian of that generation, Eduard Meycr (born
1855) in his treatise Zur Theorie und Method! k der Geschichte.
Geschichtsphilosophische Untersuchungen (1902). He drew attention to the fact that history is not directly
concerned with groups either of people or of facts, but with each fact
separately, and on each occasion and for every fact with people specially
grouped—in opposition to Barth's assertion that history was concerned only with
associations. According to Meyer a fact becomes historical through the
effectiveness of its consequences, and historic importance is proportionate to
the range of these consequences.[35]
Among Polish sociologists, the historical point
of view was taken up by Florian Znaniecki in his Introduction to Sociology
(Wstep do socjologii. 1922). He recognised the need for a "revision of the
philosophical assumptions which humanist studies in general employ". He
also looked with the greatest scepticism on the labours of sociologists
hitherto : sociology should renounce imaginary claims to the status of a kind
of universal science, and become a "specialised study like linguistics or
economy". It should investigate certain types of assembly and some fields
of the phenomena of life. Thus heavily pruned, he recognised as the proper
domain of sociology the psychology of social phenomena, "scientific"
ethics, criminology, the theory of education and the theory of politics. In the upshot. sociology is a central
although not a basic humanist study. [36]
Thus the search for an historical synthesis
with the aid of sociology also failed. There remained the theory of historic
cycles producing ever new combinations, ever new ideas about the sequence of
periods and their characteristics.
Karl Lamprecht published three methodological treatises : Was ist
Kulturgeschichte? (1896), Kulturhistorische Methode (1900) and Zur
universalgeschichtlichen Methodenbildung (1909). He believed in fixed patterns of life both
economic and intellectual discerning a parallel between them. This fixed
periodic order he called animism, symbolism, "typism",
conventionalism, individualism and subjectivism. He no less than Wronski,
forced historical events into fanciful categories. He also devised six economic
periods to occur of necessity in a certain order, as if history knew no
culaclisms. revolutions, stagnation. History he described as die Wissenschaft
\'on den seelischen Veraenderungen der menschlichen Gemeinschaften,
distinguishing seelische Gebundenheit, the narrow bounds of the spirit in the
middle ages from the freedom of the spirit . . . after the Reformation.
Another step. and the apotheosis of the
Prussian appears, renewed and perfected by the theory of cycles, into which it
fits very well. Oswald Spengler, author of the two-volume Unfergang des
Abendlandes, Umrisse einer Morphologic der Weltgeschichte (1917), was
responsible for this. It would not be an exaggeration to say that nothing in
heaven and earth goes unmentioned in his book.
Spengler treats the expressions
"culture" and "civilisation" as signifying phases of the
same process : while flowering and developing it is culture: exhausted and no
longer creative, it becomes civilisation, which is always accompanied by
caesarism. Such is the inevitable Schicksal of history.[37]
Cultures and civilisations have a homologous
course. "Biology describes morphological equivalence as homology of the
organs in contradistinction to analogy of the organs which refers to
equivalence of functions ... I am introducing this conception into historical
method". From the law of homology there results an unavoidable homologous
order of facts. In the given order such facts are simultaneous, that is they
occupy the same successive place— which should be distinguished from
contemporaneity.[38]
Examples of homologous equivalence: Greek
plastic art and northern instrumental music, the pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty
and Gothic cathedrals, Hindu Buddhism and Roman Stoicism, the expeditions of
Alexander and of Napoleon, the age of Pericles and the regency of Cardinal
Fleury, the times of Plotinus and Dante, ths Dionysian trend and the
Renaissance, Monophysitism and Puritanism, etc. A particular resemblance
appears in the development of the classical and Mexican cultures.[39]
Of the cultures which are closer to us,
Spengler knows only three : the ancient, the Arabic and the Faustian. The Arab
begins with Diocletian, who was the first Caliph, and contains not only all
so-called Roman law. but the New Testament and Mishna. the Talmud, Koran and
revived Mazdaism. the whole of Byzantium and the whole of Islam. Gothic arose
from the Arab spirit and so did the doctrine of the Resurrection. We have
little in common with so-called classicism, in fact it is more foreign to us
than Mexican gods and Hindu buildings.[40]
Faustian culture is simply Prussian culture.
"There is no nation which remains on the heights for centuries on end :
the PrussianGerman did so longer than others, and had mighty moments in 1813.
1870 and in 1914." ..."In Prussian history the period after every 345
years is significant. Henry the Lion. Luther and Bismarck are one historic
line. and Legnano, Worms and Sadowa followed each other at 345-year
intervals."[41]
At the present time we are embarked upon the
transformation of Western European culture into civilisation. Before Faustian
culture expires, its civilisation is being produced through imperialism. In
Prussia, which will assume hegemony of the world, caesarism is being created.
The whole world will accept the Prussian idea. Only now the great future of
Prussia really begins. The temporary results of the general war are irrelevant.
World hegemony cannot be taken from Prussia, the fatherland of Faustian
culture, since every culture is attached to a certain territory, is
pflanzenhaft gehuhden.[42]
As for Christianity, it has before it yet a
third stage in accordance with St. John's Gospel. It will be Dostoyevsky's
Christianity to which the next thousand years belong.[43]
The quintessence of the work is to be found in the Tafein zur vergleichenden
Morphologic der Weltgeschichte on pages 74 et seqq. picturing homologous
simultaneity in the whole of universal history. Shades of Vico and Wronski![44]
The theory of cycles has so far appeared five
times — in Vico, Hegel, Wronski, Lamprecht and Spengler — attaching itself to
various methods. Whence this revival of an old error in new garments? There
must be some common base, some common fundamental error.
It lies in the biological approach to history.
If it is accepted that peoples, nations, states and civilisations have their
youth, maturity and old age on the pattern of the individual human life. in
that case. also on the model of the individual, every civilisation must fall
and come to an end simply because it grows old. The devising of a biological
pattern common to every civilisation then imposes itself upon the
intellect—hence the cyclic theories. Somehow it is overlooked that three very
old civilisations — Jewish, Brahmin. Chinese—still exist.
The biological approach to history is not the
hallmark of the "cyclists", but is widespread and popular among the
generality of the intelligentsia. Monism favours this. Death belongs to the
laws of nature; as everything is nature, death is a necessity for everything.
Yet nature raises new lives on the death's ruins of those going before, and in
the same way on the ruin of an old civilisation a new will arise. Not
spontaneously, obviously, for nature has her laws. which are everlasting,
immutable and admit no exceptions. Both death and resurrection always obey
these laws — so the theory of cycles is a simple consequence.
That the permanence of a form diminishes with
its complication was understood by the Polish monist Erazm Majewski,
(1858-1921) in his—by any standards—remarkable Study of civilisation (Nauka o
cywilizacji) (1908-1923). A cell-form may exist millions of years, an organism
about one hundred thousand years, but a civilisation at most a few thousand
years, perhaps even only a dozen or so, perhaps even only a few generations.[45]
He bases his theory of civilisation on the biological theory of development;
civilisation for him is a "biomechanism".[46]
Although he refers the whole subject to the sphere of the natural sciences, he
is at the same time a resolute opponent of materialism. Recognising nonmaterial
factors, he does not assume that scientifically they must be treated as opposed
to the material. Majewski considered that he was filling out and correcting the
technique of investigating nature.
The enduringly important bequest left by this
great scholar was his discovery that human communities were created thanks to
speech. "Man owes his unparalleled riches of ideas not to the development
of the brain in the meaning of the theory of evolution. but exclusively to a
simplified technique of thought. That simplification he owes to speech."
And in another place Majewski says that through speech man became a social
being and then "by writing and print the human individual conquered space
and time."[47] The fourth
volume of his work. devoted specially to this subject, belongs to the
masterpieces of human thought.
According to Majewski, civilisation moves on,
that is it must fall in one place and rise again in another. Where and when? It
"must be by the same kind of inflexible law of nature, independent of the
will of man. as the law governing the movement of the earth round the
sun." But what that law is we do not know. "We do not know what
lights and quenches civilisations."[48]
If we knew. we should have to create in monism a new theory of cycles. But
Majewski did not manage to complete his study of civilisation. Published it in
parts and continuing to work on it for fourteen years, he left it far from
finished (the last volume is posthumous). If he had reached the goal of his
thought, he would then have been forced to subject the whole work to revision.
In the course of the years there naturally arose certain inequalities and
inconsistencies between the earlier and more recent parts, for the author was
constantly working on himself; it seems to me that in any such general revision
the monist point of view would have been found wanting — and that Majewski
would not have been content with a new version of historic cycles.
We have
covered wide fields of human thought from Bacon to Majewski, glancing at
different views on historiosophy, on the philosophy of history, on perpetual
historical cycles, on the history of civilisation and finally on the study of
civilisation which we are to continue in this book. Methods of historical synthesis
so far employed have produced no synthesis. Thus it may be allowable to try out
one's own. Treating the subject as strictly as possible historically, I shall
begin by looking for the nuclei of all culture. Kołłątaj laboured at this for
long years, and his work is the worthier of remark in that he employed the
inductive method. He deserves separate mention here — plain pietas alone
requires it.
Tradition is the backbone of all culture, of
learning perhaps more than of anything else. Poland's tradition of learning has
been unlucky. Particularly since the Partitions, how often the threads have
been broken by contrary winds! Learning has nourished too little among us,
because it has little tradition. The greater the duty of the citizen to guard
it wherever it is to be found — and if covered with ash from the conflagration
of evil times, to bring it out into the light of day.
In this place therefore, mention is made with
grateful respect of the man who was first among Poles to devote long years to
research into the origins of culture. Father Hugo Kołłątaj. Destined like
Turgot for scholarly quiet, he tore himself from the study and plunged into the
whirlpool of political life. Like Condorcet, he wrote in prison. With
incomparably more scientific method than Condorcet. in thought he is closer to
Turgot.
Whereas his contemporary Stanislas Staszic was
simply a pupil of the Encyclopedia, Kottataj had more of the elements of the
Enlightenment. The two stood at the head of public life in Poland, but only
because of circumstances: they did what, in the condition of their country,
they regarded as their main duty. The
disastrous state of Polish affairs impelled them to politics a hundred times
more urgently than any Turgot. Had Poland been secure and developing normally,
Kołłątaj and Staszic would have been university
professors. Their qualifications were such that there was no
university in Europe of which they could not have been ornaments.
Father Hugo Kotlqtaj (1750-1812), the
distinguished reformer of Cracow University and one of the creators of the
Constitution of the Third of May, a man of relentless energy (in which Staszic
was his equal) and of a warm temperament (Staszic was his superior in control
of self and master of circumstance), differed from contemporary scholars in not
being a naturalist. He was indeed remarkable among European scholars of his
generation in being preeminently a humanist who possessed a naturalist's
training but who worked in the field only in so far as it was necessary to
enable him to go deeper into historical studies.
Kołłątaj proceeded on the assumption that
history rests on geography and chronology, and that it was the more necessary
for him to study these subjects as he wished to work on the beginnings of man's
history. For the same reason he devoted himself to research in the field of
physical geography, and embarked on geodesies. cosmic geography and latterly
astronomy.
The fruit of these extremely extensive studies
and an enormous erudition was the relatively disappointing Critical examination
of the principles of history on the beginnings of the human race.
Attention has been called to the fact that the
title does not correspond to the content, since it is not an historical but a
geographical work. "Kołłątaj's book is in essence a great system of
general geography, full of fresh and creative thought: suffice it to say that
with his clearly defined concept of geological time, and analyses of geological
processes in the light of contemporarily active forces he anticipated Lyell,
while his analysis of the influence of environment on society provided
foundations for the system of anthropogeography, in anticipation of both K.
Ritter and Ratzel."[49]
The history really begins only with volume III.
Almost all the results of the research of those days are indifferent to us, the
interest lies in methods and basic views. Here are Kołłątaj's:
"It is vain," he says, "to try
to collect and explain the whole of early history from Moses alone"[50]
the latter is, incidentally, much and often misused.[51]
In view of this, the exhausting work of recreating prehistory must be
undertaken (as we should say today) from other sources and by other means. It
is an indispensable task, since "the moral sciences cannot dispense with a
search of early history".[52]
"For anybody who reflects well on such important material will easily
understand that without an improvement in early historical studies, improvement
in the moral sciences is very difficult, not to say unlikely; for what natural
history is to the physical sciences, human history is to the moral
sciences".
On method Kołłątaj has this to say: "So
many philosophers. metaphysicians and legislators have believed that where
history failed it was enough to rely on reason alone, that by looking well into
the nature of man with its help it would be possible to uncover the whole
history of the first beginnings from which man reached his present state. Historical truths, hcin^ results of the
activities of either man or nature, never of metaphysical speculation, cannot
be discovered by any means except patient investigation of the activities of
man and nature, and that in those examples in which history shows them."[53]
Written in 1800. the passage explicitly
proclaims the inductive method. In another place—arguing that a numerous band
of scholars was needed for the task in hand — Kołłątaj says: "Let us begin
without concerning ourselves about who will afterwards correct us: for it is
time that those who work on the moral sciences ceased to derive their systems
from conjectures: that history should lake the place of fairy-tales,
suppositions and all cosmogonic fancies; that we should make entirely certain
by undisputed proofs what can be known and in what measure, and what shall we expect
in vain to discover later."[54]
Kołłątaj resists the supposition that humanity
at the start of its existence was in a "savage" state: he asserts on
the other hand that after the Flood for many people there followed a period of
barbarisation which in some cases still endures—and writes a special paragraph
"On the causes of man's lapse into barbarity after the Flood".
Today's "savages" are not wild because they have not yet raised
themselves higher, because they have remained on their original rung but. on
the contrary, because as descendants of those who separated themselves from the
main stream of humanity, they have continued to be left to themselves and grown
savage. In Kołłątaj's view the enormous differences in the mental state of the
various peoples of the world are not otherwise explicable.[55]
Let it be said that in our time many scholars share this opinion, and many
suppose it to be a very recent scientific achievement.
In his work Kołłątaj is never a litterateur, in
which he stands out among contemporary Europeans. Incomparably closer to Montesquieu than to Voltaire, he had a
slight opinion of the learning of the latter because "he had little
knowledge in physical matters".[56]
Indeed, where in Voltaire are there to be found such specialised, laborious and
exact investigations as Kołłątaj conducted into, for example, water, the ebb
and flow of the tide. ocean currents, eddies, evaporation: into the atmosphere,
winds, air streams and whirlwinds, into fire. volcanoes, earthquakes, the case
of coal? Kołłątaj has a whole treatise on palaeontology, one of the earliest in
existence, and on the sea-bed and a good sketch of oceanography; all with a
complete scholarly apparatus, with "notes" more than one of which
grew into a separate treatise, for example that on the measurement of height
(twenty pages of print), as if the author were more than a specialist in one
sector of his subject.
Kołłątaj excels by the precision of his work
and his extraordinary erudition.[57]
Again the comparision with Turgot suggests itself: both abandoned scientific
pursuits for the duties of public life and both failed to reach their goal in
the whirlpool of politics. And yet, how much more fortunate was Turgot! How
much more fortunate even Condorcet!
One other observation suggests itself. In the
years Kołłątaj was writing his Critical Examination the works in which
Herder"[58] and
Condorcet treat of the nuclei of human life were already published. but in the
Examination there is not a trace of them. It is probable that Kołłątaj knew and
was uninfluenced by these inquiries for reasons not difficult to divine.
Opposed to "metaphysical speculation" in historical studies, refusing
to countenance "reliance on reason alone" in relation to them. he was
an opponent of the meditative method, and inductionist.
We have seen that he had a distinct method, not
unlike Montesquieu's and Turgot's. but worked out, independently. The way in
which he did this may be followed in detail in the scientific apparatus
scrupulously offered in his notes, also in a few places in the main text where
he explains in detail how he arrived at a conclusion. And he would have
achieved more had it not been for unlucky philologising.[59]
At any rate he was the first man to examine the subject of prehistory
methodically.
Let us look now at the opportunities offered by
historical induction 130 years after Kołłątaj.
Let us begin with the nuclei of things; for how
to examine matters whose beginnings are unknown — inquiries would hang as in a
void and we should be raising a building without foundations. Let us therefore
enter the sphere of proto-history and prehistory. where numerous issues have
been mishandled in the interest of various theories (the meditative method!).
Some of these have indeed already been discarded, but smoke still rises from
them.
The actual genesis of the human race does not
belong to the sphere of knowledge about civilisation. Discussion of the issue
of polygeny or monogeny, of one or many cradles of man[60]
lies outside our study. Three Poles have just lately brought weighty evidence
of the universality of the tradition of the Flood, and so indirectly for
monogeny. In 1923 Christianity reached the Botocudos, regarded as the most
savage savages. The first group-baptism was performed there by Father J.
Kominek. who was educated at the Lazarist Fathers' schools at Kleparz in Cracow
and subsequently a member of the Wilno house. This priest states that the
Botocudos have a tradition about the Flood.[61]
In other parts of Brazil fifteen hundred kilometres away, the travellers M. B.
Lepecki and Mieczyslaw Fularski[62]
found the same. But more than one good brain will still pursue this question as
now it appears that human stocks differ in the chemical composition of their
blood.
The study of civilisation begins with the
question whether man was from the beginning a gregarious being, living in
groups of some size. More recent study has shaken this belief. Erazm Majewski
also dealt it a blow, putting forward at the same time the reasonable
suggestion that as there had been no gregariousness there had never been the
"herd communism" which the elder Morgan postulated.[63]
The history of mankind is divided, in our
opinion, into two opposed epochs: pre-fire and post-fire. These are the epochs
of all epochs. Wherever the discovery of fire reached, it radically transformed
conditions of life. Above all feeding improved. Let us remember that so far no
report has ever appeared of any people. ancient or contemporary, who ate fresh
raw meat. In many countries of the world, and by some tribes in Ruthenia and
Serbia, it is dried in wind and sun.[64]
Esquimoes and Chukchi cat raw reindeer and fish. but not fresh and only when
cut into pieces us a kind of frozen conserve; everything else they cook.[65]
Similarly the Mongols prepared uncooked meat in brine, adding various roots,
while the poorer among them use garlic.[66]
And to this day "in Bukovina ramand goat-meat, cut into pieces and
previously kept for some lime in a container with salt (just as in Polesie) is
then taken out and hung in the hut above the hearth".[67]
Since primitive man did not know how to organise stores nor to make meat
edible, and did not eat raw fresh meat, he did not eat meat at all. He became
carnivorous only after discovering the properties of lire. There is even an
interesting account of this among the Guayaqui of Eastern Paraguay.[68]
Pre-fire man could feed himself only on certain
plants and their fruits, edible raw. He was primarily herbivorous. Edible herbs are numerous.[69]
Even today, in lean years, pulp, bark and leaves are used as food. Pine-bark
and woodland roots represent an improved method of feeding. A classical
instance are the kernels of the pinion in the Brazilian jungles, where it is
eaten by almost every creature, and the ripening season is one of satiety and
abundance for Indians, Caboclos, colonists, wild pigs, racoons, cattle, birds
and the most various forest creatures.[70]
The Guayaquil of the Paraguayan Chaco eat the pith of the pindo palm which they
cut out with a stone hatchet. All Indians have been hunters for centuries, but
in addition most have not ceased to be herbivorous. In the Chaco "Indians
know very well where and when fruits ripen, and plan their travels so as to
arrive at the right time for fruitpicking".[71]
Pre-fire man could only get beyond
vegetarianism by lapping warm blood. He could not hunt. having no instruments
with which to attack animals stronger than himself. He could only watch
predatory animals hunt and wait in a hiding-place until the victor went off and
he could then enjoy lapping blood from the remains of the defeated animal.
Such feasts were, however, exceptional, and the
daily diet was herbivorous. Thus it seems that earliest man was a woodland
creature, an inhabitant of forests. Such are even now those most primitive of
the primitive, the African pygmies, and such were until lately the Ainu. with
an economy recalling "the forest economy of our ancestors",[72]
and still using stone hatchets. The Guayaqui of eastern Paraguay easily climb
tall trees and jump like monkeys from branch to branch.[73]
But forests too full of beasts of prey were
unsuited for habitation by completely defenceless men, and so were swampy
forests with their swarms of mosquitoes and other biting and disease-carrying
insects. So they fled from them into the mountains, and generally towards
temperate areas. It also seems more probable that the cradle of mankind was in
a temperate than in a hot zone. In no case could it have been in a cold zone
(wherever they then were in the world), for in that event early man would never
have become acquainted with fire, which he could only have come to know through
nature and a cold zone would not provide.
This is all that can be said of the pre-fire
epoch—which was perhaps as long as the post-fire down to our own days. Fire, increasing the sources of
nourishment, also increased man's degree of security, protecting him against
marauding beasts which do not approach flames. This beneficial side of fire is
universally known and recognised, but there is insufficient realisation of the
protection which smoke lent against small enemies more troublesome and
dangerous than the large predatory animals. Since this perhaps sounds
improbable. I shall give some examples.
The discussion is of mosquitoes, gnats, earth
fleas, tse tse flies. the South Americui. r/olvori. mbarigni. pernilongi,
piques, bicho de pe, etc. Now the plague of biting and disease-carrying insects
reaches strangely far north. In Northern Norway, in the land of Arctic night,
at a fishing-ground relatively distant from the land. "clouds of flies and
mosquitoes hung in the air. It was necessary to smoke all the time to save
oneself from their bites".[74]
This is still a trifle compared with the case of other inhabitants of the
frozen North, the present-day Yakuts, who. sometimes with expanses of unclaimed
land around them. settle pressed close together and getting in each other's
way. because on fresh land they would not be able to cope with the mosquitoes
which would "cat up the cattle". In the most painful season, from the
first days of June to the beginning of July, the Yakuts "avoid going out
of the house and sit in rooms full of acrid smoke". For mosquitoes are
"indisputably able to suffocate and eat up a man who loses the ability to
kindle a fire in summer".[75]
In Central Asia. on the Amu-Darya, in the
spring gnats "stick to a man so that one has to sit all the time in thick
smoke"—and in summer the huntsmen go into the mountains.[76]
Did the original inhabitants not do the same? As soon as born, calves must be
wrapped immediately in blankets or rushes. Flies bite through the skin of wild
animals and lay their eggs in the wounds, the resulting insects biting into the
muscles.
In the African Wasagara country it is
impossible even today to keep hens or cattle because of the omnipresence of the
tse-tse fly.[77]
Among the Malagasy "many are so crippled
and wounded (by the African ground-flea) that they differ little from
lepers".[78] In
Argentina Guarani hunters do not land on the islets of the river Parana
"because of the gigantic swarms of mosquitoes and gnats".[79]
Even now in out-of-the-way corners of Polesie
cattle die from mosquitoes and gnats, their nostrils, ears and windpipes choked
with them. The shirts of reapers grow bloodstained, until "after a few
days the bloodstains run together into one whole, and the shirt, because of the
dried blood becomes a certain protection".[80]
Thus we see that it is hardly an exaggeration
to claim that the value of smoke as a deterrent against insects is perhaps even
greater than that of fire as a protection against wild beasts.
Modern travellers, provided with means of
defence, complain of being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Where fire and smoke are
insufficient shield, primitive autochthons like the Andaman Negritos go naked
and cover their bodies with mud. while the Shilluk on the White Nile use
excrement and urine as a protective agent.[81]
The once densely populated Roman campagna turned into a desert when drainage
was neglected and the land became marshy. And perhaps the reader will not smile
incredulously when we say that mosquitoes more than once decided mediaeval German-Italian
wars, for armies of Arnulf. Otto II. Otto III, Conrad II. Frederick Barbarossa,
Henry VI and Henry VII disintegrated because of an unknown disease— malaria.
All this with fire available.
Fire did, however, at least help to limit the
plague to proportions not exceeding the endurance of primitive man, thereby
preparing habitable lands. It is assumed that man has known how to kindle fire
since the beginning of the paleolithic period.[82]
The words "in general" should be added, for the Andaman islanders
(pygmies) do not know how to light a fire and have no expression for it, but
"with great care maintain ever-burning hearths and explain the origin of
fire by a religious myth". This was the position in 1922. "The
Andaman islanders would thus constitute the single exception now known".[83]
(It had been universally assumed that there was no longer a people on earth
which did not possess the art of kindling fire.)
It is worth noticing that among primitive
peoples there are now nine different ways of making a fire,[84]
and it may be that there were other methods the tradition of which has
perished. The conclusion would suggest itself from this multiplicity that
Prometheuses appeared in more than one place; but that question does not belong
to our subject.
A man who kept going a fire (kindled by natural
forces) stood high above others. His hearth was safer, more populous and more
prosperous. So he guarded his property. And after this property followed
immovable property, the property of the space occupied by the hearth. Facts
known from the history of Iceland point to this conclusion. In the tenth to
twelfth centuries a curious symbolism. worth the notice of ethnologists, was
observed when land was taken into possession. The land was surrounded by fire
(Sara eldi inn landit): the boundaries of the whole area taken over were
circled by burning fires in such a way that the flames from one were visible at
both those adjoining it. The whole boundary of the area was thus marked by
fires.
It must be assumed that the proto-historic
owner of the fire multiplied it himself, setting up new hearts in the
neighbourhood. It is easy to understand that he placed them in such a way as to
have a view of his property, so that he could see at least two neighbouring
fires from every point. Clearly all were his property and he benefits from all
belonging to him, so that the settlers gathering round them were dependent on
his permission and on the conditions he imposed. In brief: the areas surrounded
by a man's fires became his property.
Was not the Icelandic custom a survival of this
state of affairs? According to this custom, the first man to light a fire on
land became its owner. Newly arrived settlers lit fires at the mouths of
rivers J in the area they proposed to
occupy. Later, as usual, the symbol was abbreviated, and the area in question
was ridden round, buming torch in hand.[85]
Ownership of an area acquired by fire appears
to be the seed of the very idea of immovable property. Those not in possession
of fire obviously strove to acquire it. Was not violence and fraud used to that
end? Were the first attacks and assaults, the first expeditions and battles not
for fire, about fire? A man who knew how to kindle a flame by himself was a
potentate.
It is known that flames not only give protection
against beasts of prey. but attract at the same time a number of animals of
more peaceful disposition which tolerate fire. The acquisition of the domestic
animal was a result of the possession of a hearth. And when later on various
tools were discovered and hunting began, it could be planned and turned to
advantage only in conjunction with the hearth. Without fire. hunting would have
been futile, since it was only fire which made the hunted animal edible.
Nevertheless the hypothesis about so-called feasting partnerships being the
oldest form of association, whence the further hypothesis that all civilisation
originates with primitive hunting man. must be rejected. Before the discovery
of fire. flesh was not eaten and not hunted. Fire made it possible to keep meet
for several days, so that it did not have to be eaten immediately. Moreover the
hunter had his own family to help with the eating: feasting partnerships have
not been discovered among hunting peoples, not even in the case of those among
whom big game are hunted by several men: the flesh of the animal is divided,
but communal feasting on the spot is not arranged.
Thus fire became the seed of the kitchen and
the larder, and round it food was increasingly good and plentiful. It was also
the seed of authority and power. The population round the hearths grew denser,
groupings began and the lord of the hearths became ruler of men. The oldest
communities took shape, based on a hierarchy, on the inequality between the
lord extending shelter and those who sought it in dependence on his favour or
disfavour.
Obviously the trend must have been towards
every man possessing his own hearth. When social development reached this
stage, the hierarchically based communities formed round fires disappeared, the
oldest authorities disappeared. Their place was taken by other hearth
communities, now based exclusively on the tie of blood, when every father of a
family could found his own fireside.
This was the consequence of the spread of
discoveries about different means of kindling fire. It was not, however, a
development which occurred everywhere. A fireside of one's own is even today in
some places the privilege of superior authority. As Kubary testifies, on the
Palau Islands in Micronesia only the obokul or headman may possess his own
hearth.[86]
And so the organisation of collective life
begins with fire. Two levels of development emerge: that of knowing how to
kindle a flame and that of knowing only how to keep it going. The first led to
further development, the other to standstill—as in the case of the Andaman
pygmies. Those knowing how to make
fire then divided according to whether knowledge remained the privilege of
certain persons or became general. And again those peoples who did not succeed
in making fire common properly failed to develop. Collective life was further
differentiated where it became possible for every man to acquire a hearth as
his personal property, with ownership of the land marked out by fire or fires
following. Still further differentiation occurred if the fire was made use of
to keep domestic animals.
In both periods, whether possession of fire was
exceptional or general, these fireside communities were hierarchical. After the hierarchy of fire-ownership came a
second hierarchy, that of the clan—of which later. The historical progress of
man begins not with communism and equality, but with property and hierarchy.
Let us pass to the question of the taming of
animals and their subsequent deliberate rearing. Animals which suffered worst
from mosquitoes because of their relative lack of hair or thin skins but who
were tolerant of the sight of flame and so suitable for domestication,
approached fires of their own accord. A tradition is preserved among the Yakuts
according to which the wild horses of the steppes became domesticated because
of the mosquitoes. And the presentday Yakuts, when they want to gather in
horses grazing free at considerable distances, light a fire.[87]
Nevertheless, permanent maintenance of animals for rearing required whole
centuries, because it could not take place without mastery of the animal by
force, and for that suitable tools were needed. And there were (as there are
today) various stages before human control over a domestic animal became
absolute.
Since this capacity was dependent on the degree
of perfection of the tools, domestic animals should in my view be divided into
two sections, into two chronological categories. Before man discovered tools
suitable for subjugating the stronger animals, his mastery must have been
confined to weak animals, defenceless or almost defenceless against him.
I suggest, for the first category,
chronologically earlier, the sheep, goat, pig, hen (poultry in general), dog.
Only in sub-polar regions are there no sheep or goats. Remarkable for their
exceptional resistance to insect pests, they survive where neither dog nor even
hen survives, as for example, among the Wasagara of Central Africa.[88]
Pigs have been in Australia from the beginning.
South America is full of wild herds. The later range of the pig was
unfavourably influenced by Islam, but the Chinese keep it on a large scale and
abroad, on the western borders of their empire, feed mainly on pork.[89]
The hen has a still greater range, but the greatest is the dog's, although it
is not true that he is found everywhere with man. He is not to be found [90]
in the Wasagara country, and he was also unknown to the Tasmanians[91];
the pastoral Todas. camping in the Nilgiri Hills 8,000 feet above sea-level[92]
do not keep him. On the other hand. there are people whose only domesticated
animal he is. for example, the Esquimoes and the nomads of tropical Africa, who
use him for hunting.[93]
Islam also restricted the range of the dog, but there is the known
exception—the inhabitants of Wanchu in Central Asia who breed a certain kind of
greyhound.[94]
It appears unlikely that the dog is the oldest
domesticated animal in the strict meaning of the word, that is, tamed and
reared. The attachment of the dog to man may, however, go back even to prefire
times, on the basis of its attraction to human excrement. This may often be
observed, and where the dog does not yet belong to the household it is more
marked. In the case of the Yakuts he is still at the stage of attaching
himself, allowed to remain in the neighbourhood and have scraps. The Yakut dog
does not yet know how to bark (which the dog learnt only among people).[95]
The keeping of dogs began when, joining in the hunt, they proved useful
companions; only then they became really domesticated, having been preceded by
sheep, goats, pigs and hens. To master these animals the dog was unnecessary,
and hunting could not begin without suitable instruments: as soon as these were
discovered, the taming of the larger domestic animals began. Thus.
chronologically, the dog stands between the older and younger ranks of domestic
animals. It is a significant fact that Mongol and Chinese shepherds do not use
them.[96]
The younger category of domestic animals is
made up of the reindeer, camel, bull (buffalo, yak), ass, horse. In order to
master any one of these considerably more force, stronger and more efficient
tools were needed than iiTthe case of the first, older category. There is no
question of any general sequence operative territorially, for this second
category depended in high degree on climate: every pan of the earth has its
"cattle". The reindeer is exclusively a polar animal, the zebu only
sub-tropical, the yak lives in high mountains, the camel must have the dry air
of the deserts, the ass gets lung trouble from too much heat or cold. and
attempts to transfer milking strains of cattle to tropical countries have not
so far been successful.[97]
Only the horse has displayed a capacity for acclimatisation, and is found in
almost all countries except the hottest and coldest.
Thus in different countries in the same period
different animals were being domesticated. The ass has been with man longer
than the horse. We deduce this from the fact that in Asia Minor, in the Sinjar
country, where horses arrived only around 2,000 B.C. (probably from Persia)
they were called "mountain assess".[98]
Somewhat similar to the ass is the half-wild horse called kulon, now living in
Mongolia, but never approaching herds of domesticated horses.[99]
During the last war, the Russian Trans-Baikal division formed from various
Mongol tribes, used half-tamed horses. The division appeared in Volhynia
"on small . . . shaggy horses, never groomed or stroked, knowing neither
stable nor manger, but permanently tied to trees... They gnawed the bark down
to the pith".[100]
The geographical range of the ass is not large,
that of the horse incomparably larger. The horse and camel live wild today
between the rivers Kara-Kash and Kerya-Darya. between the town of Kerya and the
Chira oasis: yaks in north-west Tibet: wild asses in the basin of the Raskem.
in greater numbers closer to the axis of the Himalayas.[101]
But these larger domestic animals are not kept everywhere, and there are
countries in which there are more. large or small. Without fire there, would be
no domestic animals; but they are not to be found everywhere there is fire.
Neither Australians nor autochthonous
Brazilians lamed any animals. There are herds of wild swine in plenty in both
places. but the Botocudos either do not try or are unable even now to
domesticate them; Father Kominek was asked for a sow and a dog.[102]
The African pygmies also do not possess domestic animals. Negroes, who have
among them the eland antelope which is as if made to be domesticated, but is
not. did not themselves think of keeping any animals although latterly they
have taken over some livestock from tl:e Hamitic peoples.[103]
It should be remembered that sheep and goats
are everywhere, whether domesticated by local effort or taken over from
elsewhere. This taking over must have occurred extremely early, judging from
certain manifestations to the elucidation of which we now pass. It is plain
that peoples who kept domestic animals reached a higher stage of development.
Australians, the Indians of South America,[104]
pygmies stood outside the line of development, the negroes somewhere in
between, their advance retarded. The
livestock keepers meanwhile moved ahead.
As man had more to do with animals, he learnt
many things from them. From the older domestic animals, from the sheep and
goat. he learnt to suck the udders of the females, to feed on their milk. He
mastered first those animals against which clubs and stones sufficed. It seems
that man did not anywhere immediately overcome the larger animals, but first
trained himself on the older, physically weaker animals. Mastery of the newer
domestic animals required not a little effort, often the complicated joint
labour of several persons. Nevertheless they managed it. and camels, cows and
mares —and outside the Arctic Circle reindeer—were milked as well as goats.
Those peoples who kept domestic animals at
first followed them on their journeys. An animal attracted by a (ire on its
departure would itself lead the herd to the human hearth. So that at certain
times of year when. driven by instinct, fleeing from danger or wandering off to
better pasturage, the animals changed their places of abode, the people
accompanied their food supply. Even now paleoasiatic peoples. Ural and part of
the Tungus in Siberia "make seasonal wanderings in the track of the reindeer
herds".[105]
We are as yet too little aware that the economy
of the animal world depends entirely on wanderings. Everybody knows about the
flights of migratory birds; the wanderings of fish. often linked with a change
of shape, are known to all with a secondary education (in recent years the
mackerel has found its way to the Polish coast);
but huntsmen are almost alone in knowing of the
wanderings of fourfooted beasts.
For example, Siberian reindeer protect
themselves against the worst mosquito period by leaving the forest for the
tundra or higherlying areas where there is a constant wind.[106]
All animals wander for food. In autumn tigers in the Alexandrovsk mountains
make towards "the caravan routes, along which in autumn year in year out
merchants drive hundreds of thousands of rams for sale in from Semirechye to
Fergana.[107] In the
Pamirs, when fish travel from the lake to the river, bears go 150-200
kilometres to fish. At a certain time of year bears from the Hindu Kush and the
Himalayas hunt for whistlers in Little Pamir.[108]
Thus man began by sharing the wanderings of
those animals on whose milk he fed. With certain peoples whose development was
checked, this happens today!
"Until recently the inhabitants of Anadyr
followed the herds of wild reindeer as the Chukchi and sometimes follow their
herds to this day. When the Chukchi shepherds are forced by fire. flood or a
stampede, etc. to catch up with their herds quickly, they abandon tents,
weapons, vessels, everything and hasten off armed only with spears, not for a moment
allowing the animals out of sight. They sleep where the beasts sleep leaning
against them, and nourish themselves on milk which they do not draw off. but
suck direct from the females' udders. To do this several throw themselves upon
an animal, pull it to the ground and in turn satify hunger and thirst. In such
cases their relation to the herd is retrogressive and breathes something
primaeval, some shared life. In normal conditionts. although they follow the
herd, they control it and keep it relatively disciplined."[109]
This is not some peculiarity of the north. Let
us proceed southwards. The Todas, one of the pastoral peoples of India (in the
Nilgiri Hills), do not cat meat, but feed on milk and fruit. The times when milk was sucked by force
straight from the udders is long past with them; they are a highly civilised
people, but they follow the herd. A bul.l enjoying particular respect, as it
were their god—a bull-guide—leads the way decorated with bells and ribbons, and
wherever it stops, there the Toda tribe stays and sets up camp.[110]
In a certain part of the French Sahara
"herdsmen do not guide their cattle at all, but follow them wherever fansy
leads. They spend whole months in this way in the midst of brushwood and scrub,
feeding on camels' milk and confining themselves to obeying the animals'
wandering whims. They are clothed in a few cloth rags and have no shelter: so
that they are tanned and burnt by the sun and almost as black as negroes".[111]
Thus we have instances of men following homed
cattle, reindeer and camels. There is
no reason to make mares and she-assess an exception. Primitive man made his
geographical discoveries thanks to animals. It is difficult not to smile at the
memory of those German works in which Ur-Germans travelled from Asia to Europe
in disciplined order of man and beast. For a doubt must suggest itself about
who really led whom.
Whole ages passed before man was transferred
from wandering parasite into a shepherd and breeder of animals. Before
uddersucking ceased it was necessary for vessels to be invented; pottery marked
an epoch. For not all peoples became livestock keepers, not all went through a
period of wandering after animals. Moreover some peoples stopped with the older
domestic animals. Mongoloids passing through Kamchatka and Alaska to America
had only pigs and hens with them. The Indians of eastern Ecuador, the Jivaros,
do not know other domestic animals.[112]
In the south the Indians allowed the swine to go wild and provide themselves
afresh with the domesticated kind from missionaries and Brazilian government
administration stations. It is known that the horse only came to America with
the Spaniards. The Indians, even in the north, do not keep horned cattle,
although they very well know their use. And in the south, although the Jesuits
raised horse-breeding to a high standard in their reservations, the Indians did
not keep it up. They hunt, but do not keep stock.
The course of history, change of dwelling,
transformation of living conditions bring changes in stock-keeping. The Yakuts
are a classical instance. Herbivorous at first when far to the south, they came
to feed on ass-milk. Travelling northwards, they brought with them horses whose
range, constantly diminishing, is now confined to the southern part of Yakut
homelands. In the north they became acquainted with reindeer through the
Tungus. From China the yak reached them. but did not prosper. From the Russians
they received the cow which is increasingly widely kept. This triple
stockrearing distinguishes them from Tungus and Chukchi, whose whole existence
is based on the reindeer. To the Yakuts today mare's milk is a festive drink,
men doing the milking. A certain difficulty arises in the simultaneous rearing
of cattle and horses, because the Yakut horse, even when hungry, will not eat
hay on which a cow has lain, and half-wild horses will not graze on meadows
where cows have been pastured shortly before. But cattle graze very well on
fields abandoned by horses, and eat not only horse litter but even dung.
"Reindeer were formerly in greater supply. Uncounted herds of reindeer
"every autumn in their procession from south to north provided food and
clothing for the hunters waiting for them at the river fords.
Now wild reindeer wander in small herds of from
five to fifteen. In the spring the Yakuts hunt them on skates".[113]
The use made of the same animal was and is
different in different countries. The Yakuts use deer for haulage, but do not
milk them. The Tungus milk, although they do not yet know dairy products and
only drink the milk mixed with tea. They also ride on the backs of their
reindeer in the mountains and in mud.[114]
The Anatolian Turk uses cattle only for haulage; he does not eat pork and does
not drink cow milk.[115]
In Brahmin and Buddhist Asia the position is
the same. In Angola, where there are no horses at all,[116]
the ox is saddled and bridled. In China buffaloes are used only for draught. In
Peru the lama is harnessed, in Tibet the yak, whose meat is not eaten at all.[117]
African negroes drink cows' and goats' milk. In
Central Africa "the smell and taste of milk is abominable, because in
order to save water they wash the vessels in cow urine".[118]
The Shilluk on the White Nile have milk as their main food, and urine is used
to wash the vessels.[119]
Although owning horned cattle, the Africans nevertheless feed mainly by
cultivating plants with the hoe, while numerous cattle-breeders in Northern
Asia live mainly on plants growing wild.[120]
The Todas, who have already been mentioned, live mainly on milk, and never
slaughter cattle. Negroes do so rarely, but only because they have not even
enough small cattle to be able to practice systematic slaughtering. The negro,
of whom it is said that he "eats as long as he has something to eat",
likes even putrid meat—but besides the negresses grind millet and maize.[121]
In the Amirantes Islands, other negroes live on rice and fish.[122]
Among the Kaffirs, cows are so respected that they are milked only by men.[123]
But among the nomadic Indians of Paraguay mules, oxen and horses are ridden
without distinction, the cow is not kept for milk but for slaughtering. Among
the Lenguas of Paraguay it is to be recorded that the horse is not ridden, nor
are dogs used for hunting, but only for haulage and guarding.[124]
Similarly, the earliest Slavs did not use
horses for riding, and later on it was the more prosperous element which did
so. Until the nineteenth century, Slav countrymen used cattle for ploughing and
carting. The pack-saddle was used more than the riding-saddle. From of old the
horse was almost the only draught animal in northeastern White Ruthenia, in
Muscovy, among the Zyryans and in the eastern part of the western Finns'
territory. In the Caucasus, the horse was always used almost entirely for
riding, but also as a pack animal (alongside the mule and ass).[125]
When all this is taken into consideration, it
is evident that in the ways domestic animals were made use of there was no
sequence. no progression from slaughter to draught and the saddle, as German
scholars argue, presenting the progression in various ways.[126]
There never was any uniformity. Equally baseless are the constructions of
German science which put forward in explanation of the diversity of
civilisations the keeping by a people (even an entire race) of either cattle or
horses. These are somnia vigilantium. And what if neither cattle nor horses
were kept? Europeans introduced horses
into America, Romans the camel into the Algerian Sahara.
The assertion that there is a close and
necessary connection between the keeping of horned cattle and agriculture must
also be rejected. In agriculture, use is made of the animals which are
available. In Kandzhut in Central Asia, where ploughing is done with a
sharpened block of hard wood, cows, yaks, donkeys are harnessed to the plough
and frequently aided by men.[127]
In Java buffaloes draw the ploughs.[128]
In Germany at the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth centuries,,
ploughing was done with horses and oxen [129]
as it is today. Among the Kandzhuts the donkey ploughs, and in many areas
serves the rider as transport—not only in Mediterranean lands and in the Alps,
but also in Central Asia and in China.
In the suburbs of Peking, hundreds of saddled donkeys stand for hire.
Not so long ago. ploughing was done with six donkeys between Ferrara and
Bologna.[130] In Egypt
the cow is yoked with the camel which. because of its widely-set legs, cannot
make a pair with another camel, but keeps pace with a cow.[131]
Neither hoe nor plough necessitates the keeping
of horned cattle. They are a help and an advance in agricultural technique, but
neither ox nor horse is either an indispensable condition for agriculture nor
its necessary consequence—as two schools of German science hold. Dung played no
part in this. Even today it is used for fences and for fuel.
Let us trace what else man learnt from animals,
apart from the use of milk. The sheep and goat—and later horned cattle also—
taught man the use of salt, by licking salty soil and by heading more
frequently for salty areas. In the mountains of Central Asia, goathunters watch
where they come to lick the surface salt deposits.[132]
Salt tracks count for much in history. For salt
Roscislawicze conquered the Lach territory which later became Red Ruthenia.[133]
Even the most long-distance salt transport paid. Near Oued-Tifrirt in the
French Sahara a traveller encountered a column of ten camels with barrels of
salt from Idjil. They were being taken for sale to Nioro in the heart of the
Sudan, a distance of a thousand kilometres, at the rate of at most three
kilometres an hour.[134]
In Kashgar, surface salt is collected by a method requiring much labour and
expense, although this salt is impure and rather bitter.[135]
In the Congo "river grass is cut, then dried and finally burned. Then the
ash is put into sieves and water is poured over it. The ash drains out with the
water, leaving a thin layer of dirty salt".[136]
So much trouble, but it pays.
After fire, salt was the next comer of the
kitchen. How prehistoric man cooked may be observed today among primitive
peoples. Meat is burnt in hot ash, which is the most primitive method, known
everywhere. The Australians and Bushmen know how to roast in pits, placing hot
stones between the layers of food; the Patagonians insert them into the body of
the dead animal; the Australians bake in a clay covering, the Aleutians between
red-hot stones; some peoples of South America and the Calif omians on hot stone
slabs; certain tribes from the islands in the Indian Ocean heat water by
throwing hot stones into wooden or skin vessels. The last two methods are also
known among Slavs.[137]
Salt not only introduced variety, but made it
possible to cook more at once. The importance of salt is for the preservation
of ice helps the accumulation of food stocks. Perhaps in this circumstance lies
the explanation of the puzzle of emigration towards the North. The feasibility
of stocking-up obviously makes the struggle meat.[138]
The further north and the nearer the Arctic circle, the more for life easier to
a great extent, and in all probability the northern lands of the temperate zone
enjoyed a higher population than the southern; Salt made it possible for
southerners also to hold stocks. and to arrange their lives in such a way as
not to live from day to day. The Yakuts and Chukchi do not know salt and have
as many refrigerators as they want; put the Botocudos in South America and the
Bantus in South Africa[139]
are condemned to live from day to day.
Man has salt to thank that he learnt to think
of the morrow, because he could think of it. Salt is the mother of thrift,
industry, foresight in life—in a word, salt is the original mother of
capitalism. The first capitalist was the man who was able to keep food in
store.
We have not yet exhausted the material for an
answer to the question what earliest man leamt from domesticated animals. Who
taught man the use of the cereal grasses? Of the older animals, only the hen
chooses them. Clumsy in flight, she was taken prisoner in these grasses, and
because she presented man with eggs, was already the object of careful rearing
at a time when there was as yet no question of domesticating homed animals.
Different birds indicated to man which cereal grasses were edible. This was
later confirmed in part by horned cattle and in part by the horse among the
younger animals. It may be that cereal grasses were tended at once for cattle
and horses. Nevertheless whenever other sources of food failed, grain became a
kind of substitute food for man in evil hours. Certainly it must have required
a very long period before imitation of the hen led to cultivation of these
grasses; and another period, before nour was arrived at; probably these periods
were longer than the chain of centuries needed for the organisation of
systematic herding.
It remains to be recalled that in ths older
historical periods the number of grasses and herbs cultivated for food was
incomparably larger; the further back in time, the more plants were considered
edible.[140] And they
were all indicated to pre-historic man by animals.
Milk, salt and cereal grasses were lessons in
food given man by animals. In some parts of the earth the flesh of domestic
animals began to be eaten as well as the flesh of wild animals. All this
increased well-being, and made easier the permanent maintenance of a
community—at first of quite small groups. In consequence they attained higher
levels of development. No community which did not domesticate animals attained
a higher level: they remained behind, the road beyond closed to them. The other
communities went on from keeping animals and began to differ from one another,
a movement in which those without animals took no part. Communities without
domestic animals, without salt, growing neither grain nor rice[141]
had a harder struggle for material existence and incomparably smaller
advantages from it.
After investigation of the relationship of man
to fire and domestic animals, it is time to inquire how, in the dawn of
civilisation, man felt towards man.
The life of man as a single unit is hampered by
his unceasing sexuality so eminently distinguishing him from the animals, the
urge to live permanently with a person of the opposite sex. The basis of all
associations is the combination of the human couple: sex meets us on the
threshold. Manoylov's researches have shown that this bisexuality obtains
throughout nature. A piece of leaf or flowerpetal gives chemical reactions like
the blood of a man or woman, in accordance with the sex of a sexually divisible
plant. In minerals, rhomboid crystals give a male reaction, and sestoid a
female. Sex is the seasoning of all material being on earth and at the same
time (evidently) an innate organising force. Masses which do not crystallise
give no sex reaction—sex is the condition of crystallisation.
Sex is thus a highly beneficial factor for
human kind. But under one condition—which here does not involve any handicap,
since the condition is the same as in the case of every force which may be
beneficial to man, of every sense and all manifestations of life, whether
within or outside human cognition. It must be controlled, otherwise the beneficial
force may become mischievous. All the senses must be controlled, and sex is no
exception.
Actually to become aware of a given sense calls
for time. A child takes long to learn to look so as to see proper shapes and
proportions.
Control of hearing takes even longer. Today,
around us, there is no lack of people who do not see a drawing, while a
"good ear" is a rarity. The sexual instinct is no exception, and man
did not at once become aware of it. It has been confirmed that the lowest
levels of humanity do not know that coitus efficit gravitatem.[142]
Only at the stage when man becomes conscious of the consequences can the work
of controlling the sexual instinct begin.
It is a fact that at the beginning there was
monogamy. It is no longer possible to talk of an alleged original unordered
group without exposing oneself to ridicule. Monogamy is the rule among pygmies,
representatives of the "oldest culture of the world", whose existence
has been known for almost three and a half thousand years with "a striking
identity of physical features". They are scattered about Central and South
Africa, in Southern Asia, in Malacca, the Andaman Islands and the Philippines,
and in recent years have been discovered in the New Hebrides and in New Guinea.
It has been held that they are physical survivals of the "childhood stage
of all mankind", that every race was at the beginning of low stature;
others have taken them for degenerates; but recently conviction has come that
there were already small men in paleolithic times. So the oldest culture in the
world—and monogamous.[143]
These pygmies know neither sickle nor knife,
are armed only with clubs, bones, at most (not all) with bows.[144]
The most recent teaching is now almost unanimous that monogamy is typical
precisely of truly primitive peoples.[145]
Islam has not changed this. Those archprimitives, the Vedda in the mountains of
Ceylon who do without clothes, without huts, putting up only wind-breaks,
living on roots, hunting, occasionally only using the hoe, adopted Islam but
did not abandon monogamy. The Senoi on the Malayan peninsula are also
monogamous, although they did not know either how to cultivate the earth or
domesticate animals.[146]
The Toala on Celebes and the Negritos in the Philippines are likewise
monogamous.[147] And on the
other hemisphere, monogamy has been established with complete certainty among
the "Ge tribes, the oldest ethnic strata of South America".[148]
And with their relatively high level of development, the Riff Muslims also
normally live monogamously (agricultural implements found among them date from
more than two thousand years ago).
Retreat from the school of.Bachofen (1861),
Lubbock (1870) and L. Morgan (the elder, 1871), that is from the hypothesis of
an original sexual promiscuity, was not rapid but stubborn. The school invented
a sequence of forms of marriage, from agamy to monogamy, held to be inescapably
binding upon all mankind. As late as 1917 Wundt produced yet another order of
his own devising, in which although monogamy is both the beginning and end,
there are three other forms in the middle. An unnecessary complication, for
pre-history knows no order of marriage forms. Thus instead of accepting with
Wundt the compromise that "very probably" monogamy prevails in the
world,[149] let us
leave on one side the question of what prevailed when, and assert positively
that originally monogamy prevailed everywhere. Yet even in 1927 Brifiault came
out with a renewed defence of an original promiscuity.
The argument was sometimes oddly superficial.
For example, extremely primitive peoples practised intercourse openly in broad
daylight—as a check against illicit relations. This was also held to be the
explanation of the information passed from book to book since Cook's ocean
voyages, about a certain people of Oceania (do they still survive?) among whom
the women all slept together and the men in a group separately. It was truly a
strange logic which was long pleased to regard this as evidence of promiscuity.
In more recent times, Kubary[150]
looked closely into the matter of Micronesia. In the Palau Islands every adult
woman has her own hut. During the day, men are either in their wives' huts or
with the obokul (clan headman), going at night to the communal male hut.[151]
Monogamy is thus provided with the safeguard already mentioned, but at higher
levels this has come to be regarded as not permissible. Among the Semang
pygmies wives may only be visited at night.[152]
Nor is it hard to understand that monogamy must
be older than polygamy. The first families must have been endogamous in the
only too exact meaning of the term. The proto-family was incestuous. From this
developed the legal relation between a man and the children of his sister, with
the presumption that the children were his brother's.[153]
There is no need at all to make the forced connection with matriarchy which has
unnecessarily caused so much confusion. In the ancient period of Iranian
religion, marriage with a mother or daughter was regarded as particularly holy.[154]
Among the Yakuts, survivals of incest .are found to this day.[155]
Among Walachians incest with a daughter is no rarity, and in the Canary Islands
no secret is made of it.[156]
When the proto-family became endogamous, as
marriages took place between distant and more distant relatives within the same
kindred, as the kin grew and endogamy spread to very distant, indifferent
degrees of relationship—the family remained monogamous. For polygamy demands a.
surplus of women, which nature does not supply; such a surplus can arise only
from without, and so requires exogamy which, however, only appears later.
Development was in a direction opposed to the
inbred family; efforts were very early made to get away from it. With some
peoples the form lasted only among the priesthood, for example among the
Egyptian pharaohs. Among primitive peoples, deliberate social arrangements were
made to prevent inbreeding. The Australians invented divisions unfortunately
called in ethnology "classes" out of a mistaken notion that they
designated social strata fixed by caste, and for that reason not allowed to inter-marry.
The name is entirely inapplicable. In the Polish language these divisions could
be called "odrebnia", seclusion, for it is a question of
differentiation. Such primitive peoples are divided into seclusions and only
persons of different seclusions are permitted to enter into matrimony, while
the child is included in the seclusion from which the mother comes.
There are only two seclusions between Lake Eyre
and the lower course of the river Murray. Since daughters remain in the
maternal seclusion, marriages between brothers and sisters are avoided, but not
between children of two brothers, or of brother and sister, and moreover the
union of a father with his own daughter may occur by a chance of fortune. The
more developed Kamilar peoples in Queensland and the western part of New South
Wales, therefore, carried their precautions further, introducing four
seclusions. Here children belong to the seclusions of their grandmothers and
maternal grandfathers. Here only a grandfather could have intercourse with a
granddaughter. Among the people of Waramunga there are as many as eight
seclusions. In Western Australia, on the other hand, a division into three
seclusions has been confirmed. In Victoria a different method was chosen, the
children being included in the paternal seclusion.[157]
Seclusions have also been found among the Indians of the Brazilian forests,
among the Bororos of the Matto Grosso.[158]
All these methods of organisation, appearing to
many ethnologists and sociologists a puzzle requiring special ingenuity to
solve do not differ from the regulations relating to impediments of
consanguinity in our canon and civil marriage law. Islam also forbids marriage
within the family (with aunts it is expressly forbidden, but no mention is made
of the daughters of aunts), and also simultaneously with two sisters.[159]
Thus we see on a very low level of civilisation
resistance to family inbreeding already emerging; but this dislike and the
devising of measures against such families may be regarded as evidence that the
trend existed at the lowest level. It must have existed until the eariist group
(the family) had grown into larger associations (tribe, race) or until exogamy
emerged.
Until recently it was thought that no people
still practised marriage within the family. But at the Congress of religious
ethnology held in Luxemburg in 1929, Professor L. Ehrlich of Ljubljana. stated
that the Itelms in Kamchatka still permit intercourse with a sister. There are
barely 2,800 of them.[160]
It is the last survival. Peoples who did not condemn incest died out. or at
least were unable to develop even in numbers. This part of humanity declined
and fell (probably having grown sterile after a time).
As a further indication of the seniority of
monogamy, it is a fact that there is no people which does not distinguish
between licit and illicit relations, even although the latter are legally
tolerated. Everywhere a wife is one thing and a servant, slave or concubine
another.
When there is talk of marriage, first place is
taken by the question of the descendants. Never the sexual side but the
question whose property the children are determines marriage.[161]
In a larse part of the globe children are to this day the property of the
father. in the most literal meaning of the term, not excluding the rieht to
sell or to kill. Not among some "savages" but among the Chinese the
law is such.[162] "A
Chinese son is in far greater servitude than a serf."[163]
The lot of small Chinese children is such that mission collections for their
purchase, are universally familiar. Children are wounded and killed. If a
child, particularly a girl, displeases its father, "he kills it
immediately or throws it into a canal or bushes". "Sometimes they bring to Sen-mu-yu
(the shelter of Polish Franciscan missionary nuns) injured children, poor
victims of quarrels between parents.
The merciless father, wanting to break the wife's resistance, torments
the child. He beats, burns, wounds until the mother, driven to extremity, does
his will". "If a child does not please the grandmother, the mother
must remove it and then very often the couple give it to the nuns". In
China, and also in Japan, a mother-in-law has great authority over her
daughter-in-law. By no means infrequently the nuns find victims like "the
boy whose grandmother had cut the flesh on his legs and hipsthrough to the
bone; or a girl victim of the vengeance of her father on her mother".[164]
The Aztecs stood higher, only permitting the sale of a son into captivity in
certain conditions requiring the approval of a judge.[165]
In this the Chinese are nearer the very primitive Bororos in the Brazilian
Matto Grosso.[166]
In all countries outside Latin civilisation it
is accepted that in lean years poor parents may sell their children. It was
thus among the Aztecs.[167]
Here lies the origin of the sale of daughters to the harems of a richer
country. The sale of children by their parents has also been noted among the
Yakuts.[168] On much
the greater part of the globe one is personally free in fact only after the
death of one's father. Where slavery
exists, a son is his father's slave. Among Hindus, "a son and a slave may
not, according to the law. possess anything on their own."[169]
And this is not the exception but the rule with the greater part of mankind.
Various speculations have arisen in connection with
the law of property in children. Although the law does not sanction such
agreements, in Benares to this day the purchaser of a child pays for his
education and in exchange the child later works for its "guardian"
for long years.[170]
The greater part of the future geisha of Japan are educated in the same way.[171]
In Korea girls bought out of "compassion" are brought up to
prostitution practised for the owner's benefit.
It is known that Roman law also proceeds on the
assumption of a property right which undoubtedly originally existed. Later a (fictitious) three-fold sale of the
son destroyed the father's property title. Yet the son never became free either
personally or in handling property unless his father so permitted; otherwise
the son had to wait for the father's death. But in a society with a high
ethical standard a father did not injure his sons, and the law of property
existed in principle only because the Romans never abolished a law, contenting
themselves with issuing the new one which served to annul what was regarded as
out-moded (in this case the three-fold sale).
In the Babylon of Hammurabi it was permissible
to pledge wife and children for debts for three years only. among the Jews for
half as long again.[172]
In Korea, wives and children are still subject to confiscation as part of the
property of political offenders or of great criminals condemned to death.[173]
The right of property over a wife is of later
date. The endogamous wife, coming from the same tribe as the husband, was by
birth her husband's equal and so could not become his property. This occurred
only under exogamy. But from the very beginnings of all culture children have
been the property of the father. This property is jealously guarded because
children are a fortune, so that it is out of the question that anybody would
deny paternity; in primitive conditions it is more likely to be usurped. The
Hottentot also becomes owner of his wife's earlier, pre-marital children.[174]
The identification in certain cases of the position of uncle and father was
thus based on sound assumptions, for the other father (had he existed) would
hardly have agreed to be robbed of a fortune. If nobody applied for possession
of a child, it was evidently correct to apply the law of the inbred family. Not
only is this not a pointer to matriarchy, it is on the contrary proof that it
did not exist, unless one is prepared to argue that woman, as head of the
family, would not have wished to possess her own children. Woman never had this
right of ownership, and so there never was a matriarchate.[175]
Thus if the uncle's right to the children is sometimes found as a survival, it
is a survival not of matriarchy but of the inbred family.
Here is man's oldest property: his own
children. It may be that feeling for this property is older than for the
fireside and the area covered by it, representing (as discussed above) the
oldest claim to real estate. Both these possessions are individual, strictly
personal. In this beginning property was personal, not collective. That the
genesis of family and property law was simultaneous, the beginnings of both
everywhere identical, is of basic importance. There would be no family without
feeling for individual property, and what need for personal property if not to
satisfy the needs of the family? The ultimate source of the law of individual
property is the family. The very close link of the one with the other began at
once with original monogamy.
Did the division of labour among the sexes
begin at once? It is time the view was discarded that there existed a strict
division of occupations between the sexes. For example, the view creeps from
textbook to textbook that hunting belonged exclusively to men. the gathering of
"roots" to women; that the horse everywhere belonged to the man, the
cow to the woman, on the principle that man performed the heavier work and
woman the lighter. What do the men of exclusively vegetarian tribes, for
example, certain Californians, do in that case?[176]
Grinding is harder work than the sowing which fell to the men. In the granary
of ths nations which was ancient Egypt milling was not known, women ground the
grain by hand. The discovery of the mill was a blessing for woman. Later, when
tasks multiplied, they were sometimes divided according to certain
superstitions connected with the physiological characteristics of the sexes,[177]
but never according to whether they were easier or harder.
From the beginning something else was decisive:
charged with bringing up the next generation, woman carried out tasks not
requiring her presence too far from home. From the start she could not have
managed as a solitary individual. Tending of the fire meant one person keeping
unceasing watch over the hearth, and that person could not go in search of
sources of livelihood. Nobody would have domesicated either horse or ox by
himself. Among the negroes, hoe-agriculture requires three people: one ploughs
the ground, a second lights a fire and prepares food, and the third must sit on
the field to scare birds from seedbeds and harvest. Older women and children
spend whole months in this role of scarecrows. All tasks in and near the house,
light and heavy, pleasant or less pleasant, fell without exception to the wife
in primitive monogamy. Only exogamy could lead to the division of labour among
women of unequal standing.
The family, as a union consisting of parents
and children, lasted barely one generation. Among the Yakuts, for example, it
did not succeed in being perpetuated in tradition, since "the Yakuts have
no exact term to signify a family composed exclusively of a married couple and
their children".[178]
Ethnology has not investigated the question whether the same fact does not
occur elsewhere. In any case it leads to the conclusion that the concept of the
family known in historic times did not originate in that primitive family, and
is unconnected with it, because its shortlived character doomed it to oblivion
in times when tradition was as yet extremely feeble. The concept originates
with the next family formation, with the emancipation of the later family from
the tribe. Among the Yakuts, this emancipation has not yet taken place,[179]
but there are apparently the beginnings of the process.
The family proper was lost when the children
concluded marriage ties, and the years of the grandchildren began. Of any splitting-up,
of the foundation of new firesides at a distance from the original parental
hearth, there was no question when human association began. The clan was
formed. Young people remained with the older, because otherwise they would have
worsened their own conditions of life. The enormous difficulties of the
primaeval struggle for a livelihood required the concentration of a large
number of working hands. Families which did not succeed in expanding into clans
died out; they had to die out.
There arose associations of families descending
from a common ancestor and remaining under the common authority of this
protoplast. As a rule this development was accompanied by joint husbandry,
normally too by joint living quarters. Such was the original clan. The inheritance
of two, three generations was collected in one place—but was by no means common
property. Since children were the property of the father, they plainly could
not possess any goods of their own. If this principle obtained in the later
centuries of the splendid Roman civilisation, it is not surprising that it
obtains today among the Chinese: "Of the son of a Chinese it cannot be
said that he possesses anything".[180]
The original family rested on this principle at
the dawn of all civilisation. The principle that while living with the clan
neither grandchild nor great-grandchild could possess property was thus only
the practical consequence. The owner of their earnings was the
great-grandfather, after his death the grandfather, then the father. Each was the
owner of his descendants and their property. This relationship was dissolved
only by death—or by going outside the clan in order to found a new clan The creator of a clan was its owner; and as
owner, he had unlimited, despotic power.
Let us call him the clan headman. The whole clan and all that belonged
to it was originally the private, strictly personal property, of the clan
headman. The source of this oldest conception of property is the bond of blood.
We see how difficult, or rather quite impossible it is to indicate which of the
two is the older—family law or property law, which is the basis and which the
superstructure. In fact it is one phenomenon, a kind of dual phenomenon of
primitive existence.
All societies pass through the clan system, and
some have stuck in it. Among the pygmies so far there exist only "groips
formed of up to a dozen or so families with one leader at the top"—in
other words clans. There are no authorities higher than clan headmen, nor
organisations above the clans, hence the "considerable number" of
leaders within even a single tribe.[181]
In the Brahmin communities of India social organisation also stopped at the
clan. In Bengal, families still live in patriarchal fashion, all the married
brothers together under the guidance of the father or of the eldest among them.[182]
In India peoples until lately known as Dravidian and Aryan still farm in clans.
These are all monogamous communities (of others there will be mention in the
next chapter).
The original clan did not require any clan hierarchy;
the sole hierarch was the living protoplast-owner. This state of affairs could not be long-lasting, since it
depended on the life of the protoplast and founder of the clan. After his death
each of his sons became owner of his branch of the clan. which introduced
diversification into family and property law, and so into forms of the clan.
And with diversification—differentiation had begun. The comparatively recently founded clan, with its original
creator, oldest ancestor and first headman still -living, belongs to the
beginnings of all culture.
All discoveries and inventions (which in
prehistoric times were no less prolific than in our own) would have been worth
nothing had it not been possible to transmit them to later generations. Nothing
is worth anything without tradition, which is the backbone of all civilisation.
It is thus necessary to consider what are the conditions for the creation of
tradition.
Primitive living conditions were not only
unfavourable to its emergence, they were destructive. There were no durable
relations and durability and stability are the basis of development. Among
primitive peoples this matter appears desperate even today.
In Central Africa "roads are not to be
recognised even after one year. Settlements are depopulated, new ones
arise". The famous Livingstone
travelled for six days through completely deserted countryside where years
before he had seen closely-set villages. On the other hand, Cameron found a
populous and fertile countryside where Burton and Speck had seen waterless and
unpopulated bush. In Nepal, in Barak, in Assam "every few years the
village is transferred to another place, when the soil of the old settlement
has become exhausted. Then they burn and clear the forest in a new area and a
settlement arises nearby for another few years". After the passage of a
few years a map of the Arab settlements of Mesopotamia was of no use to Sven
Hedin. Only a few decades—fifty to sixty years—divides the travels and
scientific labours of Bastian from the most recent travel works, but there is
no agreement on either ethnological or sociological data relating to these
territories Much depended on the
security of life and property. Round the great African lakes and in the basin
of the Lualaba "it was sufficient for security to be more or less assured
for people to assemble quickly from all sides, while another, less safe place,
became depopulated. This process is so rapid that many travellers maintain that
African states and towns grow like mushrooms after rain only to disappear again
after a brief life".[183]
For any community to become an ordered and
differentiated society there must be a certain density of population. Yet
thousands of years after fire became generally known, vast areas have sparse
populations The Chukchi, who number 10.000 in the tundra between Kolyma, the
Behring Sea and the Arctic Ocean, represent an exceptional rate of density. But
the Koryaks in Northern Kamchatka on the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk and in the
tundra of tho interior numbered only 6,300 after 1920.[184]
On the average, an area equal to the "Congress Kingdom" in Poland has
2,500 inhabitants. "The Australian lived in the company of only two or
three dozen fellow-clansmen, on a few occasions in his life he might be present
at a gathering of a few hundred persons, but never saw a crowd of
thousands".[185]
These primitive peoples have died out and are
dying out at an alarming rate. For example, in 1850 the Kurnai people of
Australia numbered fifteen hundred, in 1880 barely 140.[186]
During the First World War, in 1918, "half the nomad population of
Turkestan died of starvation".[187]
But the danger of complete extinction was much greater in proto-historic times.
For primitive man was less hardy, less able to endure, helpless in face of his
environment and bsyond comparison more susceptible to illness.
Even the nervous diseases are more common at
lower levels of civilisation. Among
the Yakuts, madness is well known and hysteria widespread. Deniker lists a
whole string of these diseases, often infectious. Malayan and Indonesian men
suffer from amok. a kind of dementia with epileptic symptoms, while the women,
affected by the disease latah. strip naked before the men and women their
children about like balls. The
uncontrolled imitation of others' movements common in many parts of Asia is
well known there. Fear of certain expressions (for example, tiger, crocodile)
occurs in Malaya, among the Tagalog in the Philippines and the Sikhs in India.
Similar illnesses are mintim of the Ostyak and autochtonous Siberians, and the
bakchi of the Siamese. At sea Esquimoes show a kind of agoraphobia. Charcot's
major hysteria has been reported among negro women in Senegal, among Annamite,
Hottentot, and Kaffir women as well as in Abyssinia and Madagascar. Full-scale
nervous epidemics are known among the Hurons and Iroquois.[188]
Diseases known in Europe appear in more
dangerous degree among the Yakuts.
Ninety per cent of them die of smallpox. Tapeworm is general, there is
rarely someone who is not tormented by rheumatism, the terrible illness of the
narrowing of the throat is frequent and syphilis is widespread.[189]
In some parts of Portuguese Angola "apparently 75 per cent of negroes
suffer from venereal diseases".[190]
When smallpox breaks out among Indians "hundreds of corpses poison the
area". Leprosy is almost
universal among primitive peoples even in Ecuador. Even under the civilised
Belgian Government, the Congo is threatened with depopulation because of disease.[191]
Peoples whom nobody persecutes also die out. In 1906, a Government Commissioner, D.
Francesco Matana, sent to the Government of Ecuador a register of 9,750 Jivaros
("observing that their number was constantly declining".[192]
The Yukagirs, once rulers of all the land between the Lena and Anadir and south
to the Verkhoyansk Hills had melted by 1928 to four hundred souls.[193]
Erazm Majewski described all this shortly and
pithily: "Let us combine in a single whole sparsity of population, the
transitoriness of its centres, the short duration of its families, the poverty
and chaos of primitive tongues, the short duration of common experience, whence
the level and very restricted range of its ideas —and we have factors which
necessarily kept the human race in the proto-social state of existence for a
very long time". For the consequences "of the small and short-lived
character of social circles was the perpetual wastage of common experience and
constant fresh-beginnings. The discovery of bow. boat, weaving, pottery, was
made a hundred times in different parts of the globe".[194]
The only lever of tradition was speech, the bond of society which made
permanent understanding possible.[195]
But even the tradition of speech was interrupted and whole ages passed before
the effort was made to perfect language. "Poor methods of communication
were evolved in the course of generations a hundred times over".[196]
Fundamental scientific discoveries in the field
of the origin and meaning of language as a social bond are continued in the
most recent studies of infant prattlfc
The genesis of speech lies in each smallest human child as in almost
every animal. A child makes its own babbling^ stuttering, exclamatory
language—very varied sounds usually comprehensible to the parents alone. Where
one child shouts tilipiti, and another elebele, the third, youngest, learning
from its elders, mixes the two languages in an independent. original linguistic
creation. If allowed to develop without hindrance, with the years such prattle
would develop into a language and . . . every man would speak his own. This is
prevented by life in society. At the very beginning of the child's life parents
check the development of an original childish tongue, imposing their own, which
their parents once imposed on them and the latters’ parents on them.
There would be too many kinds of speech even if
only every family possessed its own. It seems that this was the position in
pre-fire times. By language we
understand speech which has already become common to a community of some size.
Without such grouping there is no language, and in this sense it can be
asserted outright that there were no languages without fire. Conversely, fire
without speech would not have served much purpose, for its management and
manifold uses would not have been known. On the other hand, without fire we
should have perished even with the most highly perfected language. But the
utilisation and control of fire, the whole long series of discoveries which
made possible its conservation, quite apart from the process of kindling, as
well as the discoveries relating to its uses—all would have been impossible
without the preservation of tradition, and so without the progression from
speech to language.
On this basis it may be deducted that the use
of fire and the use of speech were developed and perfected simultaneously,
although not with the same swiftness. Beyond doubt the perfecting of speech
required an even longer sequence of centuries than the spread of the use of
fire. While the discovery of fire acted quickly, radically, the shaping of
speech led upwards, but slowly. It was more difficult to perfect speech than to
employ fire. The quicker a common tongue evolved in a given group, the more
rapid and many-sided was its ability to ensure itself stable existence and
enduring relationship. Language fulfils a double role for tradition, which it
not only preserves, but creates. Language is the perpetuation of thought.
The emergence and perpetuation of tradition was
aided by the consciousness of death. But awareness of mortality did not come
quickly. Primitive man was killed by murderers, cannibals and beasts of pray;
to die a natural death in the ripeness of years a community able to ensure its
members a considerable degree of security was required. Primitive man did not
know that he was by nature, mortal.[197]
Death from disease is ascribed by Oceanic tribes to enemies, and every case of
natural death provides grounds for a new war of revenge. In Korea the
superstition still persists that anybody dying before completion of the cycle
(sixty years) dies as the result of the activity of evil spirits.[198]
Thus primitive man organises only for battle and fights without cease. When he
grows aware that he is mortal, one of the causes of struggle lapses, as well as
an impediment to the uniting of very small groups into somewhat larger ones.
With realisation of his mortality, man felt the
need to hand on his experience to his descendants — and he began to create
tradition. Only then did the backbone of civilisation begin to form. Fireside.
domestic animals, salt, corngrowing would all have gone for nothing, availing
nothing to create permanent communities had not tradition emerged, with its
prerequisites of permanence and stability, (relative) density of population and
security. Without these conditions community life can only be short-lived, with
insufficient time to develop and method in its system.
Density of population, permanence and stability
of relations are in great measure dependent on material conditions of
existence. At an extremely primitive level, at the very beginning of any kind
of civilisation, the struggle for existence was confined to the material, since
another was as yet unknown; it was a struggle exclusively for food. The
character and possibilities of this struggle depended at the beginning on the
same three groups of factors on which they have uniformly depended since,
namely on production, on communications and on control of nature, space and
time.
Until the end of the nineteenth century
prehistoric economy was believed to have been a trichotomy, an immutable
sequence of hunting, pastoralism and agriculture. It was assumed at the same
time that a certain order occured in the invention of tools, related to these
"economic states". Attempts to define this inventive order —allegedly
everywhere the same—produced a number of manyvolumed works, boldly put together
on the meditative principle and,'in this branch of knowledge, without value.
Each of these attempts may be turned upside down and the meaning remains the
same. In different parts of the world the order could differ. Economic
trichotomy was called in question in 1896 by E. Hahn in his Die Haustiere und
ihre Beziehungen zur Wirtschaft des Menschen (it ,may be noted parenthetically
that he deduced instead proto-religious factors in animal-rearing), and may be
said to have been overthrown in 1907 when F. Goldstein printed an essay Die
soziale Dreistufentheorie in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaft. On this
occasion German science led the way.
Investigation among primitive peoples also
shows only too clearly that hunting need not come first. It is possible to pass
to hunting from pastoralism and even from agriculture, and also not to have a
hunting period in one's past at all. For example African negroes were never
hunters and never engaged in animal-rearing on any scale, but there is no negro
country where hoe-agriculture is not practised. On the other hand Indians, the
world's greatest hunters, do not think of keeping cattle. Numerous wild herds
take refuge in winter in forests inhabited by Redskins (except on the Brazilian
coast), but the Indian draws no conclusions.[199]
And those Indian peoples who allowed themselves to be persuaded into
agriculture did not pass through a previous pastoral stage. Most curious of all
that among some tribes the dendrophagous tradition was lost, so that the
.Indians of Nebraska learnt about fruit again from missionaries.[200]
Indians do not want to be herdsmen, Africans on
the other hand are largely prevented by the-tse fly. Thus for example there are
no cattle at all in the Lake Rukwa area, among the Wasagara people, among the
Wuka, where hens and dogs barely survive. It is not permitted to take a team of
horses from the British settlements to the neighbouring "independent"
territories, to prevent the reimportation of cattle plague. And what this
plague can mean there was shown among the Masai, a pastoral people of
proto-Semitic origin, when "dying of hunger on the plains, leaving the
weak and the children a prey to fate, they sold themselves into captivity among
the neighbouring settled tribes".[201]
They were unable to carry on cattle-breeding and had ceased to be
dendrophagous. For negro Africa is becoming deforested. Once felled, the
forests do not renew themselves, and negroes do not plant trees, while missionary
efforts to reafforest with European seeds have only local importance. "The
time will come when the whole of East and Central Africa, following the example
of the South, will be without a scrap of real forest".[202]
Dendrophagy has been losing ground for long centuries, and with rare exceptions
has ceased to exist.
Moreover negroes know nothing of fishing, of
which there is a good deal among Indians. Formerly the Canadians relied on it
for their existence, and even now it is a favourite occupation of Brazilians.[203]
But the "purest fishing cultures" are to be found in the fjords of
North-West America and at the southernmost limit of humanity, in Terra del
Fuego.[204] In the
Banca Islands, whole tribes live crowded on to boats, not recognising land at
all and living exclusively on fish.[205]
Fishing cannot well be linked with pastoralism
or agriculture. One of the first Norwegian settl&rs in Iceland. Floki
(about 900 A.D.) found in his bay such a plentitude of fish that his men,
absorbed in fishing, forgot about haymaking and in winter their cattle died.[206]
Something of the same kind happens to the Yakuts in certain parts of their
territories.[207]
While fishing is found at all levels of
civilised development from the most primitive to the highest, a low level of
development is characteristic of hunting peoples, because hunting does not
permit of any great density of population. Thus transition from dendrophagy to
hunting did not benefit any people. It became tantamount to the spiking of
civilisation. The pygmies among whom dendrophagy did not die out, but whose
chief means of livelihood became hunting. have retreated everywhere before the
negroes, withdrawing into marshy forests on plains.[208]
And the Indians of North America die out in their reservations where nobody
disturbs them, because for a growing population they have too little space and
too few animals. Hunters need large areas, otherwise they destroy each other.
Agriculture may be adopted at a high level of
civilised development. It is an error to ascribe to agriculture some basic
superiority in this respect, as if a raising of the level of civilisation
automatically followed from it. At very low levels the fruits of herbs are
collected, which represents the genesis of agriculture. Flour paste and flat
cake have been known since the ancient epochs of pre-history, while bread
appeared only some two thousand years ago.[209]
Nor is the agriculturist always settled for good. In warmer lands, cultivation
for a single year, or rather for three to four months is known. In difficult years,
nomads decide on casual tilling and abandon the ground after the harvest. The
Tartars of Southern Russia did not cultivate the same piece of land for longer
than two years. Nor does the communal three-strip field "always and
necessarily lead to a finally fixed and firmly settled mode of existence";
for example. the Finno-Ugrian tribes round Ula transfer the whole village when
the ground is exhausted.[210] On the highest level of agricultural
development, there are among the Germans specialists who are ever wandering
through the world after fresh fields, changing their place of residence every
few years; and these are excellent agriculturalists. for whom owners of empty
spaces compete. Apparently this profession is also beginning to emerge in
Poland.
Let us also discard the widespread belief in
three basic levels of civilisation corresponding to three basic agricultural
implements. hoe, wooden plough and plough.
The introduction of English ploughs to Russian villages achieved
nothing. In Africa the hoe suffices to produce several dozen kinds of bananas
where the plough would fail. Even the primitive Wakami tribes engage in
cultivation of the soil, tilling it a little with a hoe of their own
manufacture and channelling water from neighbouring streams. In the Konde
territory there is noticeably careful cultivation of the banana, as well as of
little maize, sweet potatoes and beans.[211]
A favourite dish of the Rhodesian Bantus is a maize gruel with unsalted water,
known as naima.[212]
If cultivation with the hoe is to be regarded
as something inferior —it nevertheless borders on gardening. It is worth becoming acquainted with
accounts of hoe cultivation in China, Japan, even in the southern part of Asia
Minor; they reveal miracles of foresight, thrift and at the same time unusual
professional intelligence. Are we to refuse the Chinese a high level of
civilisation because they have been content until now with the hoe?
In any case among the Slavs, for example, the
wooden plough, in the Polish socha, was the oldest tool for tilling: the
improved plough called radio is younger and youngest of all the normal plough
(at first a wheel). But there might be no wooden plough at all; it did not
exist among the southern Slavs, among the Czechs or Slovaks; in Poland all old
wooden tilling tools, even ploughs. are called socha; the true wooden plough
was known only east of the Vistula.[213]
It is also a mistake to imagine that corn
production was the joyful news of a certain" moment in history. In Japan
bread-eating was not at all common, even at the end of the nineteenth century,
although potatoes were already known.[214]
Recourse was had to grain only in case of a shortage of other food, in the last
resort. Even when the use of grain i.e. the milling, preparing and baking of
bread had already been learnt, corn was long a secondary foodstuff, because of
the great difficulty of accustoming the human organism to the diet. Corn is a
poison to which one must become accustomed.
The northern Yakuts complain of heartburn from
flour, while "not long ago large numbers of the southern Yakuts were
adversely affected by flour". Sieroszewski relates that during his twelve
years among the Yakuts he did not eat bread for long periods, and that once a
"barley loaf, eaten in the absence of other food in large quantities
during a journey, acted upon me like poison. Kolyma Cossacs, feeding of
necessity on what the post-stages give them, often get terrible pains from
bread, so that they fall from their horses". Yakut dogs cannot be
persuaded to eat bread.[215]
Negroes in the Mkushi basin in Africa also dislike bread.[216]
And a curious thing happened with grain from the Ukraine brought to the Ussuri
country for seed. After a few years it produced poisonous wheat, from which
so-called "drunken-bread" resulted.[217]
Man became accustomed to bread under pressure of necessity.
Thus agriculture alone does not raise man,
other factors must operate. No agricultural product and no agricultural
implement offers a pledge of higher development, which comes from elsewhere,
but may be shared by agriculture. The error lies in taking effect for cause.
Moreover the entire prehistory of production explains nothing about the
emergence of the various methods of communal life. Let us pass to the second
factor in economic development. that is to the question of communications.
Every degree of population density, every kind
and degree of wellbeing, every stage of communal life has a necessary minimum
of communications, below which it cannot subsist. A degree of communications
which does not correspond to the given level must hamper development and in the
end may cause not merely stagnation but even retreat.
It has been generally accepted that the use of
waterways is older than that of roads. But to a primitive man, a river of any
size represents the limits of the accessible world. When the Sudan tribes
pushed southwards, their journey was halted by the Congo.[218]
Tribes in the virgin forests of the Amazon basin do not know boats.[219]
The hollowing out of the most primitive boat requires efficient and strong
tools, and the discovery of the hollowed trunk marked an epoch. It is used on
the Brazilian rivers, in Eastern Ecuador, in Central Africa, in Rhodesia, and
among the Yakuts and Esquimoes. Bark, sealskin may be substituted for wood.[220]
And in Lithuania and Ruthenia have we not travelled in the classical
tree-trunk, known affectionately as duszogubka (because sailing in her one may
easily lose one's life). Even today it is still possible to sail in a
hollowed-out willow log on the lower Wislok.[221]
The discovery of the raft on floats, that is on
inflated skins. was a great advance: they are still used on the Euphrates, on
the rivers of Bokhara, Turkestan, Darvaz.[222]
What power river shipping gave is shown by two examples: the Varangians
conquered the eastern Slavs because they possessed sail-boats, and later the
Muscovites conquered Siberia thanks to their river-craft, despite its
primitiveness. For the Siberian peoples had no idea that it was possible to
sail on a river. The Yakuts relate how the first boat they ever saw came with
the Russians. Rivers could only serve as landmarks to those travelling
alongside the water; but there is no water transport at the beginning of any
civilisation.
Moreover, water was an element long neglected
by man. It may be said in parenthesis that laundry is older than washing of the
body. Various Brazilian Indians, Ainos, Algerian Tuaregs never wash. Yakuts who
wash do so rarely, and do not take baths at all. Koreans wear snowy garments on
bodies which are perpetually dirty.[223]
And the average Slav countryman cares more for the cleanliness of his clothing
than of his body.[224]
*Let us pass to land locomotion. It began with
the riding of all domesticated animals, but only the horse and camel offered
speed. But the horse became widespread relatively late, and the range of
draught cattle is considerably more extensive to this day. The oldest vehicle
is the limber, then the tumbrel from which the sledge emerged. Now limbers are
known as far as the Philippines, tumbrels in Siam, sledges in Indo-China.[225]
Thus they are unconnected with a snowy winter. In the mountains of southern
Bulgaria and north-east Serbia there are districts where sledges, noi carts,
are used for farm-work, even in summer.[226]
The discovery of the wheel marked an epoch.[227]
At first they were solid. To this day
in Anatolia they are solid and convex like the Greek disc, and revolve with the
axis. In Mongolia they are "put together out of six pieces of roughly hewn
wood, transfixed by large nails". Until very recent times, wheels with spokes
were unknown in Brazil. Let us add that in Manchuria wheels are very low, while
in the Amu-Darya basin they are two metres high. The primitive cart had two
wheels. It survives now at the southern and northern ends of Slav territory.[228]
In old German and Dutch drawings, two-wheeled carts are to be seen drawn by a
sigle horse: in Norway four wheels make a luxurious equipage; in Italy and
Portugal the two-wheeled cart is used almost exclusively for carrying loads.
Throughout Asia and in South America the two-wheeled cart still has no rivals.
In Parana carts were not known at all before Poles arrived and so the Cracow
type was adopted. In the Brazilian Contestado nobody knows about carts, while
the Congo negroes leamt about the wheel only from European arrivals and did not
have even wheel-barrows of their own. The inhabitants of Sumatra are in similar
plight. In the whole of Tibet there is only one cart. the sacred one used on
great feasts to transport the god Matray. The Dalai-Lama has no carriage, but
is content with a litter.[229]
Among the Buryats the cart was unknown until about 1830. Then at Seleginsk in
Transbaikal one of the Byestuzhev brothers, exiled as a Decabrist, began to
manufacture carts of his own design, with shafts and two wheels, "which
are still in use".[230]
The more primitive the road and cart, the more
numerous the team. In Manchuria five or seven horses or mules draw the cart;
in Mesopotamia the so-called carbela is pulled
by four horses in a row; in Central Asia the strongest animals, buffaloes and
yaks are used for haulage; in Central Africa four donkeys; among the Boers, up
to forty cows to a cart; in Brazil a dozen or more oxen;
in the Argentine, in Ituzaingo the cart is
drawn by eight to twelve mules, horses or steers; in the Paraguayan prairie by
six to ten oxen;[231]
only in Puerto Rico by a modest pair of powerful Andalusian oxen. Even today in
Rhodesia they harness six pairs of oxen to four-wheeled carts, and several
pairs of mules in towns; three pairs of oxen is an unusual team.[232]
In Slavonia also, and in Bosnia two to four pairs of oxen are harnessed to one
cart.[233]
Without communications, production is merely
the satisfaction of hunger. When the most primitive arba opens the way to the
conveyance of goods, exchange of production begins, and from it in time real
trade emerges. Societies which achieve good communications quickly turn into
differentiated societies. But even very advanced communications do not alter
the essential character of a system of communal life, which may remain the same
with a six-piece wheel and a locomotive: improved communications merely raise
the level of a given civilisation—as do developing production and the
inventions required for this. So far in our arguments we have not come upon
traces of the causes which bring about the variety of civilisations. We have
been moving inside the circle of first beginnings common to all civilisations.
What is the position when in the light of these beginnings, we examine the
conquest of nature, space and time?
The initial step was fire, frontier fires the
first delimitation of space and the measurement of an area the time needed to
circle round it, as may bs seen in the customs and surviving traditions of old
Iceland. There a new settler was allowed to take as much land as he could manage
to "consecrate with fire" in one day: a woman, as much as she could
encircle on a summer day from sunrise to sunset with a two-year-old and
well-fed heifer.[234]
The old Polish ujazd indicated the area which could be ridden round in ons day.
Distance is everywhere measured by time—a day's travel, two "suns"
(among the Indians)—a habit which survives at high levels of civilisation,
although dating from its very beginnings.
It is necessary to distinguish between
awareness of space and its conquest. Man became aware of space as he wandered
after animals, leading a parasitical existence of passive submission to their
direction and guidance, but it was the herdsman, camping deliberately of his
own will, who began the conquest of space. In the beginnings of civilisation
there were nevertheless only rudiments of an active relation of man to space.
Without need born of hunger, this relation
might never have become active. On this point we have frightful indications
from the hot zones. What worried the saintly Father Beyzym in Madagascar was
the "Malagasy, seated on the ground, warming himself in the sun and
capable of sitting three, four or five hours completely immobile".[235]
Which pales before Captain Lepecki's example from Central Brazil:
"I only learned how primitive human life
can be in the forests of the Contestado. A Caingang (an Indian), when in
possession of stores of food, is able, without moving from the spot, to spend a
number of days literally in one place, satisfying all his needs, including
natural ones. in the space of a square metre.
Only hunger obliges him to leave the spot and think of fresh
stores."[236]
This is the true "state of nature".
Do not let us be surprised that primitive man is in no hurry to move out into
space where so many dangers lie in wait for him. Fortune favours those whom
animals lead into the world, under the continuing protection of the instinct by
which animals know how to choose their paths purposefully. But man was not
everywhere able to join herds with famales in milk. And nature herself provides
no means for the conquest of space, until man gains some measure of control of
nature herself. And nature herself is more hindrance than help. So the mastery
of space remains closely linked with the subjugation of nature, which however
can only be clearly recognised after the beginnings of civilisation have been
experienced; at low levels there are few opportunities to catch expressly this
connection.
On the other hand, nature provides clear
measurements of time and time was long the only measure of distance. The
quarters of the moon so force themselves upon the senses that they were noticed
and made use of for the measurement of time even on the lowest levels of
community life. The negroes of the Congo not only count months from one full moon
to the next, but are able to indicate the time of day from the position of the
sun in the sky. And so it is everywhere. But the same negroes are unaware of
the number of full moons or of rainy seasons they have seen. "They never
give themselves the trouble of counting them when it is a question of the age
of a child or of their own".[237]
Awareness of the year is reached by plain, practical empiricism—for example,
the Mongols count how often the grass has grown. A man asked how old he is,
replies how many grasses he has.[238]
Here time and its periods are being counted: which is already a superior level.
If natural phenomena in a given country offer
cycles longer than the year, awareness of longer periods also may emerge
without intellectual effort, by the most obvious empiricism. In the Brazilian
forests live the so-called cabocio, famed among travellers as a mixture of
three races, white, red and black, of whom it has been said that
"replacement of Indian tribes by the half-civilised cabocio has not
advanced the civilisation of those parts one step". Now they have a cycle
reckoning, because nature provides them with it. that is to say, a plant grows
there which "flowers once in thirty years and then immediately afterwards
dies and withers. Vast areas of forest are then liable to fires during which
all undergrowth is burnt up, masses of animals perish and many cabocio
plantations are spoiled. The withering of the tacuara is such a great event in
the jungle that the elders divide years into periods from one fire to the next.
In the forests it is said that this or that happened before the last burning of
the tacuara, or the one before that".[239]
In all this there is nothing which could not be
linked with the beginnings of any civilisation. Differentiation between
civilisations, their plurality and manifoldness will only become comprehensible
when we begin to examine the relation of man not to food nor the manner of its
acquisition, not to nature, space, not even to communications—but to man, the
relations between men in their communities.
A statement of certain facts hitherto unnoticed or, if noticed, not taken into account, will serve as starting-point in our investigation of the relation of man to men. First of all, the manifestations of community life which create family (and marriage), property and inheritance law are always interpenetrating. They remain in ceaseless and close association, dependent on each other in turn at every step, exercising a constant reciprocal influence, explaining each other at the same time. It is impossible to consider one of them in relation to civilisation without touching the others. Because of the exceptionally close connection between these departments of law they may, or rather ought to be considered as a separate group which we shall call the triple law. As we shall see differentiation between civilisations begins with ths diversity of the triple law.
The investigation will, in the nature of
things, be set primarily against the background of the clan system. It is
generally thought that this system was always and everywhere uniform, although
the differences are considerable and must cause more than one change in views
hitherto obtaining. I distinguish five types of clan system: primitive,
despotic, clan partnership, the clan community and groupings which make
possible usufructs. These are novelties which I shall explain at once at the
beginning of the chapter.
In addition I deny that a matriarchate ever
existed. I know that here I am in conflict with all the authorities, that there
is no ethnologist who does not appeal to matriarchy. Alleged manifestations of
matriarchy will be dealt with directly in the course of discussion. Similarly,
I do not recognise totemism. Studying
stages in the development of many kinds of civilisation, from (he primitive
beginnings common to all to the most advanced examples of differentiation on
the higher levels, I have nowhere encountered any evidence of totemism or
matriarchy, and have accordingly excluded them from the scientific apparatus.
How rooted these errors have become can be seen
from the presence in the new edition of Deniker of the "totemist
clan" while Fritz Graebner cannot do without "matriarchal
culture" although he restricts the seniority of matriarchy over universal
patriarchalism to very rare instances.[240]
Moret and Davy take a step' backwards, apparently unable to proceed without the
aid of totemism and matriarchy.[241] The renowned Wilhelm Wundt. in his
Voelkerpsychologie, regards totemism as a separate phase in universal
development.[242] Only
Edward Meyer flatly denies meaning to matriarchy, as well as to all deductions
of religion from totemism or the cult of the dead, and every kind of
"comparative mythology".[243]
I should, however, like to anticipate
misunderstandings in another field. For exact presentation of the subject is
frustrated at every step by the indeterminate meaning of the expressions
denoting human associations. Real anarchy has reigned in the use of the terms
family, clan, tribe, generation, stock, horde, people, nation, etc. When
reading new scientific works one really does not know whether for example the
Lencisi (Leczycanie) are a stock, a people, a tribe or a generation. And
richness of language does not consist in speaking and writing chaotically.
Things are no better abroad. In the same author on one and the same page
confusion may be complete because of a lack of precision in use of the
expressions clan, tribe, phratry, class, family, house. Since in scientific
discussion vocabulary must be precise if anarchy is to be avoided, without
wishing to impose them upon anyone, I shall define the meaning which the
following expressions have in my works: family—parents and children together;
clan—association of families deriving from a common ancestor; tribe—association
of related clans deriving from a common ancestor. From related tribes the
people emerge. From peoples the nation may emerge, but only historically.
Ethnologically related peoples make up the stock (e.g. Slav stock), regardless
of whether history makes a nation or nations of them, which is quite
unnecessary for the creation of stocks. Between peoples and the stock them may,
but need not be, a rung of nations.
I use the expression generation solely to
designate collectively persons bearing the same genealogical degree of
relationship to a common ancestor.
Related stocks form races (e.g. the
Indo-European). (The author gives also three more terms, but as they are not
used in this book we abstain from translating them into English. The
Translators.)
The oldest type of organisation based on the
clan was described in the section on oldest associations in the previous
chapter. But the shortlived primitive clan ended with the death of its
protoplast, founder, sole possessor and despotic ruler. Changes must have taken
place and a second type arose.
A man whose father died acquired the full
rights of fatherhood, becoming possessor and ruler of his descendants and their
property. In the language of today, on his fathefs death a son became
personally and materially free. Each son became with equal right possessor of
his descendants, that is of the branch of the family founded by him and of its
assets. Whether the branches of the family split up or continued their
husbandry in the same way as before the death of their protoplast depended on
circumstances, in the first place on the numerical strength of the clan. The
collection of persons and property in one place could not, under such primitive
conditions, endure for long; a too numerous clan would be under pressure to
produce emigrants who would found a new clan. But for a certain time (sometimes
very long) all the sons of the protoplast farmed together.
In this period of the history of the clan, its
property was divided into as many parts as there were sons of the protoplast.
Each of them was the individual owner of his share, as the individual owner of
everything was their father. In the next generation(as the sons of the
protoplast died off and his grandsons became free), there plight be a dozen or
more of these shares, and conditions and circumstances might incline their
owners not to go different ways and not to found separate farms. There then emergss a combine of individual
owners, the clan partnership.
Farming in partnership nevertheless required a
common head. The joint owners, that is the heads of the different branches, of
the clan, handed over their possessions to the management of the oldest
brother, who thus became elder among his kin, with; rights restricted by
comparison with those of the protoplast, for the elder was only the overseer of
everything, not the owner.
I refer here to the discovery made by a Polish
scholar, Professor Lotar Dargun, of Cracow, forty-five years ago. Going against
generally accepted opinion, he held that private, not collective property was
the more primitive. According to him even the Haiisgemeiiischaften could have
been made up of separate properties belonging to families and not to the whole
clan. even although all kinsfolk lived together.[244]
It seems that Wuridt'accepted Dargun's view when he'wrote that in fact only
private property is property in the strict sense of the term, while collective:
property is a "transitory product'*, arising from economic necessity, but
leading again to personal property.[245]
This was a quite unnecessary complication, as we shall see more plainly below;
Put simply, the economic resources shared by the kindred consisted of pooled
personal property. This can now be verified by a quite different. independent
line of approach—and let us hope that it will not have to be
"discovered" a third time.
Since there is no corner of the earth where the
clan system does not exist or has not existed, its forms repeat themselves in
every part of the world. For instance, the Yugoslav zadruga is none other than
a clan partnership. In the land register the property of the "clan of
Petar Petrovic" would be entered; after his death it would be entered as
the property of his sons clans, of Zhivko. Lazo and Yovan Petrovid who, working
together, form a partnership of three owners.[246]
We find a classic example of the same kind of combination in the Fiji
archipelago, where houses owned by brothers are fenced together, forming the
wawula. In ancient times the early Romans formed clan partnerships, which long
survived among the Georgians (Strabo's Iberians) in the Caucasus.[247]
In India/these ancient partnerships still exist.[248]
The elder, director and overseer of a
partnership of kindred, had not a few opportunities to widen and abuse his
authority. It would also be impossible to ascribe to ancestors in possession of
the power of overseeing a. strict distinction between property and management.
Many circumstances made it easier for an elder to restore the previous
position, so that. he became sole possessor of everything. An illegal state of
affairs was tolerated, and finally recognised as legal This return was made
easier by the shortness of the average life, the, high death-rate, particularly
among children and the considerable number of minors with property rights they
could not exercise. The more, difficult the conditions and fortunes of the
clan, the more calculated they were to reinforce the authority of the elder;
while the poorer the clan, the more important it was to each individual to be
in the elder's favour. Uncertainty of the morrow increased still further the
need for authority, making it the easier for an elder to exploit his kinsfolk
and subject them to himself as his property.
Things assuredly happened so with the majority
of clans, but not necessarily with all.
An elder might be honourable, or it might also happen that a would-be
despot and his descendants were sent into enforced emigration. Nevertheless
there arrived a third type of clan organisation in which everything was the
personal, although illegal, property of the elder. We shall call this type
despotism. There are plenty of examples to this day among polygamous Arabs in
Asia and Africa; their sheik, oldest in years of the oldest generation of the
clan, has absolute power over all.[249]
Yet another, fourth, type emerged. Clan
partners granted each other reciprocal rights to the use of their property. The
more numerous clans were particularly inclined to this arrangement.
Such undivided co-ownership is found until today
(brothers not sharing out). Only this type deserves the name clan community,
which is improperly applied to all kinds of arrangements among kindred. We have
them at present in Australia and in the Congo as well as alongside partnerships
in India.[250]
A variant of this clan community permitted the
granting of property rights to individuals temporarily and for a restricted
space. In Sumatra the lands of the clan (marga) are divided up into such
individual temporary usufructs.[251]
Here also belongs the North-Asian mir, grafted in the eighteenth century on to
Muscovy. and truly inviting a newer study than that of Haxthausen (184752).
This is the fifth type of clan organisation known to me.
How many types were (perhaps are) there that
remain unknown? In principle, the number is not limited; those unsuited for
development disappear after a brief existence. On the other hand, the greater
the variety of clan organisations on a certain territory, the smaller the
likelihood of the emergence of a more significant organisation.
I speak of five types of clan organisation,
relying in information supplied; I employ the number only for this reason. If
other investigators raise it to six or more, I am very ready to take account of
the fact.
In so far as the present stage of research
makes judgment possible, therefore, the clan was differentiated in five
ways. The primitive type constantly
renewed itself thanks to voluntary or enforced emigrations arising from
over-population, exhaustion of feeding-stuffs or from any of a great variety of
circumstances. Anybody settling with his descendants on fresh ground formed a
new clan there, based on the primitive principle, on the unrestricted
individual ownership of the founder and protoplast. Every such emigrant became
a new primogenitor. The clan always remained an association of related families
under a common ruler, and all five types remained vital.
Wherever a primogenitor departed this world,
the question of the succession arose. Despots ensured it to their sons
according to the double principle of primogeniture or minority. Examples of minority are to be found in
Europe in our own times. Among the Friesians, older brothers go as labourers to
the youngest. It is the same in Brittany in the de Rohan duchy, in Germany in
Pfirdt manorlands, in Brabant in the Grimberghe area and in Upper Alsace. In England the custom is known as tenure in
borough-English. In other parts of the world, it survives among the Mrus in the
hilly country of Arawak and in New Zealand. Among the Mongols, the youngest son
is called utdzhgin, i.e. guardian of the hearth, for this reason. Among the
Tartars the youngest takes the hut. since his elders have already gone out into
the world with their shares of the herds.
Among the Brazilian Indians, ownership of the hut falls to the son
married first; movable goods are divided equally.[252]
The Mongolian custom also exists among the northern Turanians in Siberia, and
among the "multi-racial" Yugrians on the westernmost edge of the
Turanian world, whence it passed to the Novgorod Russkaya Pravda.[253]
In the clan partnerships and communities things
were entirely different. In these a hierarchy of the generations emerged, with
authority belonging first to all members of the first generation (sons of the
protoplast) in order of birth, then to all members of the second generation
(grandsons of the protoplast) in the same order as their fathers; thereafter to
all members of the generation of great-grandchildren, again according to the
hierarchy of their grand-parents. This is the seniority of the clan, which does
not give authority to the oldest in years, as is erroneously supposed.
The hierarchy of the clan partnership and
community is a hierarchy of the generations regardless of the age of the
individual. The elder's grandsons by his eldest son are as a rule older than
the youngest of his own children, yet the grandsons will be subject to the
youngest of their uncles, even if the latter is only a lad. A grown-up nephew
might have an uncle a baby in arms, but always. the uncle takes precedence over
the nephew. For that uncle will.. upon the death of his father (the nephew*s
grandfather) become a. free co-owner of the partnership or community, whereas
the nephew will still continue the property of his father (his uncle's
brother).
All members of the clan, including every child,
know th&ir place in the hierarchy exactly. When they learned to count,
every. member of the clan knew what number he held in the order of probability
of his becoming elder. The death of any one advanced on rung all those standing
below in the clan ladder.
Kubary discovered a curious example of this
hierarchy in Micronesia. At the head of the clan (blay) stands the obokul and
his wife/followed by all the clansmen in ordered hierarchy so that upon the
death of an obokul each goes up a place. Kubary supposed that the order was one
of age, but age does not account for the step up: if age were decisive, nothing
could ever change, because age relationships remain the same. It is also
improbable that the Micronesians know their age in years, when today in Europe
in the villages people rarely know their age exactly. On the other hand, the
matter is easily explicable as an ordered hierarchy of kindred in which it is
enough if each knows who is immediately before and after him for the whole
hierarchical chain to be firmly established.
In the Palau archipelago the same Kubary found several blay arranged
hierarchically.[254]
Among historic examples, very striking is the
hierarchy among the Rurik clan, strictly one of generation (Russia was the
clandynasty's common wealth, divided into usufructs allocated hierarchically in
accordance with their profitability).[255]
Wundt, unable to make anything of this, invoked the "so-called Malayan
Verwandschaftssystem", expressed surprise and explained everything on the
grounds that in the Sippe both father and mother were unknown.[256]
One of the innumerable instances of how. with the help of learning, a simple
thing can be made complicated.
Evidence for a hierarchy of the generations
lies in the very wide meaning of the expressions "brother" and
"father". Among peoples who adhered to the clan system for a long
period, even today the expression "brother" refers to members of the
same generation. Among the Ruriks, it was in this way that "brother"
was understood, while members of the older generation (even though younger in
years) were called "fathers".
People often undertook by treaty to hold somebody as "father"
or "brother". And in Poland, especially in the east, everybody has
numerous "brothers" and "sisters", which often denotes a
distant relationship, not in any way binding (to indicate descent from the same
parents, the word "bom" must be added). A "brother" is a member of the same generation.
Yakut clansmen (kargen) call an elder and a
younger brother differently and divide all their kin into older and younger.
Sieroszewski explains this by the longevity of the family, but it is in fact a
simple manifestation of the hierarchy of the generations. The
"brothers" are merely members of the same generation.[257]
The inheritance law of the Congo negroes provides a classic example of hierachy
according to generation: upon the death of the father not his descendants, but
his brother or the eldest son of his eldest sister inherit,[258]
just as with the Ruriks. In the Congo, "after the death of a king or
chief, his brother or sister's son inherits, and only in the absence of
brothers and sisters does his eldest son inherit.[259]
Hierarchy according to generation decides.
Travellers have sometimes been surprised by the
fact that peoples at low levels of civilisation distinguish numerous degrees of
relationship, of a kind which we disregard. This is to be explained by
combinations of older and younger generations not in accordance with age, but
according to an accepted hierarchical system. These relationships became looser
and finally disappeared as the clan system disintegrated either through
disappearance into the tribe or through the emancipation of the family.
Here opens one of the most far-reaching of
historico-sociological problems. Between the level of the clan and that of the
tribe events follow one of three courses: normal development from smaller to
larger associations, an abnormal halt at the clan level or an abnormal,
over-rapid advance to the tribe. In Ruthenia, tribes emerged before the clan
system was fully formed. Among the Jews of Palestine clans declined before the
twelve tribes. But ths most significant instance of strict tribal organisation
is to be found in the pile settlement communities. Settlements may contain a
single dwelling-house raised on piles, but so large that it can accommodate the
entire tribe. In New Guinea, for example, such houses have 100-200 inhabitants,
and contain a mass of small rooms with separate entrances, although sometimes
with a communal hearth.[260]
Malayans live in houses one hundred feet long and twenty to twenty-five feet
wide.[261] In
Sumatra, the Battak carry the length of their houses to 600 feet. The whole of
one side is taken up by the men's sleeping quarters, from which 40-50 doors
lead to the other half, divided onto the same number of little rooms with
hearts for the women and children of each couple separately[262]
(and so monogamy).
Among the Bororo tribes in the Matto Grosso of
Brazil there are evidently different systems among the different tribes. A. Tonelli describes on one occasion an
extensive structure in which there were as many hearths as families living
there. In another place he saw, only men had a communal house during the day;
the married men left at night for the huts of
their wives, these huts being separate, every man erecting one for his wife.[263]
How important it would be if it proved possible to ascertain whether one of
these systems takes over from the other, whether these tribes achieve a higher
organisation, whether and to what extent there is a likelihood of their
becoming a people?
In the seventeenth century it was remarked that
the Canadian Hurons bent and tied together two rows of young trees, arid then
covered them with oak or spruce bark, so that they formed enormous huts for
twenty and more families, each containing a number of hearths.[264]
This is premature tribal organisation. In these communities the clan had not
fully developed its cultural potentialities when it gave way to tribal
organisation.
Normal in type is the blay of the Palau
archipelago referred to above, several of which join in one association while
preserving their own authorities, each blay its own obokul. The status of the latter reflects the
hierarchy of the blays they represent.[265]
For all such blays go back to brothers.
The normal development of the tribe from clans
can be observed in all parts of the world. For example, Afghan tribes permit
clans a wide autonomy.[266]
The uledi (tribes) of nomads in ths Western Sahara provide similar example.[267]
On the other hand tha Paraguayan Lenguas Indians are divided into "clans
numbering from twenty to 100 persons", camping separately under chiefs of
their own clan, while above them stands the great chieftan of the whole tribe.[268]
In the very primitive conditions of the Fijian
archipelago there was even a supra-tribal association. From a few yavashi there
arose the matagnale, an association of several clans descending from
"brothers", and so a tribe, even if not numerous. Such associations formed the village,
kora. which is "all in some degree related". Sometimes koras unite,
which means that a people exists.[269]
Natural settlement took place everywhere
according to ties of blood. The family grew into the clan of lineally related
families living and working together on lands as extensive as possible. Thus
originally settlement and clans were the same thing. But clans were not everywhere able to extend their possessions
as need required; some lands were less suitable and there are also kinds of
husbandry which require not a large area but more numerous hands. When
population increased more rapidly than reserves of land, a division of clans
frequently resulted, even within the same settlement.
Something similar to the Fijian yavashi in a
single kora is to be observed among the Berber peoples. In Mauretania, the
Riffs lead a typical tribal existence. Families produce the dzhara, clan, and a
few of these together form the larger grouping of the kabila, tribe. Authority
rests with the assembly of all the elders of the different clans.[270]
Further to the east in the mountains of Algsria, in the remnants of its former
domains, lives a people calling themselves Kabyles. and so simply
"co-tribesmen". There
numerous clans are crowded into one settlement; each lives in its karuba or
district under its own elder (tamen), and related karubas associated in the
taddert form the village or township. All the inhabitants descend from a common
ancestor and being of the same descent, are equal to each other; there are no
social classes determined by birth. The entire taddert may consist of a single
clan only, which is the case in small settlements—and so the taddert cannot be
regarded as a tribe, even where it contains two or three clans; while the
karubas must be regarded as branches of a larger clan. Only the association of
related tadderts forms a tribe, known as a rule by a patronymic. Such tribes
sometimes fought each other, and chose leaders for war. Tribes which recognised
each other as being closer by blood came together in larger communities
indicated by separate names: which is the level at which peoples are organised.[271]
Further to the south, in the oases of the
French Sahara the Mozabite Berbers, extremist adherents of the Shia sect, have
isolated themselves for religious reasons. In their townships several clans
also come under the authority of mokadem the frequent combination of two clans
is headed by the kebar and most commonly there are two kebars in one town. The
townspeople become a tribe, or even two tribes; civil wars are not unknown,
with the defeated tribe quitting its birthplace and founding a new town.[272]
On the other hand, there were alliances between towns and temporary ties, but
never anything permanent. Even five Mozabite towns situated close together have
not entered into association.[273]
And yet in antiquity the Berbers created states, and Jughurta was a Berber
ruler.
The tribal system is not attained everywhere,
and there are cases where the clan system is so prolonged that the state is
formed from it directly. In Central
Asia the state of Kandzut consists of 126 villages "whose inhabitants
represent as many distinct clans".[274]
The clan system also endures undisturbed in China. The Chinese peasant still
does not own personal property while his father lives. "Boundary stones in
the fields carry the name of the clan, not the name of an individual".
"In China the state is a great family, the family a little state". It
is a patriarchal organisation "unchanged to this day from pre-historic
times".[275] The clan
system lasted a long time in Poland, a strangely short time in Ruthenia; among
the Yugoslavs the zadruga, on which an abundant scientific literature exists,
flourished until recently.
The formation of tribes from clans thus took
place in various ways. Sometimes the clan lost nothing of its compactness,
sometimes it melted and disappeared into the tribe. This neglect of the clan in
favour of the tribe obviously proved the worse for the tribe, reducing its
resistance and defences against the outer world. Over-short duration of the
clan system brought in its train results no less undesirable than prolongation
of clan rule.
The other way in which the clan system declined
was through the emancipation of the family, which was feasible where there was
a considerable density of population and a higher standard of well-being. The
depopulation of Poland after the Mongol invasions and her extraordinary
impoverishment re-established a clan system already disintegrating. In the same
way Yugoslavia, full of its zadrugi, suffered from the Turkish invaders, the
south growing poorer and poorer and steadily declining in population. The
family can survive without the clan only in favourable conditions. It
disappeared in ancient times in favour of the clan because of unfavourable
living conditions, reappearing again when conditions improved. But it did not
everywhere become emancipated and when it did, the emancipation assumed various
forms and degrees. Unfortunately, ethnology possesses no materials at all in
this field. History can only say that it is so, but we have as yet nothing to
account for the existing state of things.
In the emancipated family there must have grown
up a changed hierarchy of relationships, and so also a new hierarchy of
inheritance. This field is unfortunately totally neglected by travellers. In
the Christian communities of Europe canon law came to exert a great influence.
(A separate aspect of this matter is testamentary law, in principle superior to
the hierarchy of inheritance among relatives.) Emancipation of the family
hastened the development of the law of inheritance everywhere. Also linked with
the history of family emancipation, to which it made an important contribution,
is the dowry.
History shows that total emancipation of the
family only occurs in monogamous communities. Monogamy itself is not decisive,
and instances have been given of the clan system and monogamy subsisting
together. But only the monogamous are
capable of achieving emancipation of the family when conditions favourable for
it arise. Theoretically it is not impossible that family emancipation could
take place under polygamy—but history does not provide an instance of such
general emancipation among polygamists.
The polygamous community must first pass over to monogamy. And wherever sporadic emancipation (among
the higher classes) of a polygamous family takes place it is usually an
indication of advance towards monogamy, as happened, for example, in Turkey.
We are also unable to solve the question which
arises whether any differences in the procedures of family emancipation and in
the institutions of the emancipated family correspond to the five-fold or, more
generally, to the multiple clan system. In general; until a scientific review
of all the institutions of the clan—hitherto known in very general terms
only—has been successfully undertaken from the point of view of their
multiplicity, many questions cannot be discussed.
It is easy to understand how associations
assembled on a basis of varying family law must become in the course of
development increasingly dissimilar, that the distance between them in the
institutions of daily life must increase; for inheritance and property law will
also be different, and there must be considerable differences in relations
between people organised in accordance with dissimilar systems. The more highly
developed the community, the more complicated the social set-up, the more
marked the differences between the various systems of community life—and here
is the source of the plurality of civilisations.
There are three systems of family law —
monogamous, polygamous and polyandrous. Let us begin with the last, of which we
have not much to say since we know least about it. Polyandry differs from
monogamy and polygamy incomparably more than the two latter from each other.
Therefore if monogamy and polygamy greatly influence the process of
differentiation in the other branches of the triple law, and so the whole
system of community life, what must the effect of polyandry be!
It is generally believed that polyandry was and
is confined to Tibet and a few of the northernmost Indian lands. There is a
distinctive, highly sacred Tibetan civilisation, about which we still have loo
little information. It may be that its range was formerly greater. But if there
are indications which suggest that it once reached far into Chinese lands,
nobody foresaw survivals as far afield as the Congo.
The case is the institution known as
mushishombe. "This is a woman solemnly chosen from among the handsomest
girls, who is dedicated to several youths not as yet possessing wives. One of
them, recognised as the first, has the privilege of living with the mushishombe
who manages all his domestic affairs. The others are as it were her legal
lovers. The mushishombe gives herself to them only outside the boundary of her
plot, or visits them in the hut where they all live together. Possession of
many husbands is a high privilege for a woman, a singling out from among the
many.[276] Polyandry
in Tibet is managed similarly.
Since under polyandry two or even more men are
grouped round one woman, it is easy for combinations to arise which produce a
mistaken impression of matriarchy. The doubt suggests itself whether where
matriarchy is discerned, in Nubia or in Abissynia, survivals of polyandry have
not been preserved, as in the Congo? On the other hand, over the whole issue
hangs the question: what happens to the majority of women, since only a section
are admitted to marriage? Are several times fewer women than men bom on the
roof of the world? Perhaps polyandry is everywhere only a privilege?
In the present state of research, it is
impossible to decide whether polyandry produced a single civilisation only. in
which case all traces and survivals of it would be proof of the ancient extent
of Tibetan civilisation; or whether there were more polyandrous civilisations,
of which one only, the Tibetan, has survived into our epoch of history.
In view of the assumption generally accepted
today that at the beginning monogamy prevailed everywhere, which would be an
entirely natural state of affairs, how is the transition from monogamy to
polyandry to be explained? More than one suggestion could be put forward to
hang in the expanses of the imagination, for there is nothing to get hold of
here, a complete impossibility of coming to grips with facts. Future
investigations by learned travellers will supply them—for the moment it is
better to remain silent.
Scholars have devoted great pains and ingenuity
to the question of the way in which polygamy emerged from monogamy; here there
are several theories to choose from. Nevertheless it seems to me that they are
superfluous, because polygamy, like slavery, is adequately accounted for by the
taking of prisoners in war. War became
general only under tribal conditions, in which are the nuclei of states and
from which at the same time. there developed the so-called stronghold system
associated with tribal duchies. War produced in turn a series of institutions
of which one was the polygamous family.
The female war-captive is the forerunner of
polygamy. She became the property of her conqueror, and the servant of his
wife. There followed a division of women's work into more and less honourable
through which the superior status of the mistress of the house was underlined.
The real mistress rested her dignity on the fact that she was surrounded by
captives, slaves; so that nowhere is there found a trace of opposition to the
presence of strange women in the house. Among .the Nyaneka, the wife herself
procures her husband a friend—and. herself, a helper—for times of menstruation,
illness and pregnancy.[277]
The only reservation is that the unfree woman must not dress herself as well as
her mistress. Only members of the tribe are permitted to beautify themselves on
the model accepted in the given country. For example, only a free Botocudo
perforates his lips in order to put the botoka (a large wooden ring) into them,
and makes three cuts in the right leg of his own free daughters. Among the
Karaibs, mistress is distinguished from slave at a distance by her gashed calf.[278]
And among the Romans, wsre not certain garments long reserved solely to legally
wedded wives? In Assyria a wife went coifed; servant and slave were not
entitled to do so.[279]
There were not always wars, and neighbours' women
remained a requirement. In order to get them by peaceful means, it was
necessary to grant them the position of wife. Ethnology provides a number of
formalities devised on this account; a strange woman was legalised in one's
clan and tribe; tribe and clan accepted her as theirs. Exogamy followed,
required for the struggle against the inbred family.
The simplest way of obtaining a wife from
neighbours by peaceful means was always to buy her from her owner, that is from
her father. And what is bought becomes personal property, where lies the origin
of the fact that a wife becomes the property of her husband, just as from the
beginning the children were his property. Thjis does not merely apply, for
example, to Kaffirs; wives were bought in Babylon and in America among the May
an peoples.[280]
Assuredly as higher levels of civilisation were
attained, purchase became increasingly symbolic, and a wife did not, as a
result of it, become her husband's property; but among many peoples—numerous
Indian tribes, the Australian aborigines, the autochthons, of North-East
Africa—a wife is still emphatically owned "like a thing", "like
a dog".[281] In
investigating this, it is necessary to keep separate the: question how the man
behaves towards his wife. A husbandowner :may treat his wife extremely well,
while she may havea bad time even when enjoying equal rights; one has nothing
to do with the other.[282]
Where a wife can be purchased, the road is open
to polygamy, for the more prosperous. In ancient Mexico the common people had
to stop at one wife.[283]
The erroneous supposition that polygamy emerged at somewhat higher levels of
society, in some obscure connection with the rising level of civilisation,
derives from the fact that polygamy appeared at the level of the tribal
duchies, organised for the waging of war. There is no lack of instances of
primitive peoples falling into polygamy, without in any way diminishing their
primitiveness; for example, the Chukchi and Botocudos who, in the matter of
primitiveness, can rival the monogamous Vedda. Even after baptism, the negroes
of Southern Rhodesia fall back into polygamy.[284]
On the other hand, not all warlike communities discard monogamy. The Romans
were never polygamists, although a survival of the ownership of wives as
chattels (in pptestate) continued in sacred marriages to the last.
Wife-purchase demoralised the purchaser. She
could be resold, exchanged, even lent,[285]
which was the case in ancient Australian cultures, and survives among the negro
Wabala people and among the Hottentotts and Nyaneka.[286]
Even the Koran permitted it.[287]
Elsewhere a woman must turn prostitute on her husband's orders, for example in
a certain village between Heliopolis and Cairo and also in a part of Algeria.[288]
But purchase alone does not account for this demoralisation, which is not found
elsewhere. Moreover, among some peoples, the Chukchi, for instance, only the
second wife is purchased.[289]
Where a wife is her husband's property, she
plainly cannot herself own property.
This is the case not only among primitive peoples but also in the land
which, in the opinion of many, radiates all wisdom—India. Among the Hindus,
"a wife, son or slave may not, according to the law, own anything for
themselves; everything they are able to acquire becomes the property of him upon
whom they depend". Moceover the laws of Manu clearly prescribe that
"a young girl, a young woman, an elderly woman should never do anything in
accordance with their own will, not even in their own houses". Being
always in the charge of father, husband, children (in old age) "she may
never conduct herself according to her own wishes"[290]
Polygamy frequently amounts to speculation. A
Zulu works hard in the gold-mines of Transvaal or the diamond-mines of
Kimberley for a year or two, so as to acquire the number of cattle required as
a gift by a new father-in-law for a new wife (the strength of the first being
exhausted), in order to lead an idle life while laying all work upon the new
wife's shoulders.[291]
After a period, having prospered still further, he will allow himself several
young women during his later years, while not a few young men must be content
with an elderly, withered wife, a widow or released slave. A negro chieftain at
Mpansia in Northern Rhodesia owned twelve wives.[292]
The Herero reckon property by the number of wives,[293]
while the Nyaneka acquires more wives in order to be able to cultivate more
fields.[294]
Alongside monogamy and polygamy there exists
semi-monogamy which might equally well be called semi-polygamy. It is common in
communities which demand, unconditionally, male descendants, even if the wife
is not regarded as her husband's property. In primitive economies, lack of sons
leads to poverty and the decline of the clan, so that much is to be explained
by this although the custom frequently remains when a higher economic level has
been reached, for example in China. Either the barren wife, or one who produces
only daughters may be discarded, or another may be taken in addition, by legal
bigamy. It was already permissible to get rid of a childless wife in Babylon.
Travel literature is full of information about the hardships endured by these
women. At the 1925 Vatican missionary exhibition were displayed the horn bells
which childless negresses must wear at the belt[295]
so that young wives are not infected by them.
Desire to possess a son is sometimes carried
very far. Among the Mzaba people the husbands leave to make money, but
recognise children born during their wanderings as their own: they consider
that their wives have, in their own way, increased their property. Childless
Yakut women permit their husbands everything, living in agreement with his
concubines, while sick husbands look tolerantly at infidelity by their
wives—because the position of decrepit, childless old men is frightful; the
highest percentage of suicides is among them.[296]
Legal bigamy exists in Korea and in Hindustan.
Two wives are legal, but a third cannot be legal. In the Moslem world, divorce
notably reduces the cost of polygamy. The Hindus also believe that such double
matrimony does not detract from the principle of monogamy.[297]
Chinese conditions and attitudes are
interesting. They say of themselves that they are monogamous, intending by this
the uniqueness of the head wife, "the first", true wife. With her the
Chinese stops—if he is poor. Chinese
law even declares bigamy to be ground for divorce, releasing the second,
illegally wedded wife.[298]
But here is meant a case where a man has
simultaneously wedded two women as "first" wives. And the second (in
the absence of a son by the first) can only be one.[299]
And divorces are so easy that it is not even necessary to write a letter of
divorce, it is sufficient to make a statement before witnesses.[300]
Children by concubines are subject to the authority of the first wife in the
home, only the most recent Chinese legislation allows concubines certain rights
over their children.[301]
There is thus a basic difference between the
Chinese and Hindu method of solving the problem, namely an ethical one. The
Hindu is, it is true, under obligation (Manu law) to take a second wife if he
has only daughters by the first, but he may not take as his second wife a woman
whom the first does not wish; the second must have the first's approbation, and
it is not seemly to treat the latter contemptuously; and a wife may on no account
be abandoned because of illness.[302]
In China, however, in practice it is not even necessary to preserve any
appearances, and the taking of a second wife has in fact become an open and
tolerated institution, a kind of concubinage unrestricted in numbers. Ku-Hung-Ming states that "in
accordance with Chinese law, a man may have only one wife. but he may have as
many concubines as he wishes". Here the Chinese scholar forgot to put
between the words "wife" and "but" the phrase "at a
time"—since with the necessary sequence of divorces, it is permissible to
have as many wives as one wishes. And Ku-HungMing, in his view, pays Chinese
women the highest compliment in these words: "The self-denial of the
Chinese woman makes possible and permits her husband to take to himself a
concubine without offending his wife", for the true Chinese woman
"has no self'.[303]
Tho seven Chinese grounds for divorce include—jealousy shown by the wife. And
in her husband's house a rich girl is at once given by her parents as part of her
dowry two serving-girls destined to be concubines.[304]
So in China monogamy has become fictitious, all because of the obligation to
have a son. But the emancipation of the family from the clan is already
beginning and will constitute a revolution with the most far-reaching
consequences—as Father de Smedt rightly says.[305]
At advanced levels of culture, another method
was devised to meet the lack of a son—adoption. Already known to the law of
Sumeria and Babylon, it is very widespread in lands tf Chinese civilisation,
extending to the Annamites.[306]
In Korea a relative is adopted, but only from a younger line than one's own.
Japan recognises no limits, it is permissible to adopt anybody, and most
extraordinary. the adoption may be withdrawn. "Somebody is adopted today
to be disowned tomorrow, and replaced the day after that by somebody
else".[307] A
son-in-law is frequently adopted. He assumes the name of his wife's family,
entering into the rights but also the duties of a son towards his wife's
parents. If the marriage bond is broken, the relationship by adoption also
ceases. For example, a student may be adopted and promised the wherewithall to
complete his studies on condition he marries a daughter.[308]
In case of dissatisfaction, parting is permissible and if the family is in a
position to do so, a new student may be adopted who will again enter his wife's
family.[309]
On marriage law depends to a large extent
family law—the attitude to children, the division of authority within the home,
the unilateral or mutual character of laws and obligations, the extent and
gradation of blood ties, etc. Moreover, different marriage laws contribute to
the formation of differing ideas about work. A superfluity of women in the
house led to laziness. When the men yielded to this vice, and threw the labour
on to their wives and concubines, things were worse.
All polygamous societies are materially weak
and, in the long run, ruined. Labour becomes a disgrace, idleness becomes the
antisocial ideal. Not everywhere; for how to deny the laboriousness of Chinese
or Japanese, who live in semi-polygamy? But wherever the woman is not sure of
her position, where her marriage can be denounced, in all communities where
there is divorce, from the Moslems to the German Protestants, a married woman
becomes her husband's first servant. A Japanese woman is not her husband's
companion and helpmate in life, she does not even sit down with him to table.
And in Japan a fatheror mother-in-law may force a son to divorce his wife,
whose position is thus in the highest degree uncertain. Any marriage subject to
notice, if the right to give notice applies only to the husband, lowers the
position of the woman in their life together. In the whole of the East, wives
eat what the husband graciously leaves from his meal.[310]
The Yucatan woman of the Maya civilisation did not sit down to eat with her
husband.[311]
In China even the first legal wife holds a
menial position. KuHung-Ming himself explains that "the Chinese ideal
woman has a broom in her hand". And he further enlightens us: "The
Chinese letter for a wife is de facto made up of twu elements: the first
denotes a woman, the second a broom. In classical Chinese ... a woman is called
overseer of the larder, lady of the kitchen".[312]
Speaking plainly, in Chinese woman is written with a broom.
Various devices intended to ensure the wife's
fidelity exist under polygamy and bigamy. The harem system occurs in Korea.[313]
Seeing even male relatives is forbidden at opposite ends of the earth. among
the Yakuts and the Brazilian Caboclos[314]
burdened by their "W krainie
jaguarow", op. cit, p. 60. Sieroszewski. "Dwanascis still fresh
traditions of polygamy. Penalties for infidelity are also more severe under
polygamy. Among the Hittites, there was the death penalty for such women, among
the Jews stoning—and among the Kabyle it is so to this day—in Korea she is sold
into slavery, in China also, with the reservation that it must not be to her
lover. The Koran does, it is true, contain extenuating regulations, but they
have nowhere been put into practice. Only the primitive Semang of Malacca
permit the woman to ransom herself with a ransom equal to that for murder.[315]
Here also belong the various face-veils used in the east not only by Moslems.
It should also be added that not all Islamic women veil themselves, but
Christians never do. In Mosul Syrian and Chaldean female inhabitants go without
veils and entertain male guests.[316]
It is only under monogamy that the resources of
society are doubled by the cooperation of woman. Polygamous communities have
always constituted the lower rungs in the progress of history, precisely
because in them. woman is excluded from joining in the shaping of the triple
law, and so has no say in the building up of society. And it is not only
materially that polygamists lag behind; do not the categories of Truth and
Beauty develop almost exclusively in monogamous societies? The experience of
history teaches that under polygamy feminine mind and spirit declines— and male
also.
Let us, finally, draw attention to a fact of
general historical importance: polygamous societies nowhere rise above the clan
system;
they have been sunk in it for centuries. It is
at first a strange circumstance that the feeling for the clan should not be at
all weaker among polygamists: among Arabs the clan system even exists in towns.[317]
Under polygamy ties of blood embrace very many people and the constant influx
of new relatives is great, yet solidarity among kindred is preserved in the
highest degree. The clan relationship
assumes two levels: in a Yakut kargen (clan) a distinction is made between
ie-usa, descendants of both common parents, and the wider aga-iisa
connection—descendants of a common father and all his wives.[318]
This differentiation between full and half-brothers and sisters, essential
where there are many wives, divides families—yet clan organisation is at its
strongest among them. This is explicable on grounds that it is their highest
form of social organisation. Polygamists do not reach beyond tribal existence;
only semi-polygamists found states of any size, and these based only on the
clan system as in China.
Closing these considerations on family law in
relation to the multiplicity of systems of community life, I would draw
attention to the fact that matriarchy did not develop under polygamy. Although
it might have seemed that all the physical conditions for it existed,
polygamists have remained under the patriarchic system. A weighty instance of
the powerlessness of physical factors if spiritual factors do not direct them.
On several occasions, in the preceding pages,
property law has been discussed, and that from unavoidable necessity, since all
three divisions of the triple law closely interact. Here the earlier remarks
must be amplified, chiefly in order to make clear why I insist that from the
beginning property was individual, despite the often-quoted four
"communisms"—hunting, pastoral, sub-polar and negro. They are to be
met with in every text-book; denial of their reality calls for explanation.
None of the five varieties of the clan system was communistic. How inaccurate
is therefore the widespread confusion of the property law of the clan with
communism! With this prefatory comment, I pass to the four
"communisms".
A hunting form of existence leads to
stagnation, as we have had occasion to show; thus if the huntsman's conception
of property had originally been communist, it would have been petrified in the
hunting way of life. We know that when the Indians hunted bison collectively,
they shared the meat according to where each man's arrow hit it—and that it was
only with firearms that the carcases became collective property. A large animal
is usually hunted by a group, and even when the animal is small, it needs
collective effort to get the most out of a given area, otherwise the animals
escape. Today a huntsman cannot well manage alone, and it should be bome in
mind that conditions were then such that the inhabitants of a certain area were
obliged to satisfy their hunger with what they hunted; would the hunter succeed
in feeding himself on his own? The most skilled occasionally return from the
chase with nothing, the more often the longer a certain area is hunted.
Partnership prevents hunger. Those who hunt together decide to treat the catch
as common property, regardless of who hit the target and who missed; all share
the carcase. Here is the beginning of so-called hunting "communism".
Fishermen are exposed to even greater risk, since fish fail often and
unexpectedly. So fishermen everywhere,
whether in Spain or in Poland,[319]
or other parts of the world, enter into partnerships.
In a given hunting or fishing settlement there
may be more or fewer of these partnerships, or the entire settlement,
particularly if not very numerous, may make up a single partnership, in which
case everybody would have the right to draw on anybody else's catch. Thus every
Tunguz may take part in a feast arranged by a successful hunter, but on the
significant condition that he gives notice of his intention to be present. Thus
some record was kept of who took how much and when, which is only to be
explained in terms of partnership; we should say that an account was kept for
each partner. Similarly among the Aino. in a settlement described by
Sieroszewski, each fisherman catches fish for the whole settlement. When a
group of fishermen returns from sea, they immediately make a division.[320]
Another instance, therefore, of a partnership split into groups, which in this
case take turns to go out fishing. There is no communism here.
So-called sub-polar and negro communism is the
result of a certain ethical outlook which—by a singular chance—reigns in these
opposed spheres. According to this
view, the individual should have only as much as he needs, and what he has
above his needs he ought to distribute to those poorer than himself; in certain
communities it is permissible to take such surplus for oneself if it is not
voluntarily given. He who has more must give to others otherwise they will
"steal" it from him, as the Christian missionary says.[321]
The same source also informs us of the effects of this ethical-property system.
Thus on the Mulungussi, every African sows and plants as little as possible.
In the frozen north, among the Yakuts, he who
sells hay has his allotment reduced by the clan authorities at the next
allocation of meadows, the argument being that since he sells, he evidently has
more than he needs.[322]
But opposition to such views is growing, and the prosperous "rich"
are even beginning to give their daughters dowries in land. In Greenland they
avoid an "excess" of the means of production. Anyone possessing tent
or boat as his own property cannot inherit a second such object.[323]
In both cases, therefore, private property is fully acknowledged, only its
growth is restricted in the interest of other, smaller property, also private.
Among the African Negroes, the principle is the
same. Communism affects fire and water—and tobacco. "Among the Wadzhgan
fire, water and tobacco are regarded as the immediate gift of the heavens, and
so are treated as common property, and nobody may refuse these gifts when a
stranger asks for them".[324]
(And do we refuse fire or water? Or tobacco among work-fellows and neighbours?
Is this communism?) And in Terra del Fuego "a piece of material given to
one is torn into rags and distributed".[325]
This economic system is also known among Asiatics. We in Poland had ample
opportunity to become acquainted with it when the Bolshevik hordes cut up into
strips furniture-covers, curtains, carpets, etc. in order to share them
"justly". What was received from the shareout became personal
property; there was absolutely no question of any kind of communism. It is the
same in Central and Southern Africa. When a crowd of negroes surrounds a
European, and one of them receives a present, it is immediately shared among
his companions. Normally these are not objects of necessity (according to their
ideas) but luxuries, and so possessions beyond their needs, or rather not
needed. So that all this "sharing out" always concerns something
which does not constitute property according to the law of the clan, and is
indeed restricted to the sector of casual gains outside the clan.
Even in the clan 'community enjoying reciprocal
property rights the tradition of partnership was alive, for on request it was
possible to have allocated what belonged to one "from one's fathers".
It was permissible to leave the community and to withdraw one's share. so that
the principle of private property was never excluded. In the community the
individual owner's rights were not exercised until the owner requested it.
There often emerges a special property law
designed to suit working conditions. It may include completely contrary
factors. For example the Turanian and Slav-Turanian peoples keep cattle on the
steppes, and trees may not be planted there, not even round a house:
but the Indians hunt in the forests, and so
protect against nomadism. In such conditions, would private ownership of
relatively small areas of steppe or forest be feasible? It would be harmful.
Ownership of nomadic territory lies with the whole nomadic tribe, and it is
only between tribes that boundaries exist. But the herds and flocks are the
property of the clans, and within the clans the property of the elder, or of
the clan partners, and so strictly personal.
On the other hand, where there is no forest
economy, although the forests grow. they may belong to nobody and as a result
appear to be communistic property. For
example. Professor Talko Hryncewicz. living on the Russian-Mongolian frontier,
received wood for nothing, only paying for delivery and sawing-up.[326]
Joint control of pastureland for the whole
community is extended to the land itself, the ground; it would have been
strange for one to be distinguished from the other. Moreover, on the steppes
individual ownership of land is not allowed. Among the pastoral Yakuts,
permission from the clan authority is required to fence in ground round a
dwelling. But among the same Yakuts, even families "jointly owning land,
jointly gathering hay, living under a single roof, feed their cattle
separately" (just as they separately "eat their food, make their
clothes and other gear").[327]
Amon the Todas wandering over the slopes of the Nilgiri Hills in India after
their cattle, the herd is the property of the whole tribe, of all five of its
clans, but the tents are the property of the fathers of families.[328]
There cannot, therefore, be any question of the absence of the idea of personal
property.
And so there is no necessity to take refuge in
the hypothetical survival of a primitive universal communism in order to
explain present-day parish ownership of meadows, woods, etc. Mountain pastures
are still owned jointly by the descendants of the old clan partners, and
certain facts about communal property in the history of England and France are
also to be explained by the old clanpastoral law. The matter is as simple as
life: farmers keep a few cattle, and with a high density of population each man
cannot own his own pasturage so they are communal, although every one of the
cattle is somebody's personal property. In Algeria farming imaziri ("men
from the tilled fields") are organised in karuba, with private ownership
of the fields they till, but collective of grazings and pastures. Several
karuba make up the taddert (village) which again owns certain lands communally.[329]
Unlike nomadic pastoralism, agriculture
requires private ownership of land. Among all agricultural peoples the
principle grew up that the owner of the ground is the man who first tills it:
in the Koran, the man who first "sprinkles" and "feeds"
it—that is introduces water. Thus actual work on the fields is also the
farmer's title to ownership. In Korea, where there is still ownerless land. the
local primus possidens enjoys a three-year freedom from taxation, and after
five years becomes legal owner of the land worked (on the coast after ten
years).[330]
The law of agricultural property has for long
centuries been adapted to the types of the clan system and to the relevant
features of clan property law. It is known that in over-populated lands— in
China, or in Tuscany—agricultural property may be reduced to very tiny
holdings. But among the Kabyle also, "apparentlya fruiter an olive-tree
sometimes has several owners, each of whom tends and crops the one branch he
has inherited".[331]
Ideas on the law of lease-hold may be regarded
as a pointer to private property. In
Korea, for example, there now obtains a system which in Polish could be called
"smallholding", that is where the landowners lease their property out
in small parcels.[332]
It is the same with the Algerian Kabyle, who themselves gladly take leases from
the Arabs.[333]
Peoples who were originally pastoral are long
unable to accustom themselves to individual ownership of land, even although
they become agricultural. Yakuts understand the right of prima occupatio only
as a right to temporary use, always with a reservation on the rights of the
clan to which the first farmer belongs. "Even fields which have been
cleared out of forest become clan property."[334]
And "kindred watch vigilantly to make sure that the land is not
appropriated by separate families", because "according to Yakut
ideas, land can never become private property".[335]
There is a sharp struggle going on for and against the emancipation of the
family. They are also unwilling to recognise leases. Regarding letting of land
as evidence that its owner does not need it, they believe that it should be
taken from him.[336]
In the same way the Arab shepherds in Algeria are passing over to agriculture,
but complete individual ownership of land is unacceptable to them, despite the
strong pressure of the French authorities.[337]
They hold to clan ownership— which is certainly not communism.
Similarly in Palestine the Jews—originally
nomadic herdsmen— only had the use of a limited area of agricultural ground. The Zionist Congress held in Vienna in 1925
resolved that the land regained in Palestine must be the property of the Keren
Hayemet (national fund), while the owner of the land was to be only a user. But
forthwith with utmost lack of logic, these users lease their land to Arabs!
The institution of boundaries and marks
followed from the fact of property in land. Among the Chinese, frontier posts
and stones carried the mark of the clan; if kept up by tradition, it became the
historical mark of the clan. It could be a linear mark, of straight or crooked
lines, or a stylised drawing signifying a plant or animal. And here lies the
origin of the "totem", one of learning's worst mistakes. Weird indeed
is the connection between a property mark and so-called totemistic religion.
Similar signs are in use to this day, the arms not only of clans, but of
countries and states and nations have been made from them. Clearly a sign
common to an entire clan was respected by the clan, the tribal mark by all
members of the tribe; just as in our time the national flag is everywhere
surrounded with respect. Nobody argues from this for the existence of a
"totemistic-religious" cult of the white eagle. In the chosen mark
there often lies the source of a later surname, since the clan was called after
the mark it used. In Poland there is a multitude of names from mammals and
birds, fish and insects, fruit trees and ordinary trees, bushes, herbs and
flowers, offering plenty of opportunity for totemists![338]
Property law, adapted to family law, creates
inheritance law. It enters so deeply into all relationships that of necessity
it has already been discussed in all the earlier sections of this chapter,
beginning with the remarks on the clan system. For ethnologists ignorant of the
variety of clan institutions, often too having false ideas about it, even the
simplest manifestations become incomprehensible, and hence the invention of
theories into which the facts are fitted. Unfortunately, in the process it is
rare for reference to be made to a certain mental category with which the
scholar should constantly reckon, namely common sense.
The variety of inheritance laws is great
because there are no uniform combinations of descendants, ancestors, parents
and coevals, relations and relatives, apart from the quantity of combinations
in the law of inheritance affecting the widowed. What great variety was until
recently contained in German laws of inheritance, different in each Land! Were
missionaries and travellers to interest themselves in inheritance law there
might perhaps appear to be no little variety among the primitive peoples also.
This sector is, however, ignored, to the great loss of learning. The norms of
inheritance are, in fact, the most significant sector in the methods of a
system of communal life and the most instructive, throwing into simultaneous
relief issues of both family and inheritance law. If we knew the laws of
inheritance, we should dispense with more than one hypothesis which cripples
scientific investigation.[339]
Every clan had to arrange its affairs in such a
way that clan property was not reduced but increased with every generation,
since otherwise the clan must have ceased to exist. Since the capacity to grow
richer was dependent on the number of male descendants, the clan had to combat
childlessness, particularly the absence of a son. A family without a son became
in course of time. parasitic on the clan. Only tthe emancipated family,
economically self-sufficient and responsible only for itself—and so only after
a long period of development—could break with the views obtaining in the clan
on this matter.
If the question of descendants is always basic
to marriage, in the clan system it must have been the more prominent, even
glaring. Primarily the issue is whose property the children are to be. It was a
simple matter under endogamy, but doubts could arise under exogamy,
particularly in a marriage by purchase. The notion of a wife as property
remained even among those peoples who turned from polygamy to monogamy, among
the majority of Jews and some Turanians for example.
How many are the problems where, as among the
Kaffirs,[340] a wife may
bought on credit? Hire purchase is also not unknown. Strict accounts are kept
with the father-in-law: on the Gold Coast descendants remain the
father-in-law's property until the son-in-law completes all the payments. A
wife may also be obtained by working for her father, as is known from the Old
Testament, and as can be observed today among the autochthons in Siberia (among
the Yukagir to the father-in-law's death), among the Hottentots, Bushmen and
the Bergdama people in South Africa.[341]
In Indonesia the son-in-law pays by working for his father-in-law, but until he
has cleared the entire debt any children bom in the meantime belong to the
father-in-law. In Indochina a higher stage has been reached, and marriage
servitude ends with the arrival of a child.[342]
It is difficult not to regard labour of this son as a kind of purchase,
although some do not wish to admit this.[343]
The wife's dowry also remains with the
husband's clan. In China a widow
retains the use of property brought to her husband, but loses everything in the
event of a second marriage. Since it
It is a universal principle, under the clan
system, that if a widow wishes to return to the clan of her birth, she may not
take her children with her. This most valuable property must remain in the
father's clan.[344]
Is not permitted to any member of the clan to hold separate personal property
to the disadvantage of the clan, it is not permitted to a wife to do so. The
property of the clan is indivisible, remaining under the management of the clan
elder. As we see in China there obtains (or at least in that part of China
observed by Father de Smedt) a typical clan community. And if clans split up,
property is divided among descendants to the exclusion of women. If a wife
wants to appropriate something from the property of the clan (even, therefore,
from her own dowry) it is permissible to leave or get rid of her.[345]
Where a woman is regarded as her husband's
property, even adultery is looked upon primarily as interference with another's
property. Among the Indian Kandha, if a wife leaves her husband, the
father-in-law should return the purchase-price to his son-in law.[346]
Logically, also, the wife becomes inheritable property, and passes after her
husband's death to his nearest heir. The right of inheritance varies. Among
many peoples, a brother is his brother's heir, with the dead man's father in
second place and, in the absence of the father, an uncle. Widows are commonly
inherited in this way in India, among the Iroquois and other American Indians.
among the Congo Africans, the Melanesians, Chukchi and Koryaks and among the
Hassidim Jews in Poland; it was also the case in Egypt. Among the Chukchi not
an elder but a younger brother always takes a widow.[347]
But the question arises whether the term "brother" does not here bear
a wider meaning.
In the thirteenth century among the Mongols, a
son could take all his father's wives (except his own mother), and a brother
all his brother's.[348]
A quite different form of inheritance existed among the Hittites, probably also
in Assyria, and has been preserved among the Russian people, where it is known
under the old name snochachesivo. Whereas among the Jews only a childless widow
was inheritable, in Assyria this restriction did not exist and inheritance was
two-sided, since a sister-in-law was also under obligation to accept a widower
brother-in-law. But where there were no other relatives, the father received
his widowed daughter-in-law. (In
Babylon, widows were not inheritable).[349]
All these various ways in which widows were inherited are known by the word
leviratc. This passes for a survival of polyandry even in Deniker,[350]
but groundlessly. I suggest that the following explanation is simpler, closer
to actual conditions and more general. Among the Jews children conceived as a
result of the levirate were legally the children of the dead husband, and in
the Bible the purpose of the levirate is even explained as being to enable the
brother to save his brother's seed from perishing. This is, therefore, no simple inheritance, not merely a legal
but a moral obligation, of an abstract kind, for the leviratic husband often
harmful, since with the arrival of a child he himself ceased to be his
brother's heir. This is easy to explain in terms of intellectual and moral
evolution, as progress; but how to explain it by polyandry?
Whether variations in the levirate have their
origin in differing orders of inheritance, in differences in hierarchies of
inheritance, special investigations will finally decide; now one can only point
the problem. If ethnology takes an adequate interest in inheritance laws among
primitive peoples, our successors will be enabled to form an exact view of a
matter to which I have already drawn attention in this chapter—at the end of
the second section—namely the effect of the clan system on the triple law (in
the two subsequent sections more than one detail confirms the relationship between
them). Different clan systems reveal themselves in different norms of the
triple law, which last for long centuries on end, even after the disappearance
of the clan organisation which produced them. Here I should like to amplify
these reflections, using examples unconnected with the preceding arguments.
Strong insistence on primogeniture,
characteristic of so many peoples, calls for investigation whether it does not
in fact originate with ancestral observance of primogeniture in the clan. And
we meet this arrangement in ethnic fields as distant as possible from even the
most distant influence of Roman law. Among the Annamites, for example, the
father's house passes to the first-bom and the elder of the clan is the
first-born of the previous elder by the head wife (so-called
"first"); authority is thus retained by the oldest branch of the
clan. It presumably rarely happens that this elder is simultaneously the oldest
in years among the kindred; as a rule it is not so, and it may happen that the
primogenitus is a child.[351]
There is nothing strange here with the history of European dynasties before us.
In the inheritance law of certain peoples we
find exceptional privileges for the first-born, who receive a double share.
This was known from the Jewish law of the Old Testament, and has recently been
discovered in ancient Assyrian law.[352]
In the Congo, on the other hand, among the Ngbandi, brothers of a deceased man
inherit before his first-born son. We shall call this law of inheritance by
generation, because it is adapted to hierarchy by generation (which has already
been discussed).[353]
In this case also it happens that the youngest member of the elder (previous)
generation may be considerably younger than the oldest members of the younger,
succeeding generation.
With hierarchy by generation goes on
occasion—how often is not Icnown—a curious provision in family law, namely that
marriage may not be contracted between people of the same branch of a clan,
which is easily explained as a manifestation of struggle against the inbred
family; but in addition persons belonging to two different generations of iwo
different branches may not marry. It is a question of not spoiling the
hierarchy of the generations. This is the practice in China.[354]
The instances quoted nevertheless permit clan endogamy, provided the inbreeding
family is not allowed to emerge. And here again it is necessary to clarify the
terms used. In this book the inbreeding family derives not only directly from
the same family, but in addition from the same branch of the clan, and while
the tradition of a not far-distant common ancestor is still living; when this
is effaced, I consider the union belongs to clan endogamy, like unions between
persons of various branches of the same clan; and only unions outside the clan,
between persons of different clans, should be regarded as true exogamy. It would seem that conscientious
differentiation between these three degrees would be helpful in ethnological
research.
Indications are not lacking that it is in this
way that clans and tribes differentiate in these matters. In Korea people with
the same clan battle-cry may not marry unless they can show that their
ancestors have lived from time immemorial in different places.[355]
All peoples, more or less primitive, recognise legal impediments to marriage,
although not all fortify themselves with seclusions: and there is much variety
in detail. In "pre-Columban" America the Aztecs had one set of
impediments, the Mayan peoples another (even views on incest differed).[356]
And contemporary primitive peoples reveal much variety which on closer study
would certainly throw light on more than one dark corner of ethnology.
Let us now return to the question whether the
exogamous wife was her husband's property, and consider it in relation to the
variety of clan systems. In the primitive clan comprising on the average three
generations, while the founder of the clan, known to all from babyhood as the
father and grandfather who has brought them all up, is still alive and
exercising authority, it is no offence to anybody that grandfather is owner of
all and everything. But when this same
authority later appears in the form of clan despotism, if all the women are to
be the property of the elder, who among the younger generation would buy a
wife? Perhaps it is for this reason that among certain peoples parents exert
themselves to obtain daughters-in-law? It may or may not be so; in some
clan-despotisms property in children and their wives may be exacted with
absolute consistency, whereas elsewhere the germ of the future emancipation of
the family may lie in ownership of his descendants' wives not by the elder but
by their husbands even in their elder-father's lifetime. It would be the only
property permissible to them before the splitting-up of the clan.
Absolute consistency on ownership of wives is
found among some peoples organised into clan communities. Two cases are known.
When the Chukchi found a new clan community, several (from two to ten) men of
more or less the same age, not brothers, nor from the same tent, meet and grant
each other the right to reciprocal use of their shares of the property,
including their wives. The children of such a grouping are regarded as brothers
and sisters and may not inter-marry. This does not, however, amount to the
introduction of "sexual promiscuity", since from the first choice of
the men to the restrictions on the children, precautions are taken against the
inbred family, even endogamy being rejected. All that happens is the foundation
of a new clan centre, which is intended to become" a clan community: this
interpretation may also be deduced from the fact that the centre takes upon
itself the duty of revenge for its members.[357]
Whether all communities among the Chukchi order their relation to women in this
way. whether it is one which is generally accpeted or only permitted—and
whether it occurs with increasing or decreasing frequency—is not known.
Precisely the same arrangement is met under an entirely different sky, among
the African Hereros where it is called upanga.
Since it is not ethnology I am writing, such
partial use of the sources must suffice, although many other variations could
be discovered. And let us always bear
in mind that under the clan system either monogamy or polygamy may obtain,
apart altogether from the very varied status—elevated or debased—of women. Thus
clan law (itself so varied) enters by innumerable roads and paths into the
spheres of marriage, family, property and inheritance law, opening before us
enormous departments of ethnology and prehistory.
I was only concerned to show that on these
levels people's ideas and conceptions diverge; here is the genesis of the
plurality of even primitive civilisations.
We have traced what is common to the beginnings
of all civilisations and how far these common elements extend. They prove to be
extremely few in number. Not everybody even knows how to kindle fire, and the
keeping of domestic cattle is not general. And from the beginning people have
differed under differing clan systems and differing systems of the triple law.
Are there, therefore, not more resemblances than differences?
Only when one gives up trying to include the
whole of humanity does the number of differences decline and more common
features appear. Thus in our considerations we may confine "humanity"
to those societies which know how to kindle fire and keep domestic animals; we
may make a still smaller sector of humanity the object of research, confining
ourselves for instance to societies which have passed from clan communities to
clan despotisms, from polygamy to quasi monogamy, from pastoralism to
agriculture—when the number of points of development in common increases
considerably. Similarly, the generalisation could be made that in every culture
without exception a tradition and an ethic—some kind of tradition, some kind of
ethic—must emerge, but when one begins to describe them, not similarities but
differences appear. It might be said that the resemblances are algebraic, and
after the value has been stated differences appear, that only in narrower
groupings does humanity reveal more concrete community.
Those who do not know how to kindle fire are
exceptional and already so few that we may leave them out without committing
any serious falsification of reality. Those who have not domesticated any
animal are it is true quite numerous, but are off the main tracks to any kind
of higher development, so that they may in any classification be treated as people
from another world. Confining ourselves to kindlers of fire and keepers of
domestic animals, we may assert that differentiation in their communal life
began with differentiation in the clan system and the triple law. These are the
two fundamental things in any kind of historical development; on these bases in
fact everything which is human rests.
There are thousands of questions and thousands
of complications, increasingly involved as development proceeds. At innumerable
and most varied levels the triple law continues a development which appears to
be without limit, but alongside it, numerous other departments of law appear.
On the bases which have been described in the preceding chapters a structure
has arisen resembling both a pyramid seeking the sky and a labyrinth. How to
count and how to include all that is human? In what abbreviation can the
material and moral heritage of thousands of years be represented to the mind?
What formula will embody all the possibilities of communal life of all
countries and all times?
It is impossible to follow stage by stage from
the emancipation of the family from the clan to the Improvisation in
Mickiewicz's Forefathers and aeroplane flight. One must observe the
organisation of human things as a whole, seize hold of some leading thread,
examine lines making for understanding of the composition and ordering of
things and affairs, collect observation points offering refuge from chaos. In a
word, our argument must be generalized.
No broader or more many-sided generalisation of
human affairs exists than that in the small catechism for children which
teaches that man consists of soul and body. Let us take this as a starting
point for our conclusions and discussions.
Body and soul make up man and all that is human and bears any kind of relation to man; all this possesses form and content, an internal and an external side. Fullness of life requires both, for the failure of one leads to dislocation of the whole. To the internal, spiritual side of life belong the concepts of Good (morality) and Truth; to the bodily, health and prosperity; in addition there exists the category of Beauty common to body and soul. There is no manifestation of life which does not bear some relation to one of these categories, often to two or more. Here every fact and every opinion belogs.
There thus exist five categories of human
being. Unceasing reciprocal relations make up as it were their organisation.
And where there is organisation, there is hierarchy. Now for a Christian the
hierarchy in this our quincunx is of course straightforward, since first place
obviously belongs to morality and the spiritual categories in general have
priority over the bodily—but in life it is only exceptionally that exclusive
choice occurs between one and the other, since reality joins them in the unity
of earthly being.
It is only exceptionally a duty to neglect the
body. In periods when the exception becomes the rule (even if in the name of
the loftiest motives) great disadvantages rapidly ensue, not only in physical
categories, but in spiritual categories as well. Such generations occur, but history shows that characters are
spoiled. Neglect of the body leads commonly to lowering of the spirit. Is it
possible to imagine sanctity in dirt? As a rule the principle of a healthy soul
in a healthy body is binding, and Buckle's statement has not lost its force:
"The pleasures of the body are, in our actual condition, as essential a
part of the great scheme of life. and are as necessary to human affairs as are
the pleasures of the mind".[358]
The whole point is that the pleasures of the
body should bs of such a kind as not to stand in the way of the pleasures of
the spirit. In the spiritualised man, the man who is properly developed, this
happens of itself, as it were automatically.
It is a fact that in life these five categories
ceaselessly mingle. constantly impinging one upon the other. There are
exceptions who arrive at spiritual heights by torturing their own bodies, but
they are the exception confirming the rule. It is only too easy to see that
excessive popularisation of asceticism leads to caricature. The state of health
affects the mental state; the healthy man will as a rule soar higher in spirit
than the sick man—and as important—can remain longer on the heights of the
spirit. And correspondingly, a lofty mental state is the most powerful lever
for lifting a burden of physical misery. He who needs illness in order to think
of eternal things is not normal; it may be said indulgently of such a one that
better ill than never. Naive minds and incompletely-instructed heads confuse
prosperity with materialism. Yet it is possible to be a high idealist in
considerable comfort, and for the generality what more desirable than that
idealists should dispose of considerable funds to realise their ideals. If I
were to write a treatise on morality, I should devote a separate section to
showing that to strive for prosperity is a moral duty, a raising of morality.
The extent to which prosperity favours development of spiritual resources was
already very well known to Nicholas Copernicus. He was the first to remark that
base money brings with it a shortage of artists, scholars and even good
artisans.[359]
Thus bodily categories are not to be treated
exclusively as opposites of the spiritual categories. They complement each other very well, and
it is just this that normal life demands. If body and soul stand opposed to
each other, if health and prosperity weaken the spirit, there is patently
dislocation, derangement, perhaps even degeneration. The view that mutual
exclusiveness between soul and body is something natural in the earthly life of
man is entirely mistaken. On the contrary, such a formulation of the antithesis
is abnormal. Wherever we meet it. we know that an unnatural, sickly condition
exists.
Let us look at the monasteries on Mount Athos:
they may serve to witness that a man cannot cultivate the categories of the
spirit alone, disregarding the bodily. On Mount Athos priests have never
engaged in agriculture, mining, building or kindred occupations of Western
European monks. On Mount Athos only supernatural Truth and spiritual Good are
cultivated. What caricatures have resulted from this, and what caricatures of
religious orders have spread thence throughout Orthodoxy![360]
Apparently Chinese philosophy refuses discussion of bodily categories, yet no
country has less of the spirit than China.
Some unyielding law requires that man, composed
of body and soul, must perfect himself in both parts of his being or decline in
both. Any perfecting of one category of life leads to the establishment of
connections with other categories; if this does not happen, a standstill ensues
even in the category in which excellence is desired. How deeply, for example.
Beauty enters into all categories! The aesthetic of daily life is no slight aid
to hygiene, and every applied art is also a source of earnings. Beauty enters
no less into the categories of the spirit. Why should Truth or Good be ugly or
boring? The Renaissance cured us of the superstition that virtue could only be
expressed by an ugly body, emaciated with fasting, withered and if possible
tormented. Since the Renaissance there has been an obligation to give the
categories of Good and Truth a beautiful exterior. These two spiritual
categories are harnessed together, morality, mother of duty, contributing to
the cult of Truth and in return, love of Truth elevating morality.
The perfection of man thus demands solicitude
for all the categories of life. But life does not everywhere and always possess
all five categories. They become articulate in only a small fraction of
humanity, so that it is only rarely that there exists the fullness of life, or
more accurately the possibility of reaching that plenitude. Even in fortunate
lands and times only a minority of the population attains it.
Let us only glance at the Orient, how foreign
to it as a whole is the scientific way of looking at things, of judging life's
problems from a scientific point of view.
Investigation of natural truth does not exist for Asiatics; but they
like to deceive themselves that morality can develop without devotion to the
discovery of truth. The Hindu thinker is prepared to consider the whole of our
science as a manifestation of materialism because he has no understanding of
scientific discovery, accepting only inventions and seeing only the practical
results of applied science. He knows
steam and electric machinery, but not physics. The Hindu, the Korean, the
Chinese boast that their thought is directed more to the spiritual side of
life, cares less for earthly prosperity. But they are empty words, for in the
field of morals their thought, unexercised in the abstract, has halted at
formulae without living content. The
whole secret of the history of Asia lies in this failure to reach fullness of
life, and "the renaissance of Asia" will remain an empty phrase until
Asiatics possess all five categories of life.
In any case, life complete on all sides is
extremely rare. As a rule one or other category is made less of, and the
perfecting of life does not take place in all directions uniformly.
Universality is the more difficult' because the degrees of developing life are
unlimited. Many complicated tangles are involved for each category of life is
composed of numerous divisions, and the more highly developed the category the
more numerous these divisions are. While they add to the complexity of life,
the loftier mind masters them the more easily, and employs them in greater
quantity.
In the absence of universality, development of
life is determined by the many-sidedness of its possibilities, and the nearer
these come to universality the more perfect the. pattern of life.
This perfecting process grows more complex as
it increasingly affects each of the five categories of life. The higher the
level of existence, the more categories go to its composition and the more
involved their impingement upon each other.
In the best regulated life there is harmony of
all five categories; in a well regulated life harmony of those of which the
given life consists. The ideal of universality with nothing left out remains a
dream. A man must limit himself. It is better to leave out some part of this or
that category, some fraction of the human quincunx, even to make one's
existence defective by almost entirely leaving out one of the four categories
(the Good excepted) than to permit disharmony in that complex of categories
against which we propose, are able or perhaps even obliged to live out our
lives. Order and organisation are the condition of a sound pattern of life, private
and public, whether for family, community or State.
But it is never possible completely to leave
out both bodily categories or both spiritual categories from a pattern of life.
Rejection of both health and prosperity turns life into an experiment in empty
phraseology; while rejection of truth and morality is tantamount to
bestialisation. Hence the plain
conclusion that communal life stands higher the more categories and, within
these, the more divisions it embraces; and the greater the harmony reigning
among them.
When the rules of the quincunx of humanity are
set forth in this way—in exclusive reliance on historical experience and so on
the inductive method—we see that the categories of life may arrange themselves
in very various relations, orders and proportions. "Humanity"
harbours the most various opinions and fantasies about Truth, morality and
Beauty, even about prosperity and (most curious) even about health. With this
fact in mind, let us now move to the next link in our chain of inquiry.
Having defined the five categories of the
quincunx of mankind we can in the further course of our investigations draw
upon every kind of manifestation of communal life. In the first place let us
put the category of morality, if only because ethics accompany man from his
primitive beginnings, as passing references in earlier chapters indicate, and
also exercises a great influence, often decisive, on other categories of being.
There are ethics and ethics, however, and this
diversity must therefore be considered. Every type of clan association had
institutions proper to it alone and unknown or at least not recognised in
others. A thing which was considered proper somewhere from generation to
generation acquired binding "force. But in the name of ethics or of law?
Ethics consists in the voluntary fulfilment of
duties, in consent to them without compulsion from outside. Could the oldest associations have arisen
otherwise than voluntarily? Power to
compel was required only in more numerous associations embracing several
generations. Then those who were dissatisfied with the norms of the triple law
accepted in their clan, and wanted to base the clan on other standards which
they considered superior, had the road of emigration open to them. They could
found a new clan of their own preference; but if they did not wish to emigrate,
could one and the same clan be governed by differing norms? Such a clan would
either collapse and perish, passing from disorder to powerlessness, or both
sides would have to resort to compulsion, and so to force.
Thus ethics are older than law, and law rests
on the sanctions of compulsion for the recalcitant. Only in this way do the
ethical obligations recognised in an association change into obligations before
the law. Law which emerged in this way was empirical and lent sanction to
ethical postulates already recognised.
A posteriori law is also for the most part derived from, and intended to
uphold ethics. This is ethical law.
But in prehistory there already existed the law
fas et nefas formulated not merely without but in direct opposition to ethics.
This was, therefore, an artificial law not resulting from actual normal
conditions but designed to change them. and to order the association in
accordance with ideas not so far known to it or at least not recognised by it.
In this case the idea came first and then the law derived from it to create
artificially binding conditions. Thus a priori law comes into existence to give
sanction to projected conditions not to those already existing.
Partnerships and clan communities arose by
force of the circumstances of life itself, and in them law developed from
ethics, from a conviction of the correctness and necessity of certain
regulations in given conditions. There would have been no communities or
partnerships if the first generations had not voluntarily submitted to certain
standards. The institutions of these associations were empirical, elaborated
out of experience, ethics based on tradition, law on ethics.
But clan despotism arose from violation of
tradition and ethics, despite the ethic of the association, resting from the
first on compulsion. There would have been no clan despotisms if physical force
had not brought them in; they were the creation of somebody's will setting
itself against conditions. Whereas
associations arose as it were of themselves, brought about by the circumstances
of life, despotisms were devised and determined from above. These were a priori
institutions.
Primitive-clan-ethics bind only in the case of
one's own people. The highest commandment is clan solidarity; and so it has
remained. In Korea one does not summon a kinsman before the courts, so that
there is "almost no possibility of getting back from a kinsman a loan or
even something which has been stolen"[361]
unless this is done voluntarily, on grounds of ethics alone. So that in the clan the ethical may be
carried to unethical absurdity. Ethics condemns theft and ethics condemns
sueing for theft! Here the clan authorities had lost their validity, while the
State had not yet acquired any. Among the Yakuts a deliberately unjust verdict
to the advantage of a kinsman is taken for granted. Twelve respected
householders committed perjury in court, but regarded themselves as justified
because the case concerned a kinsman.[362]
On the other hand. when a man finds himself outside this organisation he is by
the same token outside society and as if exempted from the law. A certain
Circassian put this very well: "I don't know anybody, sir. My brothers
were killed in the war. My kindred have gone to Turkey. I am left like a lone
wolf and nobody troubles about me".[363]
Because of this unbounded solidarity, revenge
is indispensable to the clan system, lying in its very nature, its highest
duty. Revenge is, however, undoubtedly an institution of ethical origin. It
arose in the name of right, in order that justice might be done, and crime not
go unpunished. But there is no law which would be capable of making certain
that a man does everything in his power to take revenge. Here legal compulsion
is impossible of exercise. And yet there is nowhere where revenge has not
flourished. All European communities have passed through a period of vendetta,
which in Corsica and in the Balkans endured until recent times. Among coloured peoples
it is almost everywhere still operative (in China curiously transformed into
suicide by the injured party, whereafter the offender is boycotted). Today we
know of revenge among the Kabyls. among all the Semites, Yakuts, Indians,
Australians, Syrians,[364]
in Korea, in China, in Mauretania, in Oceania.
In Japan revenge was officially regulated:
"The avenger had to observe certain written procedures and directives.
There was a separate official who was to be informed of the decision taken. and
the term one set oneself for carrying out revenge. The method of exterminating the enemy was a matter of
indifference; but murder was considered something blameworthy".[365]
Clearly revenge was regarded not only as a law but also as a duty. since an
office of the State was drawn into the matter.
The ethical obligation of revenge comes through
Sieroszewski's remarks on the Yakuts: "Members of a clan on whom there
weighed unavenged blood suffered and withered like people in an inner conflict.
Legends paint for us immensely tragic pictures of these clans, infected in the
very marrow of their being, sick and harrassed, blossoming only after
satisfaction has been exacted. A clan which had no avengers perished in those
times as a not very brave individual perishes among beasts of prey".[366]
And in Western Australia, when a man is called
upon toavenge the death of a very near relative "until he carries out this
task he is mocked without respite by the old women; if he is married, his wives
immediately leave him; if he is a bachelor no young woman will exchange a word
with him. His mother will shed tears over such an unworthy son and his father
will despise him. There will be no end to the reproaches".[367]
The unceasing upheavals of revenge made it
easier for Europeans to conquer the coloured peoples. Everywhere the white man appeared his help was sought by tribe
against tribe, sometimes by clan against clan. "In the story of the first Yakut hunters who reached the
watershed of the Kolyma it is said that the clan decided to avenge itself for
the murder of one of its members but did not feel strong enough, so called in
the Russians to help".[368]
And from his memories of Sahara-Mauretania a French officer relates how at the
outpost "chiefs would arrive, telling us of their time-honoured quarrels,
each begging for help against his enemies".[369]
The extent to which revenge lies within the
very nature of the clan system is witnessed by the experience which an
Apostolic Vicar, Mgr Costamagna, had with the converted Jivaros. On November 2,
1902, they promised that they would desist from taking revenge, and by the end
of the month "new quarrels and butcheries broke out".[370]
Do not let us imagine that revenge is now weaker than formerly. Among the Arabs
it has actually increased in cruelty in the last generation.[371]
It is the experience of all countries that in
the end vengeance degenerates into general banditry and unceasing anarchy, in
face of which public security and stable conditions lapse. So that until a State organisation is
created and the State takes upon itself the duty of revenge, systems of a
higher type are out of the question. It would lead us too far afield to
enumerate the difficulties involved, which cannot everywhere be overcome.
Clan revenge must with time pass to the tribe,
and tribal revenge "develops" into war. And so it is that primitive
warfare is of ethical origin, undertaken to avenge crimes. And then. as in the
case of clan revenge, it becomes impossible to discover among the details and
complexities on whose side justice lies. In the dawn of history war was a
chronic state: abandoning the backward glance at ethics, on the model of its
parent revenge it became universal banditry, but on an incomparably larger
scale. And peoples inadequately armed for aggression perished among the
aggressors. These are the gifts of natural ethics—for the whole of this ethic
is natural, with revenge as the crown of its development.
Let us pass to family law. Natural ethics were
incapable of devising a suitable system for marriage, but performed its task by
abasing women—the Romans only excepted. Are we not struck by that exclusive
concern for heirs? Marriages, unless they are religious, know no other purpose.
And hitherto sacred marriage is still unknown in Turkey, in China, in Japan.
But in Rome a wife was her husband's companion and helpmate in life exactly as,
it must be admitted, she is under Christianity. Under Roman civilisation man achieved by natural reason the
discovery of ethical truth consonant with ethics of a supernatural order. The
Roman virgin, wife and matron have no cause to feel shame in the presence of
Christian women, even by the most severe standards. But outside Rome the
ethical side of marriage presents a sad picture, reflected in the drastic
examples quoted above. Everything rested upon the supremacy of the man, even
the very concern for purity of the marriage-bed.
Passing to property law. we find once more—the
Romans again apart—ugly instances of abuse grounded in ownership of children
and wife. I have already drawn attention to the fact that ethical views are the
basis of variety in property law; in all probability property law would be
uniform if ethical views were uniform. Differentiation in ethics contributed to
differentiation in very many other manifestations of communal life throughout
the categories of our quincunx.
In property matters, ethical views are
split. Natural protoethics recognises,
for example, work as a source of property (he who first "feeds" the
land, etc.), but does not favour harder work: why own more than one needs, when
there may not be enough for somebody else? The result is that fresh needs do
not develop and a whole community is sunk in poverty for centuries. If every man is to be deprived of what he
possesses above the normal needs of the community, the ideal of equality in
property must result, and this can only'be realised by maintaining the lowest
material level. It is regulation of consumption in the name of ethics by
suppression of production.
The principle that property is to be derived
from labour is as it were smashed in two, since the fruits of labour may become
the property of the labourer only on condition that he does not work overmuch,
that his work does not become more productive. The absurd ban on work beyond
the level of actual need is by no means a discovery of our days: known in
prehistoric times, it has the longest possible history behind it. The value of
the system can be observed among negro tribes. Where here and there a system was created which allowed each man
to collect the fruits of his labour in unrestricted quantity, entirely
different systems of communal life developed, producing the historic societies,
active and capable of cultivating the whole quincunx of human life.
Such are the paths of natural ethics in their
most important directions. For the greater part they are properly not paths but
bye-ways. Natural ethics does not lead mankind upwards. "It prevents a community raising
itself to the rank of a society because by cultivating poverty it leaves no
room for differentiation in property and occupation; it prevents the emergence
of States of a higher type because revenge buries communities and even
societies in lasting anarchy.
Primary importance, however, attaches to the
fact that from the very beginnings to the peaks of development, spiritual
factors guide even concepts of the material. Here again we discover that
abstractions govern matter. Ethical
phenomena cannot, therefore, be regarded as a kind of sanctions for advantages
which are gained the more safely because under the protection of ethical
slogans. In revenge the avenger exposes himself to great danger, while the
practice of "negro communism" involves loss. In these matters there
is not, and cannot be an infallible penal sanction. It is all done in the name
of duty.[372]
Having stated above that all five categories of
being by their very involvement produce immensely lavish differentiation, let
us adduce by way of example the mutual interaction of the categories of
morality and prosperity. The relation of concepts belonging to these two
categories has more than once shaken the world, and shakes it today. Perhaps
this is after all the most important of the axes on which communal life rests.
They are ridiculous who imagine themselves among the first makers of axis which
is as old as the world.
Since the number of possible combinations in
the quincunx of being is unlimited, upon what condition do these combinations
arrange themselves so as to create a stable association, capable of
development?
Let us suppose that in a certain clan a section
of the members want to remain in partnership, while part set up a community,
and still others organise themselves into a despotism, and let us assume that
some recognise the succession of the clan elder and so also thp general right
of inheritance by primogeniture, others, however, by minorate, let us add that
one lot lives in monogamy, the other in polygamy; one recognises as property
all earnings from labour, while the others take away everything over and above
necessities —and all this in one and the same clan. Far from surviving under a
joint economy, such a clan would clearly disintegrate at once.
It cannot be claimed that any of the
institutions referred to is unsuited to organisation of the clan; they are all
potentially equal to it. An adherent of any of them could found and organise a
prosperous clan—provided it was on its own, provided all the standards did not
meet in a single association. It is clear that some kind of law must be
introduced into every association which is to hold together. But laws cannot be
selected haphazard. Laws inconsistent with one another cannot exist side by
side at the same time, for in that case also nothing will endure.
An association governed in accordance with two
or more systems of the triple law cannot exist; in any one association only one
system of the triple law can be in force. The standards of this triple law must
be so chosen that they are all commensurate, composing one system of the triple
law. For how can a system be evolved where nothing is commensurate—a clan
community, for example, be organised under polygamy? For this standard of marriage law, clan despotism is the
answer, otherwise branches of the same family would fly apart, to say nothing
of branches of the clan. On the other
hand, would monogamy have survived without personal property? Here each father acquires personal and
hereditable property for himself. The triple law must, therefore. be
consistent, and only those societies have developed which have fulfilled this
basic law of history.
But does keeping to a system of the triple law
suffice? What order would reign in a clan each branch of which held to a
different measure of time? And in such case would not the difference insinuate
itself even among members of the same branch?
And what would happen when it came to
regulating time? Those knowing how to save time and to observe dates would be
let down by associates to whom time was indifferent, and after a time the
latter would become parasites upon the former. Yet it is unlikely that men
would long allow themselves to be exploited in this way—such a clan would
rapidly split in two.
Even so, a common system of the triple law
together with a uniform measurement of time and a uniform method of regulating
it is not enough. There remains the attitude to the five categories of being.
Could an association develop and flourish in which contrary and mutually
exclusive views obtained on morality, with consequent emergence of differing views
on justice, on the education of children, on egoism and altruism, and finally
on the mutual relation of the sexes and the very essence of the family? Where
there is divergence in such fundamental matters, what kind of association could
there be, unless for the purpose of mutual extermination? Thus for an
association to endure and develop, ideas on the five categories of being, or on
as many of these categories as exist in a given association, must be
commensurate. Systems of approach to
the quincunx of human being are also decisive for the association. Conflicting
systems lead to hostility, often waking an urge to mutual extermination.
It is the rule that a struggle between
associations occurs when conflicting systems of the quincunx and triple law
find themselves in immediate proximity. On the other hand, the drawing together
of. small associations with the same system or with similar commensurate
systems leads to the formation of larger associations. In this way tribes
emerge from clans and peoples from tribes. All the questions we asked ourselves
a short time ago when examining the problem whether people of varied outlook
who bring with them to the clan different incompatible institutions can
nevertheless create permanent common clan associations—all these questions
arise again when it comes to the problem of the conditions in which a tribe
emerges. Exactly the same considerations apply here as to the creation and
establishment of the clan, and again when it comes to the possibility of tribes
coming together into peoples.
If communal life is to be enduring and
effective, there must be commensurateness in the structure of the association,
which means that the success of an association is the greater the more uniform
the system to Which members hold in the management of their lives. When in a
given association there is only partial commensurateness of system, when system
encroaches upon system, then life is all confusion, since one category of being
may be governed in accordance with one system and a second category with
another. In such an association culture of action must fall ever lower, until
it reaches the point when the associated members are unable to bring themselves
to a single reasonable action. There can be no system without order in thought
and action, and the absence of it must in the end be strikingly apparent and
lead to equally striking tensions within the association; the greater they are,
the more violent must be the symptoms of disorder.
Study of the old but hitherto unutilised
ethnological treasury of Bastian provides interesting and highly instructive
examples. The Asiatic and African countries described by him were inhabited by
groups of clans rarely reaching the level of the tribe. Material he assembled
in the third quarter of the last century reveals most varied forms of the
triple law and of the (defective) quincunx among neighbouring, sometimes even
among related associations.[373]
In tracts of hundreds of miles there existed virtually nothing but
insignificant associations. Bastian simply described the state of things
without being able to draw the conclusions which, in my view, simply impose
themselves. These associations did not unite because they could not do so
voluntarily, their opposed organisation of family life, opposed economic institutions,
etc., inclining them at best to avoid one another. There was an absence of
openings for understanding, but a great many for misunderstanding. Thus among
these swarms of clans and tiny tribes a state of war reigned.
Associations remain primitive for centuries,
until one system of organisation gains control over a larger area. having
repulsed other systems. It is only by a common system of association that a
larger association can be created out of throngs. For in a single community can
there be more than one social structure?
The process of rendering a system of communal
life uniform is not necessarily a voluntary one. If during the struggles between neighbouring little tribes of
differing structure one of them defeats its neighbours and is able to maintain
its overiordship permanently, the institutions of the defeated clans are
extirpated and the triple law and social institutions of the victors imposed.
The defeated decline constantly in numbers and
territory, succumb to pressure, and if they do not become extinct or emigrate,
either form a despised, inferior class or adapt themselves and copy the
victors. We shall never know how many kinds of different social institutions
perished without rising above the primitive stage, only to disappear in a
different kind of primitiveness. Institutions and opinions which are able to
gain control of larger areas and a more numerous population acquire the
possibility of reaching higher levels of development after centuries.
This possibility of course exists only in those
cases where institutions of a lower order have succumbed to higher, that is to
those better suited to development or already more highly developed. But this
is not always the case. History shows how frequently victory in an armed
struggle goes to the element of inferior order; we have no reason to suppose
that in prehistory and among primitive tribes things were or are better. More
than one victory has had the effect of petrifying the primitive, with
likelihood of the attainment of a higher level of development declining from
century to century.
Through the victory of a certain form of the
clan organisation over differing adjacent forms there arrived in course of time
an association of higher type, for while a tribe might emerge from the clans, the
tribal institutions would not always represent progress over all those of the
clans. In other words, there is no progress in social development without the
coming together of clans into the tribe, but not every tribe represents an
advance.
Many factors decide progress, but even should
all combine most favourably, they will be of no avail if the more consistent
system does not prevail. The history of ancient Greece provides us with a
highly instructive example. How high the categories of natural Truth and
Beauty, learning and art stood in Hellas! In these fields the Athenians
succeeded in imposing their work and ideas on the whole of Greece and far
outside Greece. But attitudes to the three other categories of humanity
remained different in almost every corner of the country. Youth was educated
and trained in Athens in one way, in Sparta in another, and the views of Athens
on health differed from those of Sybaris.
Prosperity assumed utterly different guises in Lacedemonia and in
Corinth. What was moral in Thebes caused scandal in Argos. Greek attitudes to
the five categories of the quincunx were various to the point of being so full
of contradictions that there can be no question of any commensurability. Even
methods of regulating time differed. The whole country suffered from the
indecisiveness of the triple law, particularly the property law." And so
in Greece[374] only one
thing was constant—the constancy of revolution. The country passed from system
to system, until general chaos resulted.
Not even the Hellenistic expansion of Alexander the Great could save
Greece. Not learning, art, or the most successful military expeditions can
substitute for the triple law as the basis of association.
Greece remained divided into as many cantons as
there were in her territories systems of the triple law, time-regulation and
attitudes to the quincunx. These cantons did not join together in one larger
State, because their systems did not become uniform, and without uniformity it
was not possible to create any larger association. It was the Romans who
imposed the Roman triple law by force.
Incommensurate basic conditions for association
made it inevitable that the Greeks should not rise above small States., An
association cannot spread beyond the area within which there is compatibility
in type of institutions and outlook. Since such type was accepted by the whole
of Greece, no all-Greek association could emerge. Moreover it should be said
that the necessary consistency in the systems of association, was nowhere found
in Greece, even in the small area in which any given system obtained.
Everywhere, in consequence, the social bond was weak. The unceasing wars of the Greek city-States were caused
precisely because of the existence in near neighbourhood of often mutually contradictory
systems of the quincunx and the triple law.
Thus the history of Greece in antiquity
provides us with evidence that the rule of commensurability binds associations
of all kinds, both lower and higher at every level of development. The more
consistently commensurate institutions and outlook are, the stronger the social
bond and also the tendency to turn the association into the nucleus of an even
larger one. But there is one condition: the commensurateness must be the result
of voluntary consent; it must rest not on law alone, but necessarily on ethical
convictions. Otherwise everything will disintegrate.
Proceeding on these assumptions, we shall
understand the growth of Rome, that antithesis of Hellas in more than one
respect. Among the Romans consistency and logic permeated the entire system of
communal life—so that in the whole vast territory of Rome there was in force
the same concept of the State and society, the same attitude to the categories
of being and the same triple law for everybody who wanted to be civis romanus.
For a long period there was no slightest blemish on this harmony. Peoples
begged to be made subject to Roman law.
An ideally harmonious combination of thought
and act in the sphere of the five categories of being would produce a harmony
of unparalleled excellence, as well as a culture of action of unexampled power
and endurance, an ideal and powerful society. But excellence is not a thing of
this world; always and everywhere something is lacking and something in excess. We often move ahead, but almost always
while moving we stumble.
With an enormous variety of imperfections,
there are also not a few assets. For the incalculable potential variations and
shades in the life of the individual are even greater in the association; nobody
could begin to work out all the combinations possible as a result of the not
quite exact coincidence of our views on the quincunx of humanity. There is no
need to attempt it; here there is variety richer than the greatest ability to
grasp and understand phenomena.
There is a resemblance between the object of
these discussions and crystallography. Pure crystal is the rarest of
exceptions, but without crystallography realities which are sometimes oddly
confused would be incomprehensible. Science observes phenomena in order to
classify them regardless of the fact that the perfect pattern is impossible in
reality.
In a given community newly-arrived, previously
unknown, complications in communal life are a test of the degree of
systematisation and so of development. A new department of Ufa which
constitutes a foreign body in the organism will turn against that organism. A
new department of life must be assimilated, and so call forth a fresh
application of the accepted system. K. however, a breach in the system results,
it brings disintegration with it. If an association acquires novelties which it
cannot reduce to a common denominator or which cannot be harmonised, it begins
to fall apart. Things which are incommensurate, which cannot be coordinated,
may not be combined with impunity. Anything contrary to the system by which the
association is ordered must prove hostile to that association.
It follows from the above considerations that
system is the basis of association. System is simply the combination of commensurateness
and consistency, and since this combination is needed for development, it
follows that only those associations develop which are based on some system.
Degree of development depends on
appropriateness and consistency of system.
The above rule is in the nature of an extreme
generalisation, for we shall not find a comer in the whole range of
manifestations of human intelligence where it would not apply. In everything
there must be some system, for otherwise anarchy or incompetence supervenes; in
one way or the other the result is always the same, well expressed in the
common phrase about everything "coming to pieces in one's hand". If
we cared more for suitable and consistent system in our undertakings there
would be in us and around us more "culture of action" (that is
established capacity for intelligent actions). And the rule with which we ended the preceding section may be
applied to absolutely every human undertaking from the most primitive craft to
the most complicated political convolutions.
In our present investigations we are concerned
with the development of associations and so with the systems in thsm, with the
systems in family, clan and tribal organisations, and consequently in the
social structure, in the organisation of nation and State. All these levels of
association may be expressed in the single phrase—communal life. This is of two kinds—private (family) and
public; and thus includes everything which is not life in isolation, in
opposition to the family and public associations. I include in communal life
the solitary room of the scholar, whose isolation is to be a means of
increasing the resources and differentiating the kinds of that communal life
which is the object of his reflections. Montesquieu's study, for example, was a
real forge of public life, and there are hundreds of similar examples. It is thus' not to private but to public
life that scientific and also artistic activity belongs.
Let us mentally add together all possible
elements of change in family and public life in all the countries of the world
and we shall understand what vastness we embrace with the expression
"communal life". From the first hearths to our own days is an
immensity of time; from the pygmies to the streets of New York an immense scale
of different human attributes. Everywhere and always some kind of communal
existence is evident—almost everywhere and always different
The difference results from the variety of
systems applied in communal life. We have gone through enough material—from
pre-fire blood-drinkers to the splendid beauty of Hellas—to recognise that
peoples differ in accordance with the system by which their communal life is
organised The great differentiating
factors in the world are systems. If all peoples held to the same system the
only differences in the organisation of communal life would be of level, not of
kind; there would be a single kind at different levels of a'development
possible only along one line common to all ages and countries. But there is no
such common axis for the whole of humanity, and so far never has been. For
"humanity" has never existed either historically or sociologically,
it may be called a literary phantom. In reality there exist only certain associations,
fragments of humanity, of which only a few have something in common. There does
not exist any organisation of communal life, common to all humanity, and there
is also no system common to all humanity.
Let us rather consider which are in reality the
largest extant fractions of humanity. Nations do not by any means exist
everywhere, and even States not everywhere.
But where they exist there is a constant search for some supra-national,
supra-State association. While the searching, inventing and patching together
of various novelties go on, not always with advantage for the health of
"humanity", there have existed and always exist natural associations
on the largest scale, and so powerful that they are more powerful than all
powers and armies.
These are civilisations. They resist every
attempt at the artificial creation of large-scale associations which take no
account of differences in civilisation.
Often civilisations—as the highest forces of mankind—overturn and undo
all that has been artificially created without reckoning with them.
Civilisation is the sum of everything which is common to a certain fragment of
humanity; and at the same time the sum of everything by which that fragment
differs from others. And since, as we have shown above, everything without
exception is included in communal life, civilisation includes no more. The
concepts of communal life and of civilisation are therefore close to each
other, to such an extent as to give the impression of being co-extensive.
The supra-national association should be sought
through investigation whether a given system of communal life does not go
beyond the limits of the nation; and into the extent to which people regard the
quincunx of life in the same way or similarly but commensurately. Societies holding to essentially the same
system of communal life create the same civilisation. Here three kinds of
attitude emerge. There are societies which look at all five categories of being
in the same way; there are those which, while looking in the same way at certain
categories differ on others or on only one category, the degree of difference
also varying; there is sometimes uniformity or similarity in fundamental
matters and variety in secondary features—but the opposite also happens; there
is also complete opposition in everything. In interpreting different systems it
is a question of the sum of the whole and of the attitude of man to the whole
and to each part separately. Systems of communal life vary with civilisations;
or in other words Civilisation is the system on which communal life is
organised: civilisation is simply system. This definition is wide enough to
include art and science, ethics and law, economics, education, communications,
for all these belong to communal life. For every manifestation of civilisation
in any field belongs at the same time to communal life. The isolated man does
not create civilisation but the sociable man among men.
The number of systems for the organisation of
communal life is clearly unlimited, that is the number of civilisations is
unlimited. From the point of view of civilisation, mankind is differentiated to
such an extent that only by looking at things from this highest point of the
association do we see with entire exactness and certainty that historically and
sociologically there is no such thing as mankind. How many civilisations there
have been, how many there are cannot be expressed in numbers in the present
state of knowledge. We are far from knowing historically all the systems for
the organisation of communal life which have existed until now; nor can anyone
even count how many there are in the world at present. Not infrequently we
possess too little material to describe the systems of lost civilisations,
whose memorials are dug up; undoubted memorials are also dug up of communal
life which cannot be assigned to a particular civilisation. Among primitive peoples time and again
discoveries are made of systems for the organisation of communal life differing
from all others hitherto known. And there is a long way to go before all
peoples are studied from this angle.
Civilisation of some kind exists everywhere
communal life exists. But this life does not necessarily embrace all five
categories of being; the organisation of communal life may be incomplete. For
there exist incomplete, defective, fragmentary civilisations which are,
however, entirely logical in what they do embrace. Not embracing all the
categories, they may also not embrace all the divisions of any given category.
In this respect there is a great variety of defectiveness. Moreover, the system
of organising communal life accepted in a certain society may give one catsgory
considerable preponderance over another, and inside a category. to a certain
division of it; this preponderance may be disproportionate, and the
insignificance of other categories also disproportionate. Here there arises an unlimited number of all
kinds of combinations. Civilisations may be complete and incomplete, one-sided,
many-sided and universal, uniform and more or less mixed, original and
derivative in whole or part.
The plenitude of civilisation consists in
possesion by society of an organisation of communal life—private (that is
family) and public, social and State—of material institutions and a
moralintellectual system such that all departments of life. fee'ing. thought
and action are harmoniously and logically coordinated.
Many will certainly feel doubt about the use of
the expression "civilisation" to signify absolutely every kind of
manifestation of life, since it has already been agreed to divide these latter
into material and spiritual and to call only one of them civilisation. How
typical it is that some authors use the expression to signify development of
the material side of life, and others the exact opposite, using the name for
the spiritual side. It is the best
proof of the extent to which terminology is still mobile, doubtful. The
opposite of civilisation is said to be culture signifying now this. now that
side of life in different authors.
The division into culture and civilisations
stems from W. Hum-boldt. For
him civilisation is "die Vermenschlichung der Voelker in ihren ausseren
Einrichtungen und Gebrauchen und der daraiif Bezug habenden inneren Gesinnung,
to which culture adds learning and art. Guizot did not oppose civilisation and culture,
but frequently used the expression "culture" in a more specific
sense, e.g. bourgeois culture. Like Humboldt, Kant put learning and art in
culture and called civilisation the outward polish; the sphere of morality constituted
for him a third factor alongside the other two. Wilhelm Wundt includes under
culture "spiritual goods", and calls civilisation ths "external
political and social forms of life"; he assumes that "culture is
connected with nationality, and civilisation attached to the idea of mankind as
a whole united under the leadership of cultured peoples".[375]
H. S. Chamberlain says of the Chinese that they possess much civilisation, a
full mead of pietas and courtesy, but little culture, and that for lack of
techniques. In another place he says that the cynics had much civilisation,
being distinguished by their moral severity, but because they despised learning
and economic goods they had very little culture. And the last century of the Roman Republic could in his view be
called an age of culture but not of civilisation, since as a result of the
civil wars there was much inhumanity and immorality.[376]
From these examples it is evident that even in the same author there is no
precision in the use of the two expressions.
On the whole, however, among German and French
writers inner life is generally termed civilisation and external life culture,
whereas among Polish writers the opposite is true of the use of these terms.
Why, 1 am unable to say, but conclude that the present general position is
unimportant, that no scientific developments have occurred to settle once for
all this corner of terminology, since there is nothing fixed in it.
Moreover the actual setting of the material and
spiritual sides of life over against each other appears to me no more than a
literary formula. It never happens in reality and never was in history. I have
already drawn attention to the way in which the corporal and spiritual
categories of life impinge upon one another, how they are sometimes in such close
harness that it is hard to distinguish between them; thousands of ties bind
them without cease, often indivisibly. In historical research I have never
found the material and spiritual development of any people taking place in even
the slightest degree of detachment.
Historical treatment of the material side of
life as an alleged inevitable opposition to the spiritual led to the so-called
materialist view of history, which would explain all historical phenomena by
the struggle for material existence. With it there spread a strangely false
view of the actual struggle itself. A truly unparalleled onc.sidedness
possessed minds which could accept that "struggle for existence" is
to be understood only as struggle for prosperity. Such excliisiveness is surely
found in reality only among degenerates. The struggle for existence is
three-fold, three times more difficult than the adherents of historical
materialism suppose, but also three times higher, more worthy of man: normal
men struggle for moral and intellectual as well as material existence, but
never for the material alone. The whole impulse of life consists in keeping
afloat or rising as an individual who is respected and considered worthy of
human friendship; in developing one's intellect to the utmost, in addition to
assuring one's daily bread and the comforts of life. It would surely be an
exceptional kind of man who would agree to be rich on condition of becoming at
the same time an object of general contempt and mockery; human ambition
normally reaches higher than money-bags, and prosperity is rather regarded as a
means to make the moral and intellectual struggle for existence easier. Moreover even the cannibal chieftain makes
war on his neighbours not only for the next-door sheep but also for the importance
of his tribe (in European terms, for "prestige".) War frequently
breaks out among semi-savages for "honour", with material advantages
falling to the victors thereafter, as it were by force of inertia, although
when embarking on hostilities they have had no thought of material advantages
and often may have no conception of them at all. Among completely primitive
peoples moral hardship, humiliation, scom are felt more painfully than material
hardship.
In the course of the material struggle for
existence an ethical question constantly presents itself: what is worthy' and
what is unworthy in the struggle for prosperity. And a higher level of
intellect contributes to a higher level of ethics. For although it is the
particular-property of the intellectual struggle for existence that it may be
conducted in isolation from the material and moral, and although in the course
of strictly intellectual development ethical questions are less in evidence
than in the struggle for prosperity— nevertheless intellectual development at a
certain stage comes to be concerned with criticism of both material and moral
issues, and as it were absorbs the whole of ethics, which becomes an
inseparable part of it.
This is perhaps the most complicated puzzle of
the whole of human existence. We know very little about maintaining harmony in
simultaneous moral, intellectual and practical education, about how to
harmonise these three main departments of social life. Nevertheless we see
increasingly clearly how entangled they are, how it is only exceptionally
possible to isolate one kind of struggle for existence. For communal life to
lean to one side of the struggle, to the material, for instance, passing over
the other two. would mean a disturbance whose over-long continuance would necessarily
end in popular anarchy and the decline of civilisation, or at least of the
local culture or the given social class, according to the area and sphere
affected by the morbid one-sidedness. Moreover, lop-sidedness in the struggle
for existence weakens it, curtails possible results. reduces efficiency. This
is, of course, a direct consequence of the reciprocal relations between the
five categories of being and their harmony, as already shown.
The indissoluble knot of the threefold struggle
for existence makes it impossible for the historian to treat material and
spiritual civilisation separately. Eduard Meyer is also right not to
acknowledge a division between political and cultural history, because history
must -present the whole of life. By the history of culture he understands the
history of both material and cultural development; and so here in his view
belong ethics, literature, art, economy.
In Polish nineteenth century history as well as in the opening phase of
the new Polish State a strangely (almost fantastically) close tie may be
observed between politics and literature, popularity of a literary education
alongside unparalleled economic ignorance. There is no room here for talk of
separate historical treatment for material and spiritual affairs, but indeed
the historian may manage without separate terms for them.
For the historian, qualitative distinction
between civilisation and culture is superfluous. Everything that has been written on the point is at best
worthless for historical studies, if not actually disadvantageous for
historical research, introducing fictions in place of realities.
On the other hand, sufficient account has not
so far been taken of another factor which is without a name. It is well known
that every civilisation may contain certain variants distributed
geographically, ethnographically or according to class. Let us consider, for
example, the mediaeval system of organising communal life in Catholic Europe.
That there was one common civilisation will not be denied, but nor can the
differences existing against that background: in the West, the feudal system,
in Poland no feudal system; alongside the dynastic States of the fourteenth
century, in Poland the emergent idea of the national State; one system of
collective life in the towns, another among the knighthood; the differences in
civilisation between the milieu of the troubadours and the Hansa cities. The
long list of such differences in the Catholic Middle Ages was no shorter in
other epochs, and in our own days it is considerable. From the Neapolitan
fisherman to the English miner, the Spanish bullfighter to the Swedish
engineer, what variety! The differences stand out while the similarities are
evident only to a practised eye, trained to look at things scientifically.
For the sum of resemblances during the period
from the beginnings of Monte Cassino to our own days determines the unity and
continuity of our Latin civilisation, in all its variants. These variants are
departments of our civilisation. The relationship is that of the part to the
whole, and is similar in other civilisations.
The historian is constantly dealing with these
component parts of civilisation, but he does not do so systematically,
methodically. We are faced with a basic category of historical research which
has hitherto been treated occasionally and superficially. as the fact that
there are as yet no names to describe these variants eloquently testifies. We
do not know how to designate something which it is essential to distinguish and
which forces itself upon us at every step. What expression should be used to
describe, for example, the relationship between Latin civilisation in Poland
and in Western Europe, as a relationship of part to whole? If we describe more
than one thing by die same name we lose the feeling of this relationship, the
relationship of part to whole.
In this book these parts will be called
cultures. To all charges Of the unsuitability of this designation, I reply in
advance that I will begin to employ another expression immediately one is
indicated to me. Somehow these variants of civilisation must be named, and I
have taken an expression which is free, because not required for the use
hitherto made of it—an impropemse, as I have pointed out. Thus there is Arab
civilisation and Moorish culture, Latin, civilisation and Polish culture,
Turanian civilisation and Uighur and Afghan cultures.
On the other hand I reject terminology for the
separate designation of the spiritual and material: civilisation may be
material and spiritual, culture may also be spiritual and material. To
distinguish one side from the other, I add an adjective. But since such
distinction does not exist historically, it will only exceptionally be proper
to employ these concepts. By thus establishing nomenclature, we shall avoid all
doubts and inaccuracies. With accurate description of the object of
investigation we emerge from chaos to science.
There should be a warning against mixing
science of civilisation with history of civilisation. When there is talk of the
history of civilisation it is necessary to ask which, for every civilisation
has its separate history, whereas the science of civilisation must be concerned
with all civilisations. It seems to me that there cannot be a scientific
history of any civilisation until there has first been a certain development in
the science of civilisation; for it is first necessary to decide certain
general questions—above all the problem of the causes and genesis of
civilisations.
The heart of all scientific investigations in
the field of civilisations lies in the problem: Whence the plurality and
variety of civilisations? This problem is the knot in which all the threads of
all the looms of History are tangled. It cannot be cut, but must bepatiently
undone.
The plurality and variety of civilisation has.
it is true, engaged scholars, but with a strange restriction to the past.
Calculations are made of how many civilisations Acre have been, and their
multiplicity today goes as it were unseen. There is no general admission of
this contemporary plurality. Tacito consensu it is assumed that there is really
only one civilisation, the so-called European, others representing only lower
levels of the one, which is in any case spreading over the world, as witnessed
by the acceptance of our inventions, the introduction of standing armies under
European instructors, imports of cotton for naked Africans, etc. Only the rungs
leading to Europeanisatioa are seen. and the same point of view is applied in
research into the past Although "European" civilisation has not
always existed, the stages through which it had to pass can still be seen among
"savages" representing an historical collection in space. All
endeavours in historical research have been directed to discovery of the plan
of these stages, allegedly of universal validity, in the progress from cannibal
to Prussian lieutenant.
It is not easy to get rid of learned
superstitions. Since I must therefore, be prepared for this book to be held in
disrepute because of the absence in it of primitive communism, matriarchy and
totemism, I do not stand to lose if I add yet another heresy, deny that homo
faber created civilisation, and limit his role to an auxiliary position in the
making of the stages of civilisation, whose kind does not in the least depend
on technical discoveries.
At present the authority of ergology[377]
is perhaps at its height. The genesis of the ergological method lies in the old
trichotomy, in the old view of prehistoric evolution according to the main
elements in the struggle for existence—fishing and hunting, pastoralism.
agriculture. This plan dates from the eighteenth century, and was improved upon
until the end of the nineteenth. E. List, for example, distinguished five
economic epochs: hunting, pastoral, agricultural, agricultural manufacturing,
and, finally, agricultural, manufacturing and trading simultaneously. Patterns
of this kind have, it is true, been abandoned, but in their place we have
ergoist patterns.
For from these first patterns it was only a
step to others, namely to the fixing of periods by the most important
invention-aids in thi struggle for existence. The first attempts are to be
found in L. H. Morgan's Ancient Society (1877) a work which was long a real
codex for an uncounted mass of scholars of all languages; but the author gave
warning that his was a temporary division, since periods would be established
for certain only when the whole history of the acquisition of the means of
existence had been properly examined.
After a time establishment of the periods of
different techniques was tackled directly. Morgan had already said that social
systems were closely dependent on techniques.
He distinguished three periods of the savage state: a low pre-fire
period, a middle period beginning with the use of fire and having for tools
cudgel, flint—up to the bow-and-arrow stage, and a superior level disposing of
wooden vessels, twig baskets, log-boats and knowledge of hand-weaving. With
pottery begins the barbaric stage—first the bow and club, then the domestication
of animals and finally, at a more developed stage of barbarism, the beginnings
of metal-working and settled agriculture. The epoch of civilisation follows,
its essential feature (according to Morgan) being the manufactures which come
more and more to the fore. Morgan supposed that it was only thanks to
agriculture that private property emerged, and through it the monogamous
family. this in turn leading on to the State, etc. The periods of the
development of property were in his view more or less the same as those of the
various kinds of struggle for existence, which depended on tools, so that
everything finally depended on technique. Although he admitted that in more
than one respect the most important department of man's spiritual development
is also embedded in the history of property in the upshot, his arguments
inconsistently make this spiritual development depend on progress in pottery,
weaving, etc.
Limiting myself to the most outstanding
scholars, I shall draw attention to the way in which E. du Bois Reymond later
divided history into three epochs: the first characterised by building,
smelting, casting and stone-quarrying, the second by the three discoveries:
compass, gunpowder and printing; and the third by machines driven by heat.
According to him, one of the most important causes of the decline of the
classical world was its failure to rise above the first level of technique.
Paul Barth justly replied that the Germanic tribes did not have techniques
superior to those of the Romans, who were in any case always improving theirs.
He also drew attention to the fact that primitive peoples sometimes die out at
the very rime they acquire better tools.[378]
The French and Catholic school of prehistory
and ethnology founded by the famous sociologist Frederic Le Play. introduced a
kind of synthesis of the development of the family organisation and the
development of technical skill. Its outstanding exponent J. R. Maurice Vignes
divided his main work La science sociale d'apres les principes de le Play et de
ses continuateurs (1897) into sections: I L'age des productions spontanees. Page des machines; H L'age des machines
(fin). Page de la
houille, delavapeuretdel'electricite. The organisation of family life depended
on the mode of the struggle for existence and on manufacturing technique.
Vignes distinguished in the latter three historical periods: hand-tools,
machinery, coal. Since agriculture was carried out not with hand-tools alone,
it already belongs to the machine period. The acquisition of food began,
however, with hunting and fishing, and with these forms of economy the family
(in Vigne's view) was loose, and paternal authority weak; personal property
consisted in the bow and tools, while the hut was family property and woods or
grazings belonged to the clan. As a result of the keeping of live prey.
huntsmen came in time to keep cattle on the steppes, with a patriarchal family
life and the land, undivided. In agriculture, slavery, etc. developed.
(Sometimes it is not easy to follow Vigne's arguments because of his
indeterminate nomenclature.)
Obviously it is impossible to belittle tools
and techniques as a whole—Erazm Majewski made the point well when he said:
"Only by artificial tools does man create a balance between his physical
side, unequal to action corresponding to his will, and the physical side,
finding expression in that will".[379]
But it is a far cry from this to regarding tools as the chief movers of
history. Lacombc and Weber (Le rylhme du progres) limited the overriding
importance of tools to the first phase of humanity, which was stated to have
been technical and not theological, as Comte had claimed.[380]
Are these not "modernistic" somnia vigilantium'!
Ergotism became the basis of all proto-historic
synthesis to such an extent that even the greatest opponents of the school of
the elder Morgan did not dare cast doubt on it. In Bonn Professor Graebner
tried the same thing as Morgan and Du Roy-Reymond, making the single
reservation that the limits of the periods could not be fixed with complete
accuracy, since they overlapped. The German Catholic school of ethnology
devised the Kultur-Kreise, whose number was finally fixed at seven
(alternatively at eight) by Father Wilhelm Schmidt, one of the most eminent of
all ethnologists, a monk at St. Gabriel outside Moedling in Austria, author of
numerous works, who in 1925 began publication of his monumental synthesis
Voelker und Kulturen (with the cooperation of Father Wilhelm Koppers). This school also links a certain level of
technical ability with a certain level of social and spiritual
development. For example, the first
circle: club, bone, bow, with traces of animism and monogamy; second circle:
stone, cudgel, pike, reed. flute, the beginnings of drawing, and in addition,
animism and magic. The way in which the family and its institutions were
established are among the essential features of every "circle".
Unfortunately this is all still confused with "sexual totemism" and
similar unnecessary intrusions. With all respect for this school from Graebner
to Father Schmidt, I am more convinced by K. Buecher when he writes in Arbeit
und Rhytmus: "There can be nothing less correct than those learned
constructions linking new cultural epochs with the appearance of pottery or
ironwork, with the invention of the plough or the hand-mill. Peoples who know
very well how to make axes and even pipes from iron, still use wooden pikes and
arrows, or cultivate the ground with a wooden spade although they have no lack
of cattle which could draw the plough for them".[381]
Truly it would be hard to find a stronger argument against the classification
of civilisation by work.
It is not possible to keep to any kind of
chronology of work. since in different parts of the world inventions did not
follow in the same order. Ethnology knows tribes which have ceramics and fight
with pikes. The extent to which material civilisation defeats all systematic
arrangement is very well illustrated by the fact that there was no bronze age
on Polish territory. In negro Africa also the iron age immediately followed
upon the stone age, in the same way as in Australia and Oceania, in the greater
part of America and Northern Asia. This alone would mean at least two systems.
If classification by work is unsuited to indicate the sequence of phases
alleged to be inevitable and the same for all civilisations, it will be even
less use in differentiating between civilisations. Is there even one discovery
which could not be passed from one civilisation to another, or indeed anywhere
even one discovery which has influenced the essence of a particular
civilisation?
Can the human race be divided according to any
kind of classification by work, even indirectly, for instance by use of the
razor? The mediaeval Orthodox, regarding shaving as a sin, would come near the
Ainos and the English of Dickens's time; whereas the AngloSaxons of today would
then be closer in civilisation to the Mongols. Aid from ergoism must once for
all he given up in issues basic to the science of civilisation.[382]
The passage of a certain object from country to
country may sometimes be an indication of the roads by which civilising
influences entered—but not necessarily.
For example, the universally-known case of the Maria Teresa thalers in
Abyssinia and the Sudan. The range of wine and olives is not a bad indication
of the range of influence of the old Roman civilisation, whereas the range of
tea is very different from the range of Chinese civilisation, and tea-drinking
no longer has anything in common with the spread of the teachings of Confucius.
Curiously, Korea, so close to China, is not tea-drinking.[383]
How much of America wanders the world with potatoes? But enough of this.
Inventions—from the club to the aeroplane—may
determine the levels of civilisation in each civilisation separately; in each
the question calls for special investigations. For example, the railways changed the tempo of life in Western
Europe—but in Russia not at all. The pot, the well and the mill, those three
epochs of classification by work, were not everywhere of help to women; in many
lands they reinforced the servitude of wives . But the well made possible
regular communications in desert lands, with important consequences for
civilisation. Every invention must be judged separately in differing lands and
times.
It is a strange thing that we do not understand
the question of classification by work, which is generally regarded as
something specifically "archaeological". It nevertheless exists
equally in our days, eternally young and always producing new fruit. The
telephone belongs to it, the radio and everything which is to be discovered
tomorrow. But has Brahmin civilisation altered a jot since Hindus became
railway officials? Has there been some change in Japanese ideas as a result of
the motor-car? And more important, have all our inventions changed anything in
us? Change around us does not mean change in us.
On the other hand, humanist
"inventions" like the will and hereditary names have changed the
world. The application of mathematics to physical products is truly imposing in
its results, but much more important is its application in the humanist field.
Social institutions based on calculation of probability change communal life
more than electrification, and the discovery of amortisable credit
(unfortunately wasted and suppressed in Poland) has accomplished incomparably
more than all technical discoveries together.
Homo faber did not establish civilisation, nor did he make civilisations
different. He has only contributed to the attainment, of higher levels.
Let us pass to other conditions for the
differentiation of civilisations, looking for factors of a higher order. Let us
first consider whether and to what extent civilisation depends on race,
language and religion.
The problem of civilisation and race can be
summed up in the question whether there is any permanent relation between the
variety of civilisation and the variety of race.
If race determined civilisation, there would be
as many civilisations as races, which is not the case; but if there were no
connection at all between the two. the widespread conviction of the dependance
of civilisation on race could not have arisen. Evidently the matter is not
simple—and to settle it, more than one tangle will have first to be unravelled.
The tangles begin with the very definition of race. The sentimental Herder once condemned this expression as unedel, offensive to the dignity of man. He was indignant with those who invented "some five divisions according to the parts of the world, or even according to colour", and dared to call this variety races. Such sensitivity to degradation passed, but there arose doubts about the reality or unreality of a species, strongly reminiscent of the mediaeval disputes between reahsts and nominalists. One set concentrated on the question of species as a strictly abstract concept, regarding it as exclusively a product of human thought, necessary for classification, constituting an indispensable aid for the intellect (Buffon, Bonnet, Lamarck, Naegeli, Wundt, Lehmann); others, however, treated species as a real entity (Linne, Cuvier, Agassiz, Wigand, Wassman S. J;, Lotsy). Darwin's views that species undergo unceasing and farreaching transformation, and that there are no fixed bounds between them, had a great effect on research and opinion.
Jussieu defined race as a fixed variety within
the species. Buffon noted that the establishment of race is relative, since
race disappears when environment is changed. Naegeli emphasised that races may
be formed quickly and as quickly disappear, whereas varieties (according to his
terminology) are formed extremely slowly, but last for centuries. The
generality of natural scientists has after all always linked the concept of
race with the "concept of relationship and hereditary stability".[384]
Races may thus be long-lived and short-lived. More of them emerge than can
survive, and of course only those which are able to establish themselves come
to the knowledge of science.
Having taken all this into account, it is possible
to agree with the definition that race is a variety of a zoological species. A
species may not contain within itself any races, constituting as it were one
race, but it may also embrace many races differing in details not decisive as
far as the essence of the species is concerned. And so alongside the essential
features of man—upright stance, absence of tail, capability for thought outside
instinct—everything else may decide racial allegiance, e.g. colour of the skin.
kind of hair, shape of skull, etc.
In any case it is a matter of corporal features
only. In my view, an exact definition of race would be: Race is a somatic
variety of a zoological species. The term race will be used in this book
exclusively in this sense.
Is civilisation to be dependant on race so
understood? With this assumption another is unavoidably linked—the presumption
that pure races exist. The persistence of this error, abandoned by science two
generations ago, into the present time, may serve as a classical example of the
truly tortoise speed (in the age of radio and electricity) at which scientific
truths spread. In Krzywicki's old handbook dating from 1897, we may read that
"there is no pure race. . . . Even the smallest little tribes living in
the remotest parts reveal traces of racial mixture". Erazm Majewski
expressed himself forcibly, guaranteeing that "there was no racial unity
among the troglodytes".[385]
Edward Meyer noted in 1907 that there should be no assumption of protohuman
conditions either in New Guinea or Australia. In 1921, Fritz Lenz emphasised
that peoples living in isolation, for example, the Vedaas and related peoples
in Ceylon, also die out. Eugen Fischer drew attention to the facts that the
Tasmanians have died out, and that the Australian aborigines, Bushmen, North
American Indians and peoples of Tierra del Fuego are dying out.[386]
Where life pulsates, there race persecutes
race. The variegated mixture of India has long exercised scholars. Mantegazza
put it in this way: "India was at one time, in a very distant epoch,
inhabited by hundreds of races, even by some thousand". He exaggerated
perhaps—but there is in any case a very great number of them. The most varied mixtures resulted from
Mongol, Turanian, proto-Dravidian, Tibetan and Aryan invasions. But the Aryans
are the race of. an hypothesis, and nothing can be said of them for certain.
There is no connection between the Hindus.Aryans and Dravids of today, andthe
classical "Aryans" of the linguists, geographers and historians.[387]
How to undo the anthropological tangle of a vast country which was densely
populated even in the Quaternary Age?
In Polynesia, since we came to know it, there
has been the greatest "disorderly mixture of black, yellow and white
types". Discovered in 1772, the islands were found to be inhabitated by
white, black and brown peoples simultaneously.[388]
Russia also presents no small somatic tangle. The learned Zograf found in
Rostov such a mixture (and without characteristic features!) that an
anthropologist "would waste his time studying them in vain".[389]
Even the gypsies, with their Hindu element, are
mixtures of the most varied European origins. The Hottentots are the product of
a Hamitic-Bushman mixture, but this limited mixture is only to be found in Nama
land; in Cape Province other elements have been added. Perhaps in that case the
Ainos? They have much of the Europeid in them (as the Polynesians have) and are
not Mongols. Their ancestors were once to be found all over present-day Japan.
living in caves; the Japanese, arriving from the direction of the continent,
defeated and almost exterminated them. In the process a good deal of Aino blood
mingled with Japanese. On the island of Jesso (now Hokkaido) this mixture
survives in the neighbourhood of Mororanu and Uso, even Japanese quarteroons;
traces of the Ainos are to be found as far as Formosa. Once the Scandinavian
Lapps were pure "Mongols", today they are a mixture: similarly with
the Finns, Karelians, Samoyeds, Zyrians, Voguls, Ostyaks and further to the
west the eastern Slavs.[390]
The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands and the Esquimoes pass as racially
purest.[391]
Among the intelligentsia there is a widespread
superstition that the Jews are outstanding for purity of race. But it was Renan
who said that there is no Jewish type, only types, while in Krzywicki's old
handbook we read that the "racial composition of the Jews is
"eightfold". More recently Fischer has declared that there is no
Jewish race to discuss, that they possess a "most extensive range of
somatic features". In Palestine they were a racial mixture from the
beginning.[392]
Racial mixtures are being produced in our days
in all parts of the world, as the result both of armed invasion and peaceful
immigration. For instance, in Central
Africa "Arabs settling among the negroes, usually on hills, surround
themselves with a palisade, rob the black population and take wives from among
them". Arabs are also scattered throughout the whole of Mauretania. among
the Moors in northern Morocco, the Berbers in the east and the negroes in the
south.[393]
Moreover, somatic changes in man are in a
constant state of flux, with new races emerging from the mixture of the old.
Mixture on a large scale does not, however, happen always, all the time, but
only sporadically; so that the purity of a race which, although coming into
existence as a mixture, does not go on receiving admixture, at least on any
scale, may be maintained. Stagnation in inter-breeding may maintain the purity
of an older mixture from which a new race arose. This is precisely the case
with the Jews: for a long period the Palestinian mixture ceased to mix in the
diaspora.[394]
The question is whether every crossing produced
a new race. The answer is in the negative—new races may, but need not emerge
from inter-minglmg. The first condition for a new race is permanence of the
features inherited by a considerable number of generations, in other words,
continuity of inheritance. On this point, there is already unanimity among
scholars: there is no heredity other than that according to the laws of Mendel,
which includes the law of the consequences of crossing. For instance, a race of
low stature will always remain short[395]
until it crosses itself with a taller, when the stature of offspring will
conform to "Mendelianism".[396]
Among men, experience confirms a thousand-fold
that the brunette passes on his features more strongly than the blonde, and the
negro twice as strongly as the white. Wernick showed how children of a Japanese
woman and a German tend to be delicate, while the offspring of a Japanese woman
and a Frenchman may be healthier than those of two Japanese parents.[397]
There are crossings which are unfertile or
productive of weaklings. Schwalbe asserts that no damage is done by
blood-changes between mouse and rat, rabbit and hare, animals close to each
other, but they are very harmful between more distant animals, for example the
cat and guinea-pig.[398]
Adametz, the biggest name in the field of scientific research on
cattle-rearing, asserts that bastard species are usually sterile.
Breeding problems require time for settlement.
Breeders long thought that crossing reinforced parental characteristics, with
preponderance of good points over faults. They were misled by the evident
vigour of such mixtures, which recent investigation only confirms, adding
interesting details. Bastards of lion and tiger are larger and heavier than
either parent. Offspring of guinea fowl and hen of a fighting breed reveal
exceptional aggressiveness. Cramp's rats, deliberately inbred, were
famous. Mixtures are considerably more
resilient under all kinds of hardship, especially where the bloodmixture is
less than half. But when the experiments have a little time behind them, it
proves that the vigour lasts barely a generation and then ends, and is even
succeeded by enfeeblement. Moreover, bastards prove unfertile, sometimes
totally, as in the case of mules. Mules live a hundred years, but never produce
another mule.[399] It has
also been discovered that bastards often go wild. Pig-bastards are known for
this. In Patagonia bastards of the sheep-dog went wild and seized the sheep
they were supposed to guard.[400]
Among people more or less the same mixture
sometimes produces different results.
For example, cross-breeding of Norwegians and Lapps does not lead to any
improvement of the race, but on the contrary: "In truth, it is rare for
anything good to come of it; most commonly this mixed blood brings to the
surface only negative features".[401]
Apparently in Brazil, a certain section of those of mixed Portuguese and
coloured blood, the so-called caboclos, constitute a truly lamentable type.
"Today in the neighbourhood of Horretes or Paranagua there are no Indians
at all, but there are very few people who do not have in their veins a certain
percentage of Red Indian blood. Round Horretes and in the whole coastal area
the caboclos are physically miserable, tormented by venereal diseases
(inherited from the Indians?) and unfitted for life".[402]
But we know from other sources that there is no lack of physically highly
successful Spanish-Indian crossings (the Mexicans, for instance). Nor is there
any lack of healthy mestizos in Brazil. Indian blood may be recognised by the
"straight. hard, blue-black hair, broad face and melancholy glance of the
passerby in the streets of the port of Paranagua.[403]
Mendelianism strictly defines the hereditary
bounds of features, of various kinds, but it does not answer the question what
the conditions are either for fertility, lasting or of short-duration, or for
sterility. Presumably the case is the same as with animals: related racial types
produce for the greater part good results from crossing; distant types. on the
other hand, for the greater part give unfortunate results.
Julian Talko-Hryncewicz found that this was the
position in the Turanian East, on whose peoples he was the greatest expert.
Crosses between Chinese men and Mongolian women produce excellent results,
creating for example in Urda "a handsome . . . intelligent
type". Children from unions
between Chinese men and Buryat women, but "particularly" Mongolian
women, resemble Spaniards. On the other hand, unfavourable results follow the
union of Chinese men and Russian women, who "stand racially at a greater
distance".[404]
In any case of what are races formed, if not of
related anthropological types? We repeat with Czekanowski that "only a
considerable number of types fairly close to each other form a race. Race is a
creation of anthropological analysis, and not an entity already given to us
directly in nature. The anthropology of races in fact present a classification
of human kind".[405]
Thus not belonging among direct natural phenomena, races emerge with time. in
time and for a time, as products of cross-breeding.
But the mingling of races to form a new race is
an extremely slow process, to such an extent that the same races (let us say
the same products of racial mixtures) are peculiar to whole epochs. Czekanowski
himself mentions the detail that "the population round Lw6w has undergone
no change since the middle of the seventeenth century"—but "in the
population of the Black Sea steppes there is, despite everything, continuity
reaching back to the nomadic Iranian population", for "the broad
noses of the people of the Ukraine indicate the survival of the old population
of the steppe territory in considerable strength". But weighing most
heavily in the scale is the fact that it is possible to verify "continuity
in the development of European relationships. . . . From the Bronze Age to the
present time the population of Europe has been composed of the same racial
elements, and the extreme long-headed and Nordic types reach back far into the
later Paleolithic. Even more strikingly evident is ... the continuity in the
spheres investigated by prehistory and ethnograhpy".[406]
"In the Bronze Age the population of Europe had already achieved a racial
composition very similar to the present". "From the Ice Age to the
present time we have to deal with racial elements found among the population
living at the present time".[407]
And so it is legitimate for the historian to
assert that our epoch has its races (even although obviously resulting from a
previous mixture) and it is permissible within these limits to talk of races.
Even so for the historian these limits are extremely wide—wider we do not need!
The canon of racial features is still an open
question; for there is no agreement on which somatic variations are to be
considered indications of racial difference. At one time (from Cuvier 17691832)
the canon was colour of skin. but Cuvier recognised only three races: white, black
and yellow, treating Indians as a variant of yellow, in opposition to Linnaeus
and Blumenbach who recognised the separateness of the "red-skinned"
races. But then more and more "colours" were discovered and
described. To avoid misunderstandings, shade-table of these colours were
compiled. The best of them, drawn up by the Frenchman Paul Broca (1824-1880)
and accepted almost everywhere, enumerates thirty-four shades, indicated by the
numbers used to designate them. The English anthropological institute prepared
an edition with the shades simplified to ten, according to the suggestions of
Topinard.
Soon, however, colour of the skin came. to be
regarded as only a secondary racial feature, and first place was taken by
variety of skull, of the head as a whole and of certain facial details and even
hair. In 1843 the Swede A. Retzuis introduced the division into longand
short-headed, and Paul Broca, having reduced to order all that we call
anthropometric measurement, added a third division— the medium-headed.
Max Mueller's idea of seeking in linguistic
relationships, in combination with somatic features, a means of indicating
racial affiliations and kinship was rejected. After all race is a zoological
matter, and language social. It was easy also tp discover that different races
sometimes speak the same tongue, or a similar one. and people of the same race
different tongues. Nor are "present-day linguistic areas identical with
anthropological areas".[408]
On the other hand, there was increasing
readiness to accept the view of. Huxley, ..who in 1870 denned races by hair.
although flaeckel's suggestion in 1879. that this should be adopted as a basic
feature did not survive. In the end, science adopted a combination of the
features of hair. "colour" and anthropometric measurements.
As somatological differences became better
known, more races appeared for the anthropologists. Adding
"secondary" races to "chief" races, in 1860 Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire obtained thriteen. ten years later Huxley fourteen, while in 1879
Haeckel got to 34: Topinard in 1885 counted nineteen races, Quatrefages in 1889
one less.[409]
Now the most recent expression of scientific
opinion is the table (fruit of thirty years' work) drawn up by J. Deniker,
enumerating 29 races and dozens of "sub-races" grouped in
"categories". The basic division is into five categories (A—F)
according to hair, account being taken of colour of eyes (and in one case shape
of nose), while the sub-divisions come from combinations of all the features
and are even in two stages. The population of Europe is not fitted into a
single category, but divided between two.[410]
On a special map of Europe Deniker indicates six "principal" races:
Nordic, coastal or Atlantic-Mediterranean,
eastern. Adriatic or Dinaric, insular-Iberian, western or Cevennole—and four
"secondary": sub-Nordic, north-western, Vistulan and sub-Adriatic.[411]
Jan Czekanowski treats these matters in more or
less the same way. In the "European" anthropological team he includes
the Finnish peoples and some of the names he uses are different, which is to be
accounted for by his researches into the anthropology of Polish territories.
According to him, the basic outline of the matter is as follows:
In the later Paleolithic age it may be assumed
that Lapponoids were the main constituent of the population of Poland. This is
the same element which "constitutes the basic component of the UgroFinnish
and Turkic peoples" (the Cevennole race in Deniker). In the Neolithic
period there is already an admixture. "The old Neolithic population, the pre-Slavonic
type (in Deniker race orientate), constituting the basis of population
throughout the whole of our territory and in the neighbouring European
territories" . . . "is a mixture of Lapponoidal with Mediterranean
(insular-Iberian) ". An increasingly important place and in the end first
place was taken by the Nordic race and by the sub-Nordic type composed of
"various mixtures of the Nordic type". We also have here and there
the "Alpine combination", which is a mixture of Nordic and
Armenoid". The "steppe population was formerly Iranian. ... It is
this and not the Dinaric type which is the essence of the anthropological
separateness of the Ukraine".[412]
This was a victory for Niederle's thesis, once
regarded as bold. that the original Slavs were of Nordic type, and that
Slavonic expansion was undoubtedly, from an anthropological point of view,
expansion by the Nordic race. By the end of the first millenium, the
predominant type among Slavs was long-headed, as it was among the ancient
southern Germans. Adequate attention was at length paid to the fact that
ancient authors (notably the Byzantines and Arabs) describe the Slavs as
light-haired. It was also at last realised that the present zone of
short-headed Slavs is an inconsiderable part of Slav territory, and includes
for the most part lands which became Slav only in historic times, as for
instance everything south of the Carpathians.[413]
Czekanowski finally recognises in Europe four
basic races ("types") and six mixed ones, whose genesis and relations
he defines thus: basic are the Nordic, Mediterranean. Armenoid and Lapponoid
types; from a mixture of Nordic and Lapponoid there developed the sub-Nordic
type, from Nordic and Armenoid the Dinaric, from Nordic and Mediterranean the
north-western;
Armenoid mixed with Mediterranean produced a
Littoral type, and w'th Lapponoid the Alpine; finally the crossing of
Mediterranean and Lapponoid produced the pre-Slav type.[414]
But the same scholar immediately gives warning that "isolation of the
pre-Slav type presents considerable difficulties".[415]
There is no lack of doubts, which is not
strange, since progress in science is born of doubt. The leading German
authority on these matters. Eugen Fischer, complicates the issue still further
by collecting features drawn from archaeology (considering for example that
line graves are a Nordic feature) lists seven ."anthropological
circles", and these are divided into races, geographically extremely mixed
(chiefly as a result of wanderings). All German scholars are particularly
intent on following up the range of the long-headed blond, in the mistaken
opinion that these features are indubitable indications of German or at least
Germanic blood. But it has already been established that they are by no means
racial features of the mass of Germanic peoples today,[416]
while Scandinavia itssif reveals quite a number of the short-headed.
After all this, the state of anthropology
invites pessimistic comment. Eugen Fischer has said that at present not
anthropology but only anthropography i.e. simple description is possible. There
are plenty of contradictions revealing the inadequate consolidation of the
science. For example on the pygmies, Fischer himself says in one place that
their original relations with the negroes cannot be defined. and that it cannot
be stated whether both are autochthons of Africa—in another he regards them as
the older race, once settled throughout Africa and also in the Mediterranean
area of Europe.[417]
But even on the southern Europeans views differ to such an extent that while some
see in them an admixture of negro blood, Fritz Lenz emphasises that what all
white in all their varieties have in common. is the significant drop of Nordic
blood and the absence of negro.[418]
Fischer, on the other hand, points not only to the Turkish admixture in
south-eastern Europe, but to the Arabic and also the Berber in Spain "and
through their intermediary to the negro clearly evident here and there in Spain
and Portugal".[419]
In Czekanowski's most recent work it .is said
that "the appearance of dark-skinned components is a significant feature
of the population" (of Europe) in the Paleolithic epoch,[420]
and the so-called Neanderthal race is "hypothetically" linked to the
Austro-African type. that is the type which was settled mainly in the forest
zone of Central Africa. But two other types of black race are linked with the
Europe of earlier epochs: the negroid type is directly identical with the
European negroids, while the Nigritian or Sudanese is linguistically related to
the Basques (monosyllabic roots, absence of grammatical genders and forms for
the plural). All this may be a trace of the former connection between Europe
and Africa.[421]
Despite the still widely divergent judgments of
anthropological scholars, justice demands recognition that the science has got
rid of a quantity of old errors. For example it has been established that the
Indo-European is a matter of language, and not genetics, since there are no
similar morphological features.[422]
No serious scholar still speaks of the "Aryan race", since the Aryan
is only a linguistic relationship, in no way deciding the question of common
blood. In the same way the until recently dominant Celtic-Slav theory has also
proved to be fantasy.
Gone beyond recovery is the alleged tribal
unity of both German and Slav. And Pittard emphatically denies that the
northern and southern Slavs could be of common origin. Balkan Slavs are in no
way ethnically related to the Russians, and on the other hand the features of
the Slavs of the Abruzzi, alleged descendants of the Dalmatians, are very far
removed from those of the Dinaric race.[423]
At one time the Nordic race alone reigned in
Northern Europe and stretched deep into Central Europe. Anthropologically,
Celts and Germans represent "two immediately successive waves of the
expansion of the Nordic type".[424]
Germans, Celts and Slavs were originally anthropologically "completely
identical", and the differences emerged later as a result of the influx of
foreign blood. The Celts melted into the population they found in their new
homes. The Slavs mingled with the Mongols, the influence of whose blood is also
found deep into Germany. The Alpine race, on the other hand, pushed as far as
Scandinavia, and ths Lapps southwards.[425]
And there is no such thing as a "Latin
race". Among the peoples using one of the Romance tongues there are as
many as five races: Nordic, Atlantic-Mediterranean, Adriatic, insular-Iberian
and Cevennole.[426]
The difficulties mount when it comes to parts
of the world whose anthropological material is incomparably less thoroughly
investigated, and the lack of established nomenclature too often bears witness
to ideas which are still fluid. The whole question of the genealogy and
affiliation of races is completely uncertain, a true groping in the dark. And
will it ever be settled, since the vast bulk of the materials for prehistoric
anthropology is lost?
And yet across the gaps and mists of doubt
there is the glimmering of an attempted synthesis (with Polish scholars leading
the way):
Asia represents the oldest element in the human
race (with the "oldest centre" in Mesopotamia). In Asia also the
territories of the yellow and white races meet in an indented line through the
Turan, Pamir and Himalaya.[427]
The population flowed into Eastern Europe from Asia (Finno-Ugrians). while in
the west the oldest, black element came from Africa. The original population of
Africa. Australia (Oceania) and America arrived from Asia. "In the East
Indies lies the hub of this common link" with Australia and Africa. To
America (where there is no trace of Quaternary man[428]
there certainly existed a land bridge (instead of the Behring Strait) which
kept out the cold currents from the Arctic Ocean.[429]
Two SouthWest Asian types are also to be found in Africa and in Oceania and
"are linked to the black race by a number of features".[430]
In Abyssinia and the Somali peninsula "the great wealth of Asiatic
elements is striking".[431]
The African Hamites are arrivals from Asia.[432]
But this prehistory of proto-population
stumbles when it comes to the subsequent history of the human race; only a few
things can be linked, and hypothetical bridges erected. Thus in Northern Asia,
for example, the Paleo-asiatic type is singled out as a bridge between the
yellow and white races (ampler hair. and the Mongolian fold a rarity), but this
"singling-out presents considerable difficulties".[433]
And the hypothetical proto-Hamites depend for their existence on speculation
alone: "put forward as a theoretical necessity by the linguistic
experts".[434]
The canon of racial features may itself
likewise undergo complete change as a result of the new bio-chemical
discoveries. Signs of blood differences have long been known, and much can be
read about them in the old text-books. A separate department of medicine,
so-called missionary medicine, has grown up in response not only to the
different diseases, but also to the different effects of these diseases in the
missionary countries of Africa and Australia —an observation which in recent
years should be broadened to include India. Step by step the thread has led to
the clue, to the discovery that racial differentiation exists even in the blood
of man, and in a way not unconnected with the colour of his skin.
The most recent studies have concerned
themselves with precisely this question of blood. Biochemistry has grown out of
serology. I repeat the words of the most competent of Polish race-experts:
"These serological investigations are directed to establishing
similarities and differences in the various forms of animals on the basis of
the properties of their plasma, their blood and other liquids, secrations, or
components of albumen, which reveal themselves by the animals* way of reacting
to foreign elements (cells and their products, solutions of foreign albumen)
which have entered their system by injection". "Here it is a matter
of defining, on the basis of similarities and differences in the bio-chemical
nature of their plasma or their albumen, the similarities and differences
arising between organisms, and manifesting themselves in various biochemical
reactions".[435]
The method of biochemical research not only
"makes possible the uncovering of racial differences", but has
already reached such excellence that "if the biochemical structure of the
red blood corpuscles of mother and child are known, in a given case by investigating
the blood it is possible to recognise among a given number of men who is the
father of the child". In other words, the two kinds of isoagglutinates in
the serum of human blood correspond to two biochemical structures in the red
corpuscles of human blood: A and B. Four serological human types or races are
distinguished, namely A, B, non-A, non-B. When the characteristics A and B
appear in one individual, the result is type AB; when the characteristics non-A
and non-B meet, type 0 results. "The said biochemical characteristics are
permanent, inherited, according to the laws of Mendel and entirely independent
of the state of health of the individuals concerned; they also occur, entirely
independently of morphological anthropological features".
"Characteristic" for the European is
the relatively frequent appearance of the A feature—in more than 40% of
individuals—and the relatively rare appearance of the B feature—in between 10
and 20% of individuals. Contrariwise,
among Asian and African nations A is rarer, below 30%, and B more common, among
Hindus even reaching 50%.
The source of feature or type A is Europe, the
source of B Asia. Nations inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, as
well as Russians and Jews who, from a serological point of view have similar
blood, represent a middle type between the European and Asiatic. Considered in relation to feature A, Poles
are of European type, in relation to feature B they belong to a middle type
(influence of the east). Serologically, Ruthenian blood is Asiatic.[436]
Jan Mydlarski worked independently in this
field, and Czekanowski has said of him: "The link, between anthropology
and serology is one of the very great achievements, for it creates completely
new bases for research into the past of human kind".[437]
Since A and B do not always appear pure,
Czekanowski distinguishes AA and AO, BB and BO, bearing in mind primarily
"coagulation and non-coagulation of blood-cells" between kinds of
blood. The biochemical distribution of blood on Polish territory is of such a
kind that "we cannot reconcile the result with our information on the
proportions of the morphological components".[438]
In any case, races exist, only in speaking of
them we must add:
races of our epoch. But is this addition not as
a rule self-understood, does it not usually follow logically from the context?
Thus all the doubts raised by the fact of
"racial chaos" have served to teach us about the genesis and nature
of races, but have certainly not disposed of their existence. And here let us
repeat after Czekanowski: ''Considering the results of genetic research it is
to be assumed that types and by the same token races are no mere definitions,
but possess real existence".[439]
And now one further point: have races according
to "colour** really dissolved into nothing? In all the races, racial types
and circles of Deniker and Fischer is there any bi-coloured race? It has merely
been demonstrated to us that for every colour there are several races!
So what is happening is a modest retreat to
Cuvier! In the most recent (1930-1932) anthropological works we read: "If
the results of our morphological research hitherto are correct, and in the
human race we have six racial elements and fifteen variants on them, it would
be highly probable that linking up originally with Cuvier's three races, the
three biological components of blood, together with their three mixtures
constituted the basis of the six morphological racial elements".[440]
Czekanowski had already spoken (incidentally) in 1927 of the yellow and black
race.[441] The Pole
Poniatowski finally included the "Redskins" in the yellow race.
The three "colours" are thus
something above race, something more, something wider than race. Let us call
them "racial stocks". This is not in any way to detract from the
knowledge that colour of skin is dependent on conditions to which the pigment
is exposed; we are not disputing the view that if negroes were exposed for long
enough to the action of the crooked Polish sun they would grow much paler. But
before the requisite length of time had elapsed, a new epoch would have
arrived.
I consider, therefore, that the supplementary
question "when?" makes it permissible to reply positively to the
question "what races are there?"—every epoch has its own;
Let us pass now to the question of the
psychical consequences of crossing, which will bring us nearer to our
fundamental problem: What is the relation between the variety of civilisations
and the variety of races?
Scepticism in the matter of race reached the
point when its very existence was questioned.
In our scientific literature this doubt was most forcibly expressed by
Professor Michal Sobeski: "Race has only psychological meaning. Thanks to
a certain resemblance between people in certain conditions, the illusion of
race is created".[442]
From psychological it is only a step to-the sociological race; this term is
used by Professor Floryan Znaniecki, who asserts that as a rule
"anthropological race and sociological race are entirely
incommensurable", and "the limits of civilisations have never
coincided with racial limits", since the "reciprocal influences among
civilisations and among the inter-mingling races never kept step".[443]
The expression "historical races" is also increasingly used —first,
it seems, by Le Bon in the sentence: "The majority of the historical races
of Europe are still at the formative stage, and it is necessary to know this in
order to understand their history".[444]
Still other "races" may be invented,
depending on the standpoint adopted towards them. And was the ancient division
into fishing, pastoral and agricultural peoples not the classical
classification of "sociological races"?
The employment by science of the same
expression in different meaning is dangerous, because it leads to confusion.
For my part I shall continue to use the expression "race" exclusively
in the somatic meaning, without regard to the spiritual side of man. I also
judge that for the expression of what Le Bon and all his successors have in
mind. the expressions: people, nation State, races which created States, would
be entirely adequate. If historical,
sociological and all psychological manifestations are put together, what is the
result if not a system for the organisation of communal life, and so a
civilisation? And is not this what scholars have in mind when they use these
expressions? If the expressions "psychological race" or
"sociological race" were replaced by the word
"civilisation" the meaning of their arguments would not be altered a
jot In fact they themselves often use the word as an alternative to the other
expressions.
Application of the nomenclature proposed by me
to the just observations of Professor Znaniecki, gives the same result in more
precise form, namely that race and civilisation are entirely incommensurate.
But this is still not exact and precise enough, because there is some
commensurability between them; so that the thesis should run: race and
civilisation are not entirely commensurable. and the degree of commensurability
may vary from extremely slight to extremely high.
It is certain that there is no permanent
relation between race and civilisation. And a quite primitive knowledge of
history is sufficient to bring realisation that within one civilisation there
may be different races—and in one race different civilisations.
At this point it is necessary to deal with the
problem whether and to what extent psychological racial features exist.
Czekanowski rightly says: "Reckoning with the racial factor in the history
of humanity is only a consequence of reckoning with the fact that racial
differentiation is not confined lo the sphere of morphology".[445]
But we shall not now return to those strange views (long since overthrown) that
anthropology should marshal history; particularly. on the issue of
"psychological races" and all "communal psychology",
history has a considerable store of information of its own.
Let us consider the relation of communal
psychology to race in the light of various anthropological arguments, but also
of historic experience.
We know from experience that Alpine, Dinaric,
Iberian and other psychologies are undoubtedly distinguishable, so that racial
psychologies exist—they hit one in the eye! A Berliner makes a quite different
impression from a Viennese, an inhabitant of Mecklenburg from an inhabitant of
the Tyrol, even if somebody has placed them in the same "historical
race". In the same way a Silesian and a Kuyavian are psychologically
distinct. The more external (and so superficial) these features are, the plainer
they are, so that the generality of people judge the psychology of a given
ethnic group by them.
But going deeper into the matter, we notice
that these are differences affecting only disposition—differences of
temperament, movement, diction. They may really depend on some secondary
somatic differences even within the same race. The matter has not yet been
investigated. Probably disposition is made up of the manifestations of a
certain middle area between the body and soul of man—primitive, very low-level
manifestations where the dependence of spirit on the body is still greatest
Perhaps psychology will one day take up this part of life, and develop a new
branch of psychology from it, a new specialised science. Then we may be able to
account for the "briskness" of the Cracow man and the
"phlegm" of the Silesian.
To this field of phenomena and research surely
belong such questions as the facts discovered by L. Jaxa Bykowski, that
children remain "childish" longer in Great Poland, and are also
unresponsive to competition.[446]
Jan Czekanowski, writing of the application of anthropology in pedagogy, drew
attention to the fact that even such small racial differences as those between
Great Poland and the south-eastern provinces call for different pedagogical
handling. He concluded that differences arise in the nervous system, and from
them derive the different dispositions, the "constitutional"
differences of individuals.[447]
Here also belongs fascinating research into' the conditions for maximum effort
(with their first pull on the ergometer the Nordic team produced the maximum
effort).[448] Here would
also bslong inquiries into whether superior or inferior abilities follow upon
anthropological differentiation,. and the different directions taken by these
abilities (towards mathematics and science or towards the arts), provided views
appearing on this matter were based on a less loose (almost arbitrary) creation
of morphological groups.[449]
These too are matters of disposition, although already more complicated. They
do not affect character, still less attain the heights of the great problems of
civilisation.
Disposition and character are mutually
independent. Disposition may derive from somatic or psychical factors, whereas
character is based on psyche alone. There may be different characters with the
same disposition, and the same character may reveal itself in different
dispositions. Nevertheless the question of disposition has absolutely nothing
to do with civilisation.
In the problem of the existence of psychical
racial features the issue is character, at least character, as well as views on
good and evil, beauty and ugliness, benefit and harm; for upon them systems of
communal life grow up. Do such fundamental psychical features have any
connection with race—here is our question. It is a question which splits into
two: may they have a connection, or must they have one, i.e. they cannot not
have it In other words. may the psyche accompany race, or is it dependent on it
through some inevitable tie directly resulting from the difference of race
itself; is then psychological variety the result of race?
For a dozen or more years before the North
American Civil War (1861-1865) over the maintenance or abolition of slavery.
there was a controversy about precisely these questions. If was argued directly
from polyphiletism that the negro must have a psyche lower than the European
planter. Types of Mankind (1854). a famous book by joint authors Nott and
Gliddon. advanced scientific arguments against negro emancipation, while the
renowned Agassiz. declared: "It would be vain for us to seek relationship
between eagle and owl, ass and horse", by which he meant between black and
white. In rejecting arguments of this .kind, it is also necessary to reject the
diametrically opposed view of our contemporary, Sageret Finot. to the effect
that if negroes had lived for a sufficiently long period of time under the same
conditions as white peoples, they would have achieved relatively quickly our
intellectual and moral level. But what certainty is there that they would use
their abilities to make themselves like us, and not in precisely the opposite
direction?
We are led out of these-tangles by awareness of
the circumstance that no psy^e can be formed on anything but ths five
categories of being, on our "quincunx". Now if characters and views
on the "quincunx" depended on race we should have dolichocephalic
intellects, civilisations of blonds and brunettes, prognathous views, etc., in
other words we should immediately jump into the depths of absurdity. Let who
will work out 29 civilisations for Deniker*s table; but Alpine, Dinaric,
Vistulan and other types of psyche exist only in the field of phenomena of a
lower order, and are not distinguishable in the phenomena which create
civilisations. There is no Vistulan, Cevennole, Lapponoid, Nordic, sub-Nordic
or similar civilisation, on the other hand there is a difference in
civilisation between Croat and Serb, although there is no racial difference
between them. And another fact confirmed by history is that a given ethnic element
may change civilisation without changing racially (the Finns and Magyars).
It follows that the psyche (going deeper than
disposition) is in no way a racial matter, and not in the least dependent on
somatic circumstances.
The next question presents itself: is the
communal psyche constant or changing? History reveals the changeable spirit of
associations. Before the sixteenth century the English were not sailors. The
greatest pacifists of today, the Swiss, lived mainly by soldiering for money
before they became a society of hotel-keepers.[450]
The Swedes were the worst militarists of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, expanding into countries with which they had nothing to do. Between the middle of the fourteenth and
the middle of the sixteenth centuries, Poles were becoming more and more of a
bourgeois society. Under King Sigismund the Old there were complaints that
almost the whole Cracow province had been bought up by townsmen; the majority
of Polish aristocratic families come from towns. And what happened to our towns
afterwards? The Germans too were changeable: until the middle of the eighteenth
century they were famous as drunkards, and afterwards for lack of
practicability. And how the psychology of the ancient Romans changed!
Peoples of short stature always remain
short—but kinds and levels of communal psyche are emphatically changeable. The immutability of psychical racial
features was first advanced by Gobineau, and the popularising of this view dates
from Le Bon. From hian derives the thesis that every people has une
constitution mentale aussi fixe que ses caracteres anatomiques.[451]
As he also states in another place that I'histoire (Tun peuple derive toujours
de so. constitution mentale,[452]
which he regards as unchanging—the history of every historic society would be
predetermined. But Le Bon did not see this consequence.
The example put forward by him and since
repeated a thousand times in all languages, according to which there is rooted
in French mentality an urge towards centralisation and the destruction of
private initiative in favour of etatism (with the great Revolution carrying on
the programme of the old monarchy) does not bear inspection, for French
centralism emerged only in time —and up to Louis XI it would be hard to point
to any sign of it. Le Bon was altogether unable to develop his ideas logically.
Once he identifies race and mentality, saying plainly L'histoire d'un peuple ne depend pas de ses institutions mais de
son caractere, c'est d dire de sa race.[453]
On another occasion, however, he says that "psychical types are no more
lasting than anatomical"71[454]—so
distinguishing the one from the other.
Friedrich von Hellwald in Kulturgeschichte in
ihrer natiirlichen Entwickung his zur Gegenwart (third edition 1884) also
regards psychical racial features as permanent, and claims that every people
has a certain inborn psychological racial character, determining the course of
its thought and activity. A spokesman of the most recent science, Pittard, does
not admit this unchangeability. In his view at a given time some races may be,
for example, more warlike, others more peaceable, but this changes. He says
there are peoples who die of hunger in a place without attempting to expand out
of it,[455] but he
does not say that such a people could not change.
Thus if something permanent is discernible in
the mentality of a race, it does not derive from somatics and has only a
circumstantial not a causal connection with race. There is a highly significant
example: what is there that is permanent in the race to which the ancient
Egyptians belonged and to which today the Nubians, their rightful descendants,
belong?[456] Le Bon
himself, an advocate of the unconditional dependence of psyche on race, drew
attention to this particular racial identity; he was convinced that none of her
conquerors had left their blood in Egypt[457]
(which indeed must have required a miracle). Why then has the level of the
Egyptian psyche fallen to the Nubian level, and why is it of not at all the
same kind?
Equally popular is the case of those other
descendants of the creators of a great civilisation, the nomadic Arabs. But not
all are nomadic. In Arabia itself, the
Arabs form three strata— nomads, farmers and town-dwellers.[458]
Where then is the psychical stability? In the Tiemsen country "every year
there is a growing number of Arab and Berber farmers, even of nomads drawn here
from distant southern camping-grounds or the steep slopes of the Atlas. New
vineyards, cornfields, orchards, modem cattle-farms are always appearing; the
Arab is foresakmg his time-honoured wooden plough and replacing it with French
or American agricultural implements, increasingly forgetful of nomadic
life". On the roal between Tiemsen and the western frontier of Algeria
"the nomads, inspired by the example and success of whites, are evidently
beginning to settle and work the land, for in a few places we saw small Arab
plantations with vines, olives and pomegranates".[459]
In the second half of the nineteenth century,
the Trans-Baikal Buryats began to adopt settled ways of life. In the summer
they have their old transportable yourts, in winter they put up little
three-windowed houses for themselves, even although they often still live in
yourts alongside the houses.[460]
Or another matter. There is a general belief
that the Chinese was the worst bureaucracy in the world. Yet it depends when,
for that bureaucracy dates only from the Mongol invasion.
What, in face of all this. is to be regarded as
permanent and unchanging in the character of a given society? Here too the supplementary question when?
must be posed. One may speak of the psychology of a given society at a given
time, but not in general, without reference to time. Thus race brings nothing
psychologically unchanging to history, and communal psychology is not in itself
unchanging.
At a given time certain psychological features
of certain races exist, without, however, being a consequence of race. It is
all that can be said on this subject.
The illusion of the identity of race and
civilisation arose because civilisation can only spread by proximity; it cannot
strengthen and establish itself except by conquering an area of some size with
a compact population. It spreads to neighbours and on to the neighbours of
those neighbours; there is no other way.
A Japanese could not, for example, acquire the civilisation bom in Monte
Cassino, nor the soldiers of Mieszkos and Boleslases become acquainted with
samurai civilisation. This
geographical consideration is unconditionally binding. Individuals who by travel acquire a
civilisation new to them are able to graft it on to their home country only if
they form and live as a group.
Modern shipping improvements have produced the
idea of "oversea neighbours".
Civilisation cannot emerge without its own
territory. Even the humblest beginnings require some territory on which the
given system of communal life may be applied. And since as a rule in a given
area the resident population is compact and ethnically uniform the illusion is
created of a causal connection between civilisation and race. But for
civilisation territory is only scaf folding.
In the same area different civilisations may develop chronologically and
contemporaneously. Northern Africa once belonged to Roman civilisation, Spain
was Arab territory. On Polish territory
four civilisations (Latin. Byzantine, Turanian and Jewish) exist at present,
and in India there are even six (Brahmin, Turanian, Arab, Latin, Jewish,
Chinese).
Civilisation embraces peoples of a given race
in a given territory, but is not itself causally related to any race or any
territory.[461] Mass
emigration may transfer a given civilisation to new territory. In this way
Latin civilisation, and Jewish also, have spread all over the world. Immigration may even change the
civilisation of a given area. if the immigrants arrive with a strong
consciousness of possessing a high-level civilisation of their own; immigrants
whose civilisation is slight after a certain time adopt the civilisation of '
the new country.
In an investigation of the relation of race to
civilisation, the question of the psychological consequences of crossing cannot
be avoided. Opinions were and are divided.
Among enthusiasts for cross-breeding the Hegelian Michelet, mentioned
earlier, has gone furthest. According to him humanity is tending to the
recovery of its primordial racial unity, which will occur through 'the melting
of all existing races "into one "middle" race, as is happening
in America; with the brotherhood of all mankind to follow. Similar optimists
were Bastian, Bodichon and Krzywicki, with Oberziner among the younger men. A.
Reibmayr and 0. Lorem restricted the advantage of cross-breeding to elements
ethnically close to each other. Lenz also limits crossing, considering it a condition
of any advantage that the parties should be suited to each other, and not very
different in spiritual qualities.
Eduard Meyer advocated cross-breeding, but with the reservation that the
influences on both sides must melt into internal unity.[462]
If they had also asked themselves the question which influences lent themselves
to this kind of fusion and which did not, they would have been on the right
track for an investigation of the crossing of civilisations; but this step was
not taken.
The opponents of crossing are headed by
Gobineau (18161882). For him
everything in history which is positive derives from racial purity, from
cross-breeding everything which is evil. While a race is pure it has one way of
thinking and one logic, so that institutions correspond with desires and are
fixed, permanent. unchanging. In a heavily mixed society "first there is
maximum disturbance, then unhealthy stagnation, in the end death". When
even the noblest race dissolves into the flood of the ignoble, the disappearance
of civilisation must be the consequence. Whether the pure white race found
itself at pole or equator, the spiritual centre of the world would be
there. The "Aryan race"
must, therefore, be protected against mixed blood. The Aryans of southern and eastern Europe have enormously
lowered their own level by mixing their blood; this can be seen, among other
things. in the egalitarian tendencies of the democracy which has developed
among them. For although in ethnically mixed elements the superior race provides
the unifying civilising factors, over a period this superior race degenerates,
while the lower race by no means rises to the other's original level. The hierarchy of race is obscured and we
approach equality, then degeneration in ethnic relations. Higher values
disappear in the mixture. The superficial spread of civilisation goes for
nothing, since "inevitable laws drive humanity towards ethnic unity which
is a foretaste of decline and a portent of unavoidable death". Even the
Semitic race, in the hierarchy of races coming immediately after the Aryan,
when mixed with the latter brings about Aryan degeneration. The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples,
standing for the purity of "Aryan" blood, have kept their
superiority—so argues Gobineau.[463]
Le Bon expressed the same ideas even more emphatically. In his view "man
is always and before all else, a representative of his race". He
proclaimed that "historic races" decline and perish through
cross-breeding. He was the first to declare that in former times the Aryans in
India and then the English in their colonies preserved unity and strength
because they did not inter-marry. He also first drew attention to the flooding
of the United States of North America by foreigners, and to the fact that
France faces the same threat. He feared that as a result the United States
might one day fall into civil wars which must end with the country's
disintegration into several hostile states. He told France that a third of her
population would be Italian, and another third German, which would be
"worse than the severest military defeat". And so the racial problem
towers above everything in history. Rome fell through such "peaceful
invasions", although the barbarians tried to continue Roman civilisation, deceiving
themselves with the idea even under the last Merovingians, so that all
Charlemagne's acts were conceived with it in mind. This Roman civilisation was
never overthrown (renversee), but came into the hands of different races who
formed a "new historical race", and so a new civilisation. The most
dangerous things are revolutions, which affect a nation's way of thinking. The
basic reason for the fall of the Persians and Romans was the change in their
mental make-up (constitution mentale) following a decline of character—here
crossbreeding is always highly dangerous. For this reason half-caste countries
must be ruled with an iron hand, otherwise they will be in perpetual anarchy.
The danger of cross-breeding can be neutralised only on three conditions: the
inter-breeding races must not differ overmuch in numbers or psyche, and must
have lived over a long period in identical environmental conditions; only then
may a new race emerge.[464]
It is evident from this line of thought that Le
Don, like Cobineau, succumbed to the illusion of the identity of civilisation
and race, as a result of which both confused a mixture of civilisations with a
mixture of races. They correctly invoke the psyche and wrongly connect it with
race; the cut hoc notion of "historic race" is no way out of the confusion.
Lapouge, that advocate of caste society, went
even further. In his view the mental inequality of races is basically
irremediable, and all crossing brings degeneration and reduces fertility.
Friedrich von Hellwald forecasts disintegration of both blood and spirit. with
regeneration precluded; for the lower do not rise through cross-breeding, while
the higher decline.
Pittard has lately brought up very seriously
the question of the future of the United States, where there are about
8,000,000 negroes and 2,000,000 mulattoes who multiply twice as fast as the
negroes and are worth even less. In face of all this the worthy anthropologist
inquired what would be the ethnic appearance of the States in 100-150 years'
time.[465]
Today complaints about the offspring of mixed
unions are commonplace. But Eugen
Fischer is of another opinion. Having investigated the offspring of Boers and
lawfully-wed Hottentot wives in Rehoboth, he discovered that these descendents
are superior to Hottentots in intellect and character, but show less ability
than their fathers.[466]
Yet would it not be as well to wait for one more generation of this
"experiment"? For experience shows that one cross is not the same as
another. After all, two famous anthropologists have been of Indian origin:
Iroquois in the case of Hervitt and the Omaha[467]
tribe in the case of La Fleche. Pittard expresses the view that inter-breeding
between, for example, Scandinavians and Germans of Nordic race may be
advantageous, but the "amalgamation" of two highly different races is
"extremely dangerous"—and he,even goes as far as to inquire whether,
in.view. of these anthropological facts, the struggle against marriage between
relatives is necessary.[468]
In all these examples it is necessary to reflect whether crossing of races or
of civilisations is in question. In India which is the greater gulf, of race
(and which?—there are not a few) or of civilisation, where the father is of
Latin civilisation and the .mother of Brahmin?
It must thus be bome in mind that mixture of
races does not always bring with it mixture of civilisations, since several
races may belong to the same civilisation, and normally they are races
somatically close to each other (neighbours). The conclusion suggests itself
that crossing may take place with advantage inside the frame of the same
civilisation, while the mating of individuals of different civilisations is
dangerous. Was Gobineau not close to
this discovery when he wrote of a "single logic" inside the frame of
one pure race? What is it he calls "way of thinking", if not system?
With his eyes on race, he was thinking of civilisation but he wrote
"race".
If it were really a question of race, a mixture
of civilisations must always have accompanied a mixture of races. There would
also never be a pure civilisation, since history knows no pure races. In any
case we know from ordinary experience that somatic inferiority or superiority
(sickness or health) does not bring with it a similar spiritual state, but very
often the opposite. In view of this, psychological differences represent not a
racial problem but simply one of civilisation.
It has happened that racial expansion has taken
place in inverse proportion to that of a civilisation. Sometimes a race which
has been successful in expanding simultaneously suffers the decline or even
loss of its own civilisation, adopting a new one from the vanquished. In such
cases, the physically weaker complete the expansion of civilisation. But even
in inter-breeding between individuals belonging not only to different races but
at the sams time to different civilisations, there is no inevitable crossing of
civilisations. Is there any lack of those whose contact with civilisation of
any kind is nil? Such a person passively submits to the civilisation of another
so that on one side nothing is offered towards a crossing of civilisations, on
neither side, when both are passive.
Those entering into the details of this problem
are subjected to the danger of exaggeration because of an inclination to
consider all psychical differences between parents and children as results of
cross-breeding—whereas children are rarely on exactly the same level as their
parents, but normally higher or lower. This is a common-place that it is not
necessary to wander through the world and its races to discover.
Experience also shows that civilisations may
cross without any anthropological crossing at all. The whole of Europe is today
a testing-ground for exactly such a mixture of civilisations. For civilisations spread by their own
roads, without needing racial cross-breeding to clear the way for them.
From the superstition of the unalterable
permanence of psychical features in races there emerged the problem of racial
ability. Gobineau ascribed to the yellow race strength of will and considered
it on the whole practical, a masculine race, whereas the black is feminine,
sensual and weak-willed but with outstandingly high (sic) artistic gifts. The
Hegelian Michelet "philosophised" on racial themes thus: negroes
constitute a "peaceful, childish pleasure—loving unity with nature";
Malayans, with their "mania for destruction", stand for die Aufhebung
des blossnaturlichen Seins,' Mongols, on the other hand. den Gegensatz des
Insichgekehrtseins des Geistes und des Sichhingebens an die Natur,[469]
from which it would really be necessary to conclude that these races had
adapted themselves to Hegelianism.
But in every fairy-tale there is some truth.
Different peoples do indeed have different abilities and preferences. In his
Antropogeographie Ratzel quotes examples to show that "racial
particularities or social relations make one people more, another less capable
of exploiting geographical conditions". He says that the Japanese once
maintained active shipping traffic in all directions. but from about the time
of the persecution of the Christians( about 1630), they ceased to make use of
favourable conditions. The Irish,
although they reached Ireland by sea, and live on very good coasts, hardly fish
at all. The Celts, unlike the Germans, never went far to sea, even when they
were surrounded by it, as in the British Isles. When Malayans and Papuans live
together, the former always make for the shore, the others for the interior.
Ratzel could have added other instances, how
the ancient Peruvians, with their long sea-board, nevertheless did not use
ships;
how the peoples of the ancient world
domesticated cattle whereas the original inhabitants of America did not succeed
in doing so;
how the elephant became a useful domestic animal
in India and remained for the African negroes a monster inspiring terror,
although earlier inhabitants of Africa, such as Carthaginians and Numidians,
had known how to subdue and domesticate the African elephant.
But what is there strange in the fact that
abilities take varied directions and nobody is capable of everything? The Irish, although a littoral people, are
not outstanding sailors, but they were good farmers. Malays have ability as
fishermen, Papuans as hunters. American Indians were and are outstanding
hunters, Peruvians warriors. Every people is normally good at something. And it
should be borne in mind that the more primitive the civilisation of a people,
the less opportunity it has to reveal abilities. since the categories of being
are correspondingly restricted.
What method will provide us with an indicator
of general ability? How to solve the question whether the Malayans heading for
the shore, or the Papuans for the interior have the greater ability?
On the other hand, history provides an excellent—and
negative —answer to the question of the permanence of a given level of
civilisation. Societies rise and fall, and the degree of civilisation of a
given "race" is by no means constant. Since it is not to be denied
that the kind of psyche depends among other things on the level of
civilisation, we have come upon new evidence that the communal psyche is
changeable and not dependent on race. Nothing can be concluded about abilities
from the variety of levels of a given civilisation, the less so in that it is
possible to stand on a low level despite great abilities. And can it be said
for certain that-one of the peoples now primitive was never on a higher level
of civilisation?
In estimating "ability" much
confusion has been and is caused by the naive view that a society somehow
stands higher from the point of view of civilisation the more closely it
approaches "European" civilisation. How many misunderstandings are
removed if we approach questions of communal psychology bearing in mind the
distinctness of civilisations! There may be a very high level of some
civilisation quite unconnected with our own; for it is possible to be very
gifted without approaching our civilisation,
Despite this, the fundamental error has been
made of drawing up a formal spiritual hierarchy of races according to degree of
imitation of "European" civilisation. First to do so was the German
Corns, author of a work significantly entitled Ueber die ungleiche Befahigung
der Menschheitsstamme zur geistigen Entwicklung. Then Gobineau elaborated an
exhaustive hierarchy of races in the work already quoted, which was ignored in
the author's life-time but has at least won him great posthumous fame.
Gobineau, an excellent writer[470]
but always a dilettante scholar, was also in his own eyes the greatest
aristocrat of his generation[471]
For him the "Aryan race" is the aristocracy of humanity, because only
Aryans are of pure white blood: other varieties of the white race have
secondary importance, while the non-white are fundamentally lower, destined for
subsidiary roles in the history and economy of the world. Among the Aryans
themselves, in Gobineau's hierarchy the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons occupy
first place, along with the Franks (from whom he derived the gentry of Northern
France). These are the true Germanic peoples, the strongest section of Aryans;
the Germans have no place here at all, because they are a Celtic-Slav mixture
who are not worth much even physically. The causes of the inequality of racss
do not lie in geography or history, but exclusively in race itself as such: the
purer Aryan, the higher the type. Outside the white race there would be no
civilisation at all if it were not for inter-breeding with whites, which he
describes at length, and almost always erroneeously, for he had at his disposal
material still incomparably less adequate than we have today. Even the Chinese
have to thank Aryan colonisation from India for their civilisation of a kind.
Gobineau energetically denies the idea that
racial inequalities can be redressed with the aid of institutions. He devotes
to the matter the fifth chapter of volume I: Les inegalitcs ethniques ne sont
pas Ie resultat des institutions. Inferiority and superiority are inborn, and
so an inferior people cannot by the very fact possess institutions of a higher
order. It is not possible to ascribe essentially identical intellect to the
Englishman and the Huron Indian, and explain the differences by the
"irresistible force of environment" (des milieux). And. he insists,
"barbarism and civilisation have flourished in turn on the same
soil". Institutions, therefore,
are "results not causes". Those inconsistent with the spirit of a
people do not endure, because they must come from the society itself and be
adapted to its "instincts and needs". So institutions do not create peoples, but derive from them. And
colonising States have never succeeded in imposing European institutions on the
natives.
"Actually there are (i.e. in 1853) in the
world two governments created by peoples foreign to our race. but according to
patterns provided by us: one functions in the Sandwich Islands, the other in
St. Domingo. An estimate of them must finally show the powsrlessness of all
attempts to give a people institutions not deriving from its own
mentality". In Paraguay the chances appeared to be greater, for the
institutions were based on religion. But the belief that barbarism is only the
childhood of nations proved mistaken.[472]
Gobineau's teaching could be called the
Calvinism of raceology, real predestination. Some, as he himself puts it, are
destined by nature to rule, others to serve; some are simply born to be heroes,
others must be content with roles of common mediocrity. Are they then to have
identical laws and duties? One further logical step, and the question arises
whether the same ethic is to be binding on both?[473]
There is no point in polemics with the
scientific apparatus of 1853, but specialists discover at almost every stage in
his chief work that Gobineau did not even have the scientific training which it
was possible to acquire in his day. And yet Gobineau's arguments do not lack
either truth or just observations. He discarded the superstition of equality
and consequently sometimes came to correct conclusions. But he errs in
accounting for even the truest observations by race.
The error has weighed on science to our day.
Gobineau's thesis was rediscovered afresh on several occasions by various
scholars entirely independently. Thirty years after Gobineau, and not knowing
him at all (for he was entirely forgotten) the French anthropologist Penka.
drawing up a "social chemistry", treated races in ethnology like
elements in chemistry. Decrease of the Aryan-Germanic element he too regarded
as a cause of decline.[474]
A few years later, before the beginnings of
interest in Gobineau in France, the same discovery was made for a third time by
the Le Bon already known to us. Each of his serious works was a real scientific
event, and, as can already be appreciated, of no passing significance. In the
book which he himself declared to be a synthesis of his numerous works, Lois
psychologiques de revolution des peoples, we read views which are as if taken
straight from Gobineau, and a whole separate section is devoted to showing
comment les institutions derivent de I'ame des peuples, with the accent still
on race; he employs almost the same arguments to prove the matter as his
predecessor.[475]
Le Bon did, in fact, make more than one
discovery witnessing his greatness. He proclaimed hierarchy as a system of
civilisation, a system for the organisation of communal life, but he hastened
on unnecessarily to a "psychological hierarchy" of races,
incidentally committing the error of establishing this hierarchy on a basis of
proximity to or distance from our civilisation, or the "Indo-European"
psychology. He adopted, therefore, a non-existant criterion (but let us
remember one disproved only yesterday).
A second error was his conviction of the basic inferiority of everybody
as compared with ourselves, and his failure to take account of the lower and
higher levels to be found in every civilisation—a failure which remains common
to this day. It is these mistakes which explain his erroneous interpretation of
facts which he had observed entirely correctly, a field in which he too excels.
He says, for example, that a negro or Japanese
may possess every European diploma, but will not act in a European way in the
varying circumstances of life. Why? Because the lower races have a greater or
lesser incapacity for reasoning (incapadte de raisonner), while peoples of
higher civilisation have not succeeded in transferring this power to those of
lower precisely because of the gulf in the mentality of different races.
Instruction does not achieve it Basically lower elements are incapable of
assimilitating civilisations basically too high for them.[476]
The anthropologist G. Vacher de Lapouge
developed this theory of hierarchy. Long-headed blonds are in his view the
nerves and brain of mankind, for only they are true Aryans. All cross-breeding
lowers the level and there is no way of raising less-gifted races.[477]
Even further on the extremist wing stood E. J. Dillon. unable to find his way
out of the labyrinth of anthropological errors. According to him, "human
races exist which are without capacity for any more useful part in human
progress than that played by the proletariat. It cannot be denied that there
are in the world races which are incapable of accepting higher forms of
civilisation, which can nevertheless provide valuable service in its lower
forms, without being thereby wronged, and without demoralising others. It
appears entirely possible that one day they will be mobilised and used in
accordance with the principle that the good of every collectivity requires
occupations to be allotted in such a way that every organ may perform the
activities for which it is most suited".[478]
All these scholars err in identifying race with
civilisation, confusing one with the other. Having proclaimed a hierarchy of
race, they were obliged to place some somatic features at the top, and so it
came about that the long-headed blond was crowned and Scandinavia made into his
eyrie and reserve country. Meanwhile, science has overthrown both the
assumption and the results of the hierarchical theory in raceography. Above
all. it has been shown how weak are the Scandinavian foundations of the entire
Nordic race and its long-headedaess.
In 1902 Anton Nystrom published a treatise
Ueber die Formenveranderungen des menschlichen Schadels und deren Ursachen[479] in which he stated that in Sweden barely
one fifth of the population is dolichocephalic, another fifth is
brachycephalic, and three-fifths mezzocephalic; but more important, that most
long-heads were found among the less-educated strata. There was a higher
proportion of long-heads among old Germanic and Slav skulls. Nystroem does not
even explain this by cross-breeding but by changes in the way of life. And when
the famous Virchow expressed the view that skulls grow shorter with the advance
of culture, the spiritual superiority of the long-heads was undermined.
Pittard recently posed a question which has
pinned adherents of the hierarchy of races to the wall: why does it not occur
to some sociologist that the enormous growth of the sciences in the second half
of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century is to be attributed to a
decline in the number of long-heads and the multiplication of short-heads?[480]
The French anthropologist is right. If the development of science (for which
history knows no parallel) were to be used as a basis on which to advance a
theory of the superiority of short-heads, it would at least be based on
something concrete.
Gobineau's mistake only applied to the whole of
humanity what in social stratification is called aristocracy, because he was
under the erroneous impression that aristocracy excelled in purity of blood.
And yet exactly the opposite is the case: the higher socially and economically
a class the more anthropologically mixed it becomes; the more prosperous a
land, the larger the influx of strangers its inhabitants have to meet: "ce
sont les pauvres diables, qui ont la plus grande noblesse ethnique"[481]
The idea that higher development of
civilisation accompanies (relative) purity of race cannot be maintained. It has
already been mentioned that the purest of the known "historic" races
are the Nubians, true descendants of the ancient Egyptians. Nor can the
hierarchy of race be sustained. Then how is it that its adherents make so many
just observations—is there truth at the back of the fairy-tale?
The puzzle clears up if here too we ask the
question when? It is possible to speak of a hierarchy of communal mentalities
in a certain historical period. For instance, there is no doubt that in T^atin
civilisation today, the Englishman is ahead of the Portuguese; but it was not
always so. It is possible to investigate and define, the hierarchy of levels
reached within a certain civilisation in a certain period by various lands and
peoples—but the hierarchy changes and is therefore no hierarchy of race. The
Pole of the Saxon period,is the undoubted descendant of the Pole of King
Sigismund's time. but one was in the depths, the other on the heights. The
historical transformation of whole societies, by disposing of the notion of a
psychical stability of race, demolishes the theory of a hierarchy of race.[482]
The unnecessary and unlucky confusion of the
bodily element with the spiritual, of race with civilisation, has explained
nothing, but led anthropology astray and bogged down many issues. It gave birth
to an error with serious consequences: the erroneous supposition that man is
bound to lie within the fetters of the mentality imposed on him by racial
conditions, that is by bodily and entirely external natural factors. Henri Berr
justly argues that external conditions possessed enormous influence in
pre-history, but in historic times it has become progressively weaker.[483]
More accurately the importance of external conditions may be said to decline
with the attainment of higher levels of civilisation.
No civilisation is the property of any race,
and no race is confined to a certain civilisation, still less to one level of
it. Between race and the five categories of life there is no permanent and
inevitable relation taking a different form in every race. African and American negroes have an
entirely different struggle for existence, despite their identity of race. How
much more is this true of spiritual categories! The study of Aristotle passed
from the descendants of the Hellenes to the Arabs, then to the Latin peoples.
And does not Christianity reach all races?
It is not in the variety of races that the
cause of the variety of civilisations lies. The Jew, living among us for
centuries, differs from us spiritually because he is of another civilisation,
even although racially he be largely assimilated. The Muscovite differs from us
in spirit not less than the Jew; although somatically nearer, he is of a quite
different civilisation. The Magyar is of an entirely different race, but
spiritually incomparably closer to us than the Russian, for he belongs to the
same civilisation as we.
A certain analogy does occur between races and
civilisations, on the issue of crossing. Just as only branches of races which
are close to one another make successful crosses, in the same way advantageous
crossing can only take place between cultures of the same civilisation —as the
whole course of history witnesses. Despite the analogy, the real difference is
that race need not be pure, but civrssation must be pure.
The issue of civilisation—the psychical
issue—is not depsndent on the bodily, the racial. We see that here the spirit
is stronger than the body.
The independence of civilisation from race is a
valuable contribution to the problem of the superiority of the sou] over
matter.[484]
Not having found the explanation of the variety
of civilisations in the material element of race, let us turn to spiritual
elements. Let us begin with something which was long considered the same as
race —with language, and ask ourselves the question whether linguistic
associations lead to the creation of distinct civilisations?
It is not easy to get one's bearings in the
vast amount of linguistic material. The state of linguistic research is such that
it is fully developed only in the case of a section of the Indo-European
languages, that is to say, of the European branch, whereas in the case of Hindi
we are unable even to describe its families with any degree of accuracy. not to
mention divisions further from us linguistically and geographically. It is not
a good thing when one reads of a Hamitic linguistic group which means ethnic
factors are being confused with linguistic, since the Hamitic peoples employ
quite unrelated languages.[485]
It has not yet been decided whether the Indo-European languages, the Semitic
and the Iranian are to be considered as three distinct divisions or to be
counted as one,[486]
with the group of Armenian languages regarded as a bridge between them.
Of such divisions and sub-divisions there is no
end, for the terminology of linguists is still less orderly than that of the
ethnologists and prehistorians. Some
divide families into branches, others branches into families. Clearly it is
indifferent which word is used, but each must always be used in the same sense.
Forced to take my own counsel, I have drawn up the following order of
expressions:[487] the Polish
language, French language, etc., each belongs to some family, Slav. Romance,
etc.. families make up the branch, e.g.. the European, constituting part of the
Indo-European stock. Related
linguistic stocks keep to the same system of linguistic organisation (I use
this expression advisedly). Research hitherto has discovered four such systems—inflective,
agglutinative, monosyllabic and incorporative. These are divisions of the
highest order.
In addition, it would be desirable to establish
theoretically the factors at work in every language and which explain its
features. I call them the elements of language, and there are three of them:
phonology, vocabulary and grammar.[488]
May there not be more than four ways of
organising language? As the discovery of the ''incorporative" system was
in its time a revelation, more than one surprise may be in store. Scientific
knowledge of the vast majority of languages is only superficial, in the case of
many extending to a fraction of the vocabulary; an unknown number of languages
still remains to be discovered—while those that have perished leaving no
written traces behind were, in all probability, more numerous than those which
have survived.
Let us begin by registering the uncounted
number of languages now extant which are at a primitive or at least
under-developed level. In Asia, in Assam on the banks of the Bramaputra,
"the population employs so many different languages that I am
certain"—a missionary relates—"that I shall not err if I say that
from the point of view of linguistic riches, it is the first country in the
world, for the 8,000,000 people who live there use, according to the official
statistics of 1921, as many as 167 languages".[489]
In the southern mountains of AssaiDs among the Naga, "it seems as if every
settlement has its own dialect". Among the Karens in the same country
"eleven Karen tribes have been distinguished, each speaking in a dialect
incomprehensible to the rest".[490]
In Africa, in Morocco there are up to thirty
Berber tribes some of which already number no more than 2,000 heads—and these
tribes frequently do not understand one another.[491]
In the Sudan, missionaries speak of a real Tower of Babel, and it is the same
in the basin of the Mulungushi in Rhodesia, in one of the groups of the Bantu
language.[492] There are
said to be 182 Bantu agglutinative languages and 114 dialects, and 264 Sudanese
languages, with 110 dialects.[493]
In North America alone, in the last generation
they still counted over 70 "different Indian linguistic families"—not
languages. Even Indian peoples who are friendly with each other do not always
know each other's languages, and communicate with the help of a sign-language
worked out in detail.[494]
Today Graebner reckons the number of known Indian languages at 150, emphasising
that not even their relationships have been examined.[495]
The black population of the Andaman archipelago,
numbering about 10-15,000 souls, is divided into nine distinct peoples, and the
differences in their languages are such that "an inhabitant of southern
Andaman understands his fellow of the same race from the north of the island as
well as the English countryman does a Russian".[496]
Curr gave samples and short vocabularies of
more than 200 Australian languages in a multi-volume work, but he covered
barely half the field; he himself put the number of languages there at 500.[497]
Will all the languages which exist today
survive? The answer may be found in certain present facts. "In Central
America or Each of the tiny islands of Melanesia has its own tongue.[498]
In the depths of Africa, a dictionary drawn up
by a missionary has proved worthless after twenty years".[499]
Too short a time for the same language to have changed so much—clearly it has
vanished and been replaced by another, one of the neighbouring tongues.
There are not a few examples of the
disappearance of languages in our own day. For example, the very name' Berber
is really a linguistic notion, but Semitic expressions make up almost one third
of Berber languages. Adopting Islam, the Berbers lost their own alphabet and
today use Arabic script. They are also losing their languages: those who still
speak one of the Berber tongues number barely 27 per cent—and those who have
forgotten are no longer called Berbers, and must be anthropologically
"reclaimed".[500]
The Arab flood is such that for example the
"Kabyle arc a Berber island in a surrounding Arab sea". The majority
of Kabyle do not know the Arabic language, and although "some more exposed
Berber areas are still being Arabicised today, there are also cases of the Arab
population being linguistically assimilated: here Kabylia shows very great
attractive power, but "Eastern Kabylia has long been Arabicised". It
is true that the Moz^bites speak Berber, but they only write in Arabic. Only
the Tuaregs still use the Berber language for writing.[501]
In Mexico only a few Indians have preserved
their languages. The negroes of Central and South America lost their languages
for Spanish and Portuguese. In an account of a journey to PuertoRico we hear of
them always speaking Spanish among themselves, and there is no sign that they
still know what their native language was.[502]
The negroes of North America have adopted English not in addition to but
instead of their native tongues. The Brazilians also do not use their
languages.[503]
All over the earth it is possible to find
evidence of how among many languages a few take the upper hand, sometimes even
only one—the remainder withdrawing into the background and gradually
disappearing. Today in Europe there are still traces of the Slavonic Polabian
language near Berlin, in Hanover and Luneberg. The Prussian language of the
Baltic group was already in extremity in the fourteenth century, and the last
traces disappeared in the late seventeenth. The last old woman who could speak
Cornish died in 1777, but as late as 1875 there were old men who knew how to
count to twenty in Cornish, although their descendants cannot do even that.[504]
The many tongues of India up to the Ganges are
not dialects, but languages in the full meaning of the word, which have to be
learnt separately. Le Bon put their number at 240, adding that they often are
more different from one another than Greek and French. Different languages have
at different periods won this upper hand. In 1895 the most widespread,
Hindustani, had barely three centuries of existence behind it, having arisen
from the combination of three tongues—Persian, Arab and Hindi[505]—and
is thus a jargon.
Today, however, the matter appears differently
in Northern and Southern India. Let us hear an opinion based on autopsy:
"English has not been adopted in Bengal,
so that all the white inhabitants, not only officials, but everybody without
exception, must and do speak Bengali or Hindustani. In this respect the
position in the south, in Madras province, differs, and English has become to
some extent the language of the more educated. The reason is twofold: in the first
place, the southern province possesses, without counting lesser dialects, three
equally important main languages. Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam while the western
border is the beginning of the territory of a fourth, the Kanarese language. In
face of this variety, English plays an intermediary role". "In Bengal
on the other hand, Bengali is dominant along with Hindustani, and generally
understood in the whole of Northern and Central India".[506]
We may thus see by the living example of India
how a hierarchy of languages is created.
Which among primitive languages takes the upper
hand over the neighbours may depend on the most varied circumstances: whose
elucidation must be left to the imagination. Only the present state of the
problem is accessible to science. It is a fact that more than one language will
have Christian missionaries to thank for its preservation and development. I
give a handful of examples.
In that Rhodesian Tower of Babsl, the
Mulungushi basin, which is the southern part of the Bantu languages area,
"in general when one uses the local esperanto, that is Chi-Nyanja, they
understand. They also confess in that language, and we speak to them in
ChiNyanja in school and in church, although their own dialect is Chi-Lala. The
question was more difficult in Kasisi, where three languages—Chi-Wemba,
Chi-Renje and Chi-Nyanja have equal rights and in the neighbourhood there are
still Chi-Ni and ChiRamba. But in Chingombe I have also noticed on ssveral
occasions a boy not understanding any question put to him in Chi-Nyanja, since
at home only Chi-Lala was used". But the elders already understand
Chi-Nyanja. It is "the future literary language of Northern Rhodesia,
unless this turns out to be Shakespeare's language".[507]
Let us note further, that Chi-Nyanja is related
to the second great negro language of Central Africa, Swahili, as well as to
ths Chikunda language.
We Poles have a special sentimental interest
that Chi-Nyanja may become the literary language of the widest possible area of
the negro world, even that it may one day wage a successful battle with
Swahili, for in Northern Rhodesia a whole hymn-book translated from Polish by
Father St. Hankiewicz S.J. circulates and is sung to Polish melodies in the
"language of the Great Lakes" i.e. Chi-Nyanja.[508]
Faced with the great abundance of negro tongues it is, however. not easy to say
which will become "literary".
But beginning at home, I note that in 1926
Cracow presses undertook to print elementary readers in Chi-Nyanja and
Chi-Renji.[509] In the
Belgian Congo, missionaries began to study the barambo and zande languages in
1914, and in 1919, "the third language of the country, mangban".[510]
In Marianhill in Natal a Catholic Zulu weekly Tsindaba Zabantu[511]
is published. In the Philippines, the Divine Word Fathers have a printing-press
in Manilla and in 1924 published 40,000 calendars in three languages—Spanish,
Tagolog and Ilokano. Since the beginning of 1925 they have been publishing a
monthly in Tagolog and Ilokano with an English supplement. In the fifth month
of the paper's existence there were 3,000 recipients, "more than the
national papers". They also published a children's prayerbook in the
Ilokano language.[512]
In 1926, in the largest leper-hospital on Kulion island in thee Philippines,
the Spanish Jesuit Filip Millan and companion heard confessions in Spanish,
English. Tagalog,
Visayan. Ilokano; retreats for the lepers were
conducted in Visayan and Tagalog.[513]
Michael Gebra. a half-caste Portuguese
Monophysite who afterwards embraced Catholicism, drew up a vocabulary and
grammar of the Abyssinian literary language known as Ge-ez.[514]
In Ceylon a Singhalese fortnightly Nanardka Pradipaga has been coming out in
Colombo since 1883. Missionaries write and publish Singhalese and Tamil books.[515]
The Franciscan Father Hugo Mense "has filled in more than one gap in the
Munduruk language" in Brazil.[516]
In Dutch Guiana "after ten years of laborious study of the Carib language
a Dutch Redemptorist, 0. Ahlbrinck, drew up a large dictionary running to about
3.000 pages of manuscript, which when printed gives about 1,500 pages of small
print". He provides at the same time a grammar of the Carib language and
an account of their life.[517]
In 1875 in the Gilbert Islands, Mgr Janssen,
Vicar Apostolic of Tahiti, drew up a small catechism in the local language and
translated the New Testament. This translation was lost during a storm at sea,,
but a few examples of the catechism were saved. A certain merchant in San
Francisco had it reprinted in 500 copies and sold them to the
inhabitants". Father Remy. S.M. drew up a grammar and dictionary of the
Gilbert language.[518]
On the island of New Guinea there are
autochthonous Daughters of the Immaculate Conception, nun "granddaughters
of cannibals". They do not take strict vows, but only promise poverty,
chastity and obedience. This caution is indicated by the instability of
character of the inhabitants. Every nun has the rules and an ascetic handbook
written in the native language and printed on the nuns' press".[519]
Similarly eloquent examples could be quoted for pages on end.
A Bengali Catholic, Ambrose Sireshchandra, has
translated the Ordo Missae into Sanscrit; it will be a basis for a translation
into the vernacular. The Imitation of Christ and the Bible have already been
translated into the Bengali vernacular. And in Madras they are thinking of
founding a university where the lectures would be in Tamil.[520]
Will not these languages advance further as a result?
Of course it cannot always be known whether
missionaries were the first to raise the status of a given language, or whether
they adopted one already recognised and comparatively widespread. There are
certainly cases of both, depending on circumstances which sometimes may
possibly even be of secondary importance but are never philological. It will
not, however, be denied that missionary intervention has been epoch-making in
the history of such languages. which have been provided with vocabulary,
grammar, alphabet, written works and even printing presses. Let us suppose that
this good fortune comes to a language which is not widespread but rather
confined to one area, will not this language in a relatively short time
overtake a more widespread speech that has not been given literate shape by the
missionaries?
Let us consider above all the extraordinary
abundance of these languages, which obliges missionaries in the same area to
learn two or three. In the above short selection of examples, ten
newly-literate tongues have been mentioned in "black" Africa alone.
How many are still to emerge—must emerge. And for every new
"literary" language, how many are there which are not written down
and are condemned to disappear?
Having considered all this, we see that there
are more languages at the lower levels of civilisation—incomparably more than
at high levels of civilisation: the number of languages diminishes with the
progress of civilisation.
This rule is, however, only valid up to a
certain level of civilisation.
It is clear that a considerable number of the
languages of an ethnic group must perish in order that a supra-tribal
association may emerge and a people with a common language result: not to speak
of associations higher than the people. The death of languages is absolutely
necessary in order that from tribes a people may emerge. Larger associations
cannot arise except on the grave of defeated languages. The higher the
development of a society, the fewer the languages; fewest where States and
nations are most settled.
Research into how many languages have perished
in Europe would be vain, for our peoples were already at a high stage of
development when they became known to those who first described thsm; here,
with few exceptions, languages died in pre-historic times. In historic times
only eight known languages have perished—Punic, East Gothic, Visigotic,
Lombard, Franconian, Cornish and Prussian[521]
(for understandable reasons I do not include here Latin, Greek nor ancient
Persian).
At the beginning there was an "immense
multitude of inconvenient languages, short-lived and necessarily
dissimilar".[522]
They perished although the tribes which originally used them survived. Other
languages perished with their tribes. An interesting contribution to this
question could be made if it were possible to investigate the ethnic side of
those Indian languages, today already extinct. whose formulae for the
administration of the sacraments could be seen at the Vatican Exhibition of
1925.[523]
It is hard to doubt that originally a given
language served only one tribe, that each had its own. Alongside written
languages common to a whole nation are there not alive today dialects, even
onevillage dialects? In Silesia, in Pomerania and in White Ruthenia villages
have their own idiom. Not White Ruthenian, not Polish. In the next village they
speak "in their way", but here "plainly".[524]
It is the same in other European countries.
Wherever several tribes used the same language,
this could only have happened as a result of the fact that one neighbouring
language had come to dominate others until finally it remained alone. We have
seen how in our own day tribes on low levels of civilisation know two and even
three languages, which may represent a transitional stage to the exclusive use
of one of them. Language was thus originally a racial matter, very closely
linked with clan origin. Facts teach that it is not so. or at least rarely so
anywhere now.
We even have instances of the language of the
same association changing radically. The Rumanians (Walachians) have in them at
least as much Slav as Latin blood, and until the middle of the nineteenth
century they used the Russian alphabet; now however they use the Latin. It is a
curious example of the fact that linguistic relationship is not the same as
racial, since the same ethnic element could have had a written language either
Slavonic or Romance. And on the other hand what a minimal drop of Hellenic
blood remains in the veins of the present-day Greeks, whose language is after
all derived from Hellenic and Byzantine sources. In the same way, Asiatic
Greeks are in large measure Graecised autochtons.[525]
And the undoubted linguistic relationship of the Slavs is strikingly opposed to
their variety from the point of view of ethnology and civilisation.
Comparative grammar also sometimes uncovers
relationship where anthropology and ethnography do not recognise any. For instance,
Eskimoes and Aleutians belong to the same linguistic family (of the Ural-Altai
branch), but anthropologically are quite different.[526]
Le Bon erred in supposing that conquerors
adopting the language of a defeated population change it because they are of
different race, and different races may not long use the same language.[527]
The ethnic differences between conquerors and conquered are not always so great
that it is possible to speak of racial differences, but certain changes in
language always occur when there is an influx of foreigners (not necessarily
conquerors) on any scale at any one time. Here it is a matter not of the
influence of race on race but simply of language on language—and languages have
their own laws, not subject to laws of race. In the case of conquerors and
conquered, it must be bome in mind that when the language of the conquered
undergoes change, the change comes from the indigenous population.
The fate of languages does not depend on
anthropological factors. There is no parallel between two anthropological
groups and two linguistic groups. Vendryes says: "Ethnic features, which
go by blood, should not be confused with institutions—with language, religion,
culture—which are eminently transitory goods, communicate themselves and are
exchangeable".[528]
They are exchangeable: that is the heart of the
matter. A language may pass from race to race. This happens in various ways;
but an examination of the question would exceed the scope of the present book.
Here we can only broadly consider certain factors in the strength of a language
and its capacity for development and for expansion—thanks to which it may pass
from race to race, and even more readily from people to people.
Attention must be given primarily to the
so-called linguistic richness generally considered the chief strength of a
language and the best witness to its capacity. Since there are three elements
of language, each language may be rich or poor in phonology, vocabulary or
grammar.
The wealth or poverty of a language must be
considered in the case of each of the three elements separately.
The question of phonology can be subdivided
into two—sounds and accent. Since we Poles have an exceptional wealth of
sounds, lets us put on record that our c, cz, s, sz, n, i, are to be found in
the Basque tongue which is still a puzzle to scholars; I, n, s in. Mongol and
Chinese; q not only in French but also in Korean and Botocudo. The Japanese
language possesses the consonants c, cz, s. dz, dz, dz, I; on the other hand
there is neither w nor /. In different parts of the world different consonants
are regarded as special, and although Japanese has as many as seven of the
special Polish sounds, it is in fact "very simple and poor in
sounds".[529] The
Chinese do not have the sounds r, d and /, and the Yakuts have no w—they
substitute b or w.[530]
The Bushmen possess a quite different order of sounds: between six and eight
labials, not identical in the various tribes. "They are made by the intake
of breath by tongue, palate and side teeth".[531]
And how many sounds are still unknown to European ears and await discoveries!
In Europe, accent is confined to the fixed and
movable (in the Russian and Slovenian languages). Outside Europe, its scope is
wider. In the African peui language, negation is indicated by accent.[532]
In the Chinese languages, in which accent gives a monosyllabic word various
meanings. Sinologists reckon the number of these accents variously at between
four and twelve. The expression tshen, for example, in accordance with one of
its eight accents may mean ship, loquacity, arrow, basin, fire, shaft, a
particular fish and a particular plant.[533]
Richness of vocabulary is of various kinds.
Basically it is a question whether and to what extent new expressions are
forthcoming as people acquire ideas. We have abandoned Latin as the universal
language of learning, because it was increasingly difficult for its vocabulary
to keep pace with the excess of new concepts. It was long artificially kept up
to the mental level of the new Europe; from St. Thomas Aquinas to Bacon of
Verulam Latin was in large measure, as far as vocabulary is concerned, an
artificial language— until in the end the constantly increasing arfificiality
became impossible. Put simply—we have grown out of Latin. It was a case of
concepts multiplying quicker than words; vocabulary lagged behind mentality.
In a very primitive language, however,
vocabulary may be rich. and in a language of a high degree of excellence,
relatively scanty. In certain matters, peoples on a low level of development
make more distinctions than highly civilised ones. The Yakuts, for example,
indicate by separate terms various degrees of relationship and connection which
we lump together under one and the same term. or ignore altogether, insensitive
to such detailed gradation and definition. And the slendemess of Chinese
dictionaries arouses surprise. For example in the dialect of the Peking
mandarins a total of 420-460 monosyllables have been counted, in Cantonese 707,
and in the richest, that of the Amoy district, 846.[534]
The German and Chinese languages, each in a
different way. add to their vocabulary by composite expressions. The German expresses the idea rzeczpospolita
(commonwealth) by the term Freistaat, while the Chinese puts together three
terms signifying to debate, mildness, government.[535]
The most primitive languages excel beyond
expectation in richness of vocabulary. The Botocudos stand on the lowest rung
of civilisation, but in 1924, when collecting materials for a dictionary.
Edouardo de Lima managed to write down about 3,000 expressions[536]
that is as many as suffice the average European of middle intelligence. But
among the natives of Terra del Fuego 30.000 expressions have apparently been
counted,[537] even if
the error were ten-fold, it would still be a lot.
Primitive languages also frequently offend
"by excessive wealth of words, and over-great accuracy. The Eskimo from
Hudson Bay has not one expression to signify washing, but as many as there are
objects which may be washed. He uses one when he means washing a table, another
for washing his face, for washing other people, for washing a spoon, a pot,
etc. His talk must be extremely precise".[538]
The heights of lexicographical wealth are
reached with the existence of a separate male and female language[539]
so that although women understand the male language, they may not speak it to
them. Every object then has two names, according to the sex of the speaker.
Among the Caribs men speak Carib, and the women "Arowak". Obviously
both sexes understand both languages, for conversation would otherwise be
impossible. Even stranger (for us) is the fact that sometimes different social
positions involve the use of differing tongues. Among the autochthonous Javans.
the superior addresses the inferior in the ngoko language, while the inferior
replies in the kromo language.[540]
Science knows no name for linguistic riches of
this kind; we shall call it the manifoldness of language. It is generally
supposed that manifoldness only occurs among "savages". Few know that
the same thing—but on a still larger scale—occurs among the Japanese.
"Japanese of the educated class use in letters a separate literary
language".[541]
And Sister ffiacynta Zaborowska, of the Polish Franciscan missionaries, reports
as follows:
"Please do not be surprised that I do not
know Japanese well. Experts say that in three years even very gifted persons
may with difficulty leam Japanese. The thing is complicated by the fact that
there are really several Japanese languages. There is a religious and
liturgical language, and a colloquial language. Some expressions are fitting
for men, and very different ones for women. Moreover I, as superior, cannot use
the same expressions as my : subordinates. There are some twenty methods of
reckoning alone! It would be an unforgiveable linguistic sin to count in the
same way persons and animals, or flat and round objects: even the counting of
full and empty cups is different".[542]
Let us pass to the most complicated element.
Here we find differences which at first sight appear improbable. Let us imagine
Polish grammar relieved of the plural number, gender of nouns, personal and
relative pronouns, temporal conjunctions, and we lose the ability to imagine
the Polish language. Japanese gets on without any of these, and instead possesses
many riches of a kind quite inconceivable to a Polish head. Relative pronouns
are replaced by skilful description of the person where need arises.
Conjunctions are used only to indicate spatial, never temporal relationship.
"It is permissible to link objects standing alongside each other, it is
not permissible to link events succeeding each other". Plural number is
indicated only by the numeral, definite or undefinite. "Two men" is
expressed in Japanese as "man two individuals", or by the Chinese in
his pidgin English (which is simply Chinese spoken with English words) a
"two pieces man".[543]
At first sight, it would seem that we have to
deal with linguistic poverty. But this is by no means the case. For example
"nouns are declined in a simple way, the cases being expressed in
suffixes. On the other hand the declension of adjectives is extraordinarily
complicated, with derivative forms as long. as they are numerous, representing
not only states but times". It is not easy for us to understand how an adjective
may also express time.[544]
On the other hand the Japanese language has no relative pronouns or
conjunctions.[545]
Grammar pays no heed to logic, as witness, the
grammatical genders to be found in the most highly developed languages and in
Hottentot. They do not derive from the opposition of sex, for in that case why
the neuter gender?[546]
All Indo-European, Semitic and Hamitic languages possess genders; in the
incorporative American languages there is "weak development of the
masculine and feminine article",[547]
but they are not known in the Far East nor in the language of the Basques.[548]
It is incidentally truly miserably super'ficial to look for the source of
grammatical genders in lust!
There are interesting observations as to how a
change of language comes about. "Different vocabularies may be ground in
the same grammatical mill". Normally, when a new language is accepted,
accentuation continues according to the old—but evidently not always, otherwise
the Gauls would not have been sending teachers of elocution to Rome a hundred
years after their country was conquered.[549]
The mixing of the three elements in various
combinations can be shown in a few examples. Armenian gypsies speak with an
Armenian accent, but also inflect according to Armenian grammar. In Hindustani,
whole phrases are made up of Persian expressions used according to the rules of
Hindi grammar.[550]
In America, Germans speak German with English word-order and syntax.[551]
In Switzerland on the linguistic border the French language is retreating in a
certain area, where they translate literally from French into German words. so
that "ideas are conceived in a French way in German terms".[552]
Phraseology reveals no less fascinating
phenomena. "Savages" are often adept at the most poetic
self-expression, of which we have eloquent instances in the notes of Bronislaw
Pilsudski on the Ainus. There is real beauty in the expressions of the Malagasy
in Madagascar, and in its day, great enthusiasm was aroused by the highly
metaphoric language of the Indian Jivaros. But the contemporary missionary sees
first of all the lack of general and abstract expressions, and virtual absence
of syntax. So that constant metaphors and poetic exaggeration point rather to
the poverty of a language which needs allegory to express thought. Jivaro-white
half-castes still use diminutives unnecessarily, conducting entire
conversations in this manner.[553]
Only after consideration of the three elements
of any language does it become possible to give an answer to questions on the
nearness, relationship and similarity of languages. Similarity may be of three
kinds. Do we not understand the foreigner who makes a grammatical mistake with
every word? But grammar decides the scholarly division. How much accent means
in the understanding of speech is generally known—considerably more than
grammar.[554]
It is certain that for history similarity or
dissimilarity of grammar is indifferent, since peoples able to understand one
another are historically close. The easier mutual understanding, the more
easily the influences of civilisation are set in motion. In the reciprocal
relations of peoples, vocabulary goes before grammar.
Consideration of the three elements of language
thus makes possible a critical approach to the so-called wealth of languages.
Rich in what—in phonology, or vocabulary, or morphology or syntax? Riches in
one element may go with poverty in a second, and a language which is entirely
primitive may be rich in one aspect.
Only now is it possible to consider with
advantage the problem of the development of languages. Are all equally capable
of this? If a linguistic association develops in categories of communal life to
to a point where its language cannot keep pace, those concerned must either be
checked in their development or abandon their own language and adopt another,
hitherto strange to them, but more apt for development. For the majority of
languages have limits to their potential development.
How far can an incorporative language
develop—that of the Algonquin, for example, in which, when wishing to express a
thought, it is necessary to form an expression so compounded that "it is
really whole sentences"?[555]
And is it certain that there are no languages standing lower than Algonquin?
Who will undertake to find out whether there
were and are not still systems for organising language so faulty that they do
not allow of any emergence from the primitive? More than one language which had
barely begun died and vanished without trace. If the Indians had risen to a
level of average education, they would have been obliged to abandon their
languages, for the incorporative system would not have taken them far.
Everything that a man thinks, says and does, what happens in him and through
him outside him, must be expressed according to some system and where that is
inauspicious it spoils everything and even the greatest efforts remain
fruitless. There may be causes for the disappearance even of a language with a
sound system; but a language with a bad system will never stand up to
competition from neighbours of superior system.
Scholars puzzle over the pygmies* lack of any
language of their own. They have used negro languages for a very long time,
stiice they now speak the languages not of neighbouring but of distant negroes,
and often in forms already archaic, so that the languages must have been
adopted in an earlier epoch of their development, before the establishment of
current linguistic forms.[556]
Similar doubts arise about the Vedda in Ceylon.[557]
These pygmies, the dwarfs of Central and
Central-Southern Africa, of the Andaman archipelago, the island of Luzon and
the Malaccan peninsula are in all probability one of the primaeval races: it is
the "oldest relic and the most ancient monument of the mysterious
beginnings of the culture of mankind" (some do not know how to kindle
fire, the Africans do not know pottery, do not cook, only bake and roast).[558]
Despite this arch-primitiveness it is impossible to support the idea that they
never had their own language, for we know that without this bond of society it
is impossible to achieve and consolidate any kind of advance in social life.
Thus we have an instance of the strangely early disappearance of a language (or
languages) based, as I suppose, on some system so faulty that it could not meet
the needs of even the very lowly level of civilisation which the pygmies
reached. They were languages unapt for development.
The highest criterion of creativeness in the
development of language is, in my view, the construction of a clear and
logically articulated compound sentence, and the highest achievement the
so-called period. Here much depends on syntax, which is not developed even in
all inflected languages. Some (Hebrew for example) are restricted to so-called
parallelism, expressing the relations between two or more thoughts by placing
them in separate sentences, entirely severed and without connection with other
sentences. This is a feeble method in comparison with the structure of the
period, with the system of principal and subordinate clauses.
Let us glance at Japanese syntax: "The
basic rule of Japanese syntax is the placing of everything which refers to
properties of a given expression before that expression; which means the most
detailed definition and description of a thing bsfore it is named. This custom places
the hearer somewhat at a disadvantage, in that a whole long story may almost
have ended before it is given him to know what the talk is really about; in
fact, however, the thing is even more difficult for the speaker, who is forced
to construct the whole sentence in his mind before he begins to speak".[559]
But we are more concerned with writing than
speech, for it is only from writing that an all-round intellectual tradition is
born. Writing may also contribute to greater development of the language or
retard, impede its development.
Our alphabet of sounds, clothed in the
universal garment of Latin letters, enables every man of Latin civilisation to
read what is written in those letters in any language, but he will say it
wrongly and will not understand a word. Our alphabet makes necessary the
learning of languages and translation from one to the other. We lose much time
on this, but on the other hand the alphabet does not limit any language, and
since it is a highly mobile form. makes possible unceasing development. Most
important, we learn to read and write with such minimal effort and so quickly
that a ten-year-old child is already proficient at both. The saving of time and
psychical energy achieved thereby outweighs a thousandfold the losses involved
in translations and'the learning of foreign languages.
Chinese writing is the opposite of this. but
Arabic and its combinations also rouse doubts on the score of time-saving and
psychical energy. Very curious is the impression made on a Pole by Turkish
writing:
"It might appear that in every language,
in order to learn to read. letters must first be recognised, and then put
together. This should not be done with Turkish. Turkish writing is. a'series of
abbreviations,-really a stenography; it is not possible to read words until one
recognises them and knows what they mean".[560]
But in 1928 the Turkish Government introduced the Latin alphabet compulsorily,
acting in the matter as true Asians; for the results it will obviously be
necessary to wait some time.
In the Far East, the oldest of the literary
languages, Korean, has an alphabet of 44 signs, 25 vowels and 19 consonants.
According to Sieroszewski a kinship with the Japanese popular alphabets
hira-gana and kata-kana may be discerned: "it must be supposed" that
the Korean symbols "derive directly from them".[561]
But Japanese writing fell into too close dependence on Chinese, which in time
cams to the forefront throughout the Far East. it may be that Korean loss of
cultural primacy and Chinese winning of first place followed upon the Chinese
discovery of a universal writing.
The Chinese are a grouping of multi-lingual
peoples. These languages are related in that all possess the monosyllabic
character;
but the populations of the various provinces do
not understand one another, and have no common literary language: a common
written language suffices them. It is true that a common official language
—Mandarin—was evolved, and novels were even written in it, but knowledge of
this language "would probably not be enough for an ordinary dragoman
today".[562]
This is an ideographic writing reduced to
abbreviations which became subtle calligraphic signs revealing no connection
with the original hieroglyphs. There is no alphabet. Of such signs there are
more than 40,000, but despite this profusion, the same sign is used for
expressions which sound the same as ihe expression which the sign was
originally used to signify (this also occurs in ancient Egyptian writing); in
addition, there may be many signs for one sound, each meaning something different.
There are for instance 150 signs read as i, each with a distinct meaning.[563]
Since the signs signify ideas, they may be read in all the languages of the
world, in the same way as mathematical signs. Peoples using Chinese script do
not need translations and are joined by the closest cultural tie, having
reading and writing in common.
Learning is gauged by the number of ideograms a
man knows, which is of course like an examination in the number of his ideas.
But scholars also need long years for this, and the man who goes on learning
without pause, who devotes himself to study, is learning the art of reading and
writing all his life, trying himself to develop the language further. And so it
is that Chinese scholars have no lime for true study.
Adopted from Tibet to Japan, this script was
adapted to agglutination, a process involving real contortions. The Japanese
language is itself poor in sound, disposing of only 54 basic syllables, but
combinations are plentiful for it is not a monosyllabic language. Since
agglutinative affixes fit with difficulty into purely Chinese script. known in
Japan as Kanji, to write these down the Japanese invented another script called
hira-gana, composed of 54 signs for their 54 syllables—and these signs arc
added below the Chinese signs. For example the expression tabemasu (I eat) is
composed of the main expression tube. which is written in Kanji, but ma-su. the
addition for present time, is written below by two signs in hira-gana. Or for
example ai, the expression denoting love, is written by the Chinese sign and
three Japanese signs are added below—ma-si-fa—to give the reading "I
loved". Not everything can be written in hira-gana, because of the
multiple meanings of syllables.[564]
For instance the syllable ko (spoken in an entirely
uniform manner) may denote several entirely different things: woman powder.
child, etc. In the same way the syllable san may mean gentleman, mountain,
three, etc., according to the Chinese ideogram employed. This is why it is
possible to see Japanese who are discussing simple subjects rapidly sketching
with a finger of their right hand on the palm of the left those ideograms whose
pronunciation might bs a cause of misunderstanding. So unable to use only
hira-gana in the printing of popular books and papers, and wanting to make it
possible for uneducated people to read them, alongside the less-known, more
difficult Chinese characters the corresponding hira-gana signs are often added
in small print (one or several, according to the number of syllables indicated
by the hieroglyph).
"For this same reason, that is the
multiple meaning of certain syllables and expressions, it is impracticable to
introduce our Latin a special roller device, but the searching out and
transferring (by means of a handle) of so many signs takes too long (longer
than writing by hand), and requires great proficiency. This machine is
therefore mostly used for stencilling, clear copies, etc.".
Thus, Japanese writing is even more difficult
than Chinese. Sister Zaborowska writes on this: "There are three kinds of
writing. Of these I already know the two easier, but with the large characters
it is a difficult matter. There are some 30,000 of them! Even born Japanese
learn them to their dying day!"[565]
The third kind of Japanese writing, kata-kana
or hata-gana, also composed of 54 signs, more pointed, is used in elementary
schools and by foreigners.[566]
A grown-up Japanese would be ashamed to use writing regarded as clumsy because
less suited to artistic calligraphy;
for the Japanese draws when writing. With a
language and script of this capacity, the twelve-page Tokio daily
"Asa-hi" needs about 150 type-setters, although its
"vocabulary" does not exceed 3,000 signs.[567]
Realising the unfavourable sides of its
universal script, on November 3, 1919, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued
an order for the use of phonetic script. Opinion in China and Japan is divided,
and the horoscopes cast by Far Eastern experts varied. Some regard it as
impossible to carry out, and at best applicable only to ordinary correspondence.
If. however, this reform is accepted, will it not be the beginning of the end
of Chinese civilisation on its present vast territory? Phonetic transcriptions
are never of general application. All will depend on whether China develops at
least a common literary language—that is. whether one of the Chinese languages
succeeds in obtaining hegemony in China.
Thus having reached a high level of
civilisation the road is nevertheless barred to others still higher because the
written language— to a certain degree the language itself—fails, breaks down.
There is no doubt that languages are far from uniformly capable of develetters
(called romajf in Japanese), particularly where it is a question of complicated
and unusual sentences and words. Thus for example to make possible the use of
the typewriter, in Japanese business correspondence English is generally used.
It is true that there is in existence a machine with 3,000 Chinese ideograms
attached to lopmcnt We see that the highest possible development of an
ideographic script has in one place brought stagnation with it. But have the
incorporative languages managed to rise to the heights at which Chinese has
stuck? Is it possible to imagine the development of human thought in languages
lacking express distinctions between nouns and verbs?
There was a time when language served scholars
as a guide in the labyrinth of communal life. Herder, Wilhelm Humboldt and
Steinthal elaborated on the basis of language a psychology of human
associations. Then there arose the sub-division of languages into philosophical
and unphilosophical, abstract and ultra-concrete. Stray survivals of this are
found to the present day. How many fantasies were invented in the time of Jan
Nepomucen Kafnifiski, who made Polish into a hyper-philosophical language not
to be outdistanced by the vocabulary of Hegelianism.[568]
There developed an etymology of dilettantes who
seized upon external resemblances between expressions in various languages in
order to draw from them even historical conclusions: as if today somebody were
to advance ideas on the relations of Polish culture to Chinese and Icelandic on
the basis that nanny is na-nia[569]
in Chinese (in Polish "niania"), and in Icelandic pad sama[570]
meaning almost like in Polish "the same". There was a period when
volumelong disputes were conducted on exactly such linguistic-historical
questions.
It was already a great advance when in 1907 Dr.
E. Chalupny deduced the whole national character of the Czechs from the fact
that they place the accent on the first syllable.[571]
But even for example such a serious scholar as Paul Barth saw a causal
connection between the -poverty of the Hebrew conjugation and what he regarded
as the Hebrew tendency to underrate the particular-tact or the individual
object in favour of general ideas.[572]
This he announced in 1915. Barth explains the unchanging word-order in Asiatic
languages by the fact that Asiatics are inclined to permanent habits, to
conservative forms.[573]
And yet in his Voelkerpsychologie Wundt
considered to the last (1917) that language was one of the three main factors
in communal psychology. Why in that case is the psychology of the Rhinelander
nearer than that of the Prussian to the psychology of the Pole—and the psychology
of a man from Great Poland more like that of a Czech than a Mazovian?
A priori assertion that language mirrors
communal mentality has its logical basis in the conviction that language is the
work of this communal mentality. A language which is to come into prominence
spreads from smaller associations to increasingly large ones for various
reasons connected with economics, politics and communications, but with
linguistics as such only when the language concerned possesses a better system
of organisation than other neighbouring languages; but it is rare for
reflection, decisions taken in advance, to play any pan in this process. A
language which has mastered several peoples was not previously a reflection of
the mentality of all those peoples; or is literary French a reflection of the
mentality of the Vendee, Normandy and (simultaneously) Marseilles and for that
reason accepted as the leading language? Was it a reflection from the beginning
and did the Vendee only fail through some misunderstanding to use in writing
the language of the lie de France—or did it only become so later, and if so
when?
Attachment to language as to a national
characteristic, love of language as we know it, can only exist where there
exists the idea of the nation—that is exclusively in Latin civilisation.
The only languages which may incontestably be
regarded as the product of a certain communal mentality are occupational
dialects. There are not a few of them, from the criminal (there is already an
international variety) to the technical and on to the sacred-hieratic. The more
primitive the people, the further these dialects will be from the main
language, and the more many-sided their elaboration. In ethnological works one
may read about "secret languages",—the jargon of camphoror gold-atiherers
in Indonesiafor example— which ethnologists make into a feature of
"savage" peoples. But we have fishing, hunting, sailing and military
dialects; and if it were possible to collect camphor here, we should also have
the dialect of the camphor-gatherers, just as we have the dialect of wild
honeygatherers.
These dialects would be a study of the first
importance if we were able to investigate how they develop from generation to
generation; or if it were possible to develop a comparative study of them in
order for instance to answer the question what is common to the criminal
mentality in China, in Germany, in Portugal, in Canada. etc. There is no doubt
that such a general, universal criminal mentality exists; let philology
describe it for us! But probably it will allow itself to be anticipated here by
every other branch of learning prepared to engage in the matter.
Let us also consider the question of special
trade languages. Broken-English in Sierra Leone and pidgin-English in China
both adopt English terms, leaving the syntax and order of the local languages,
while sabir, the language of the Mediterranean ports, is on the contrary, a
lexicographic mixture of French, Spanish, Italian. Greek and Arabic. Is this to
be treated from the point of view of "communal mentality*' (perhaps of the
League of Nations)? Artificial languages—volapuk, csperanto, ido etc. must
presumably remain a reflection of the mentality of their creators?
Languages also have no connection with kinds of
economic culture; for example the Bantu languages are widespread among the
shepherds of Eastern and Southern Africa, but also among the hoe
agriculturalists of the Congo.[574]
Moszynski recently asserted that "in matters of cultural ties and
connections linguistic frontiers are as nothing".[575]
It is thus impossible to admit the idea that
language reflects communal mentality; no conclusions should be drawn from
language about the nature of this mentality. But (as there is some truth in
every fairy-tale), language may in fact teach us about the level of communal
mentality regardless of its nature. Attainment of a higher level must tend to
promote the development of language. All progress in communal life, in any
department of it, calls for communication of new ideas or at least new
combinations of ideas; for otherwise the progress achieved will not be
maintained. And fresh communication requires new linguistic means, so that
language must become richer, develop with every such favourable opportunity. I
do not doubt that some time there will appear a history of the Polish language
considered from this point of view.
If at such an historic moment the language is
incapable of adequate development, the new achievement cannot be popularised
and will not become general property but will pass like a meteor on the horizon
of society as an exceptional event, unassimilated and rejected. Then the
authors of that advance will either fall into oblivion or—if they want
intellectual life—they will go to others in search of a society where they will
not be a foreign body.
It might happen that those responsible for an
advance did not lack understanding within their own society, but that their
language was incapable of adequate response. Then penetration by a foreign
language will begin, in greater or lesser degree, in one field or in the whole
of life; it may even happen that higher intellectual development will take
place altogether in the foreign tongue, which will gradually oust the native
tongue from communal life. Even the disappearance of the native tongue is possible,
so that after a time what was once foreign becomes native.
Not all languages are capable of keeping pace
with intellectual development in their own linguistic association, but it does
not follow that such a society cannot develop further. For instance, the Chinese have outgrown
tbeir language, and can only develop further in the English language. The
Japanese are threatened with the same situation. Now attempts are being made to
push these languages on to higher development—the encouragement of phonetic
writing has no other cause. Whether they succeed in raising the capacity of one
of them will only be known in the next generation.
Meanwhile the concrete, the non-abstract is
generally regarded as a feature of the Chinese and Japanese languages and so,
arguing from language to communal mentality, the Far East is denied capacity
for abstract thought—and higher intelligence. Lowell goes so far as to write:
"The Japanese spirit does not give a penny for powers of
abstraction".[576]
And yet Catholic catechisms have existed since 1600, and the translation of the
De Imitatione Christ! into Japanese dates from 1610.[577]
It is said of the Chinese language that it is
surprisingly concrete, because the Chinese has the overriding need to
particularise, specify, distinguish parts, as Berr argues.[578]
But it may be added that Latin is both concrete and at the same time splendid
in, abstraction. And is French not concrete enough, and not excellent for the
expression of abstractions? Let us, therefore, cease pontificating about
concrete and abstract languages and be content with the statement that there
are languages which are strong or weak in the one and the other. Some express
abstractions inadequately, but are also in general less apt for development.
Care must also be taken not to mistake for lack
of abstraction what may only be another method of abstraction, so different
from ours .as to be incomprehensible to us. For instance, "exact rendering
of Indian philosophical terms in European languages will always cause great dimculties"—as
Rhys Davids says.[579]
M.-Barth. a leading, authority on the Hindus also regards a good translation of
the Vedda as impossible.[580]
And yet neither the Hindus nor their ancient language have not been reproached
with lack of capacity for abstraction.
In any case a distinction must be made here
between the language itself and the society speaking it. Returning once more to
the Chinese: it happens that when a conversation enters upon .abstract scientic
paths, instead of verbal arguments, the speakers take tablets, and brushes and
draw symbols.[581] This is a
moment when the language does not suffice the intellect; but it also shows that
these Chinese speakers do abstract for it is precisely because of this that the
language fails them.
Vendryes is the last to have concerned himself
with the relation of language to communal mentality. He is very emphatically
opposed to deducing language from the mentality of those speaking it, or vice
versa. He merely suggests that not deriving one from the other they may perhaps
possess certain common features. Certain connections may therefore occur, but
there is no department of language .which wouldauthorise definition of the
spirit of a nation from linguistic features; in any case, with research at its
present stage it would be a "chimerical" undertaking.[582]
Language is thus neither the creator nor the
creation of communal mentality.
If a language or even linguistic stock
constituted civilisation, there would be as many civilisations as
languages! Again the system on which
language is Organised does not determine the system on which communal life is
organised, since in Chinese civilisation there are monosyllobic as well as
agglutinative languages. Incorporative languages have had several
civilisations, inflective also several: Slav. languages serve three
civilisations and nine cultures.[583]
Similarities and differences in civilisation do not follow linguistic
similarities and differences. Where is there even the slightest, trace of
spiritual resemblance between the Russian moujik and the Sile. sian villager?
Let us consider the same question again from
the point of viewof a change of language. Such change does not necessarily
contain within itself a change of mentality. In the middle of the nineteenth
century the most eminent Czechs were unable to speak Czech properly, and the
Irish have only recently begun to speak their own language again. From the Jews
it can be seen how language alone does not decide communal mentality; a Jew may
not know a word of either of his "native" languages, and yet be in
the strictest sense a Jew.[584]
For a Jew. choice of language is a matter of circumstance; heremains a Jew in
all languages equally.
Only individuals abandon the link with the
communal mentality to which they originally belonged when they change their
language; in the case of associations, such change has no importance—and under
the cloak of linguistic differences, the same communal mefl-. tality is found;
The opposite also happens: differences in psyche and national consciousness
under the cloak of the same language (Serbs, Croats).
Between communal mentality and language the
relationship is not permanent, but may vary—so one has nothing to do with tne
other.
Language is the most effective and in its
effects the most farreaching of the tools of civilisation. As the knowability
of the sky depended on the perfection of lenses, so the level of civilisation
depends on the perfection of language. Yet the lens alone does not decide the
state of astronomy, nor does language determine civilisation. So it is a
mistaken view that every linguistic association is at the same time a separate
association of civilisation. The idea of national civilisations existing
according to language cannot be scientifically maintained.
Astronomy would not have reached its present
heights without suitable telescopes, and if the art of providing the necessary
lenses were lost, astronomy would not remain for long on its present level.
Tools decide the success of work. Level of civilisation depends on the state of
the language. Is a language incapable of forming a fairly involved compound
sentence a suitable tool for the expression of abstractions? For where
abstractions cannot be exactly and conveniently formulated, how is discussion
in the field of abstraction and the drawing of increasingly subtle abstract
distinctions possible at all—in other words how can the higher reaches of
knowledge be cultivated in such a language? In the absence of an instrument the
work is not done, even if there is the desire and perhaps talent for it.
Unfortunately, languages cannot be
improved. E. Majcwski has justly
observed that the effects of the drawbacks of a given language and "the
inconvenience are cumulative and grow, so that barely visible in one generation
they become of great importance to the nation, sometimes deciding its fate.
From small grains of sand accumulating over centuries, broad shoals grow
up." ... "While the better languages became increasingly precious
instruments, the less good often deteriorated further, weighed down by the
burden of failings becoming increasingly harmful at higher stages of
development. And yet to alter anything in a language radically and deliberately
is as impossible as to change one's features, even though we feel their imperfection
and faults."[585]
Societies which have been endowed by fate with
a faulty system of speech become victims of their own language. But until such
time as, in the development of civilisation, they outgrow their language, they
move from level to level with a sure step. methodically, according to their own
system. Then when certain individuals
reach out above the capacity of their own tongue, provided they do not drown in
the bog of general inferiority and the number of such individuals grows, in the
end the matter becomes of general concern and disturbances must result which
may produce anarchic conditions in a given civilisation. In a society in this
position, the flower of the intelligentsia will begin to introduce a foreign
language, and bilingualism may prove to be a transitional stage in a general
change of language. A newly adopted language carries forward an old
civilisation.
If, for example, the English language were to
become the real language of the Chinese or Japanese intelligentsia, and then
were to become general, while Chinese and Japanese became dead languages—then
(after centuries!) Anglo-Saxon culture would not have been extended to the
Chinese and Japanese, but the English language would be serving two
civilisations, Latin and Chinese, the latter proceeding to higher levels thanks
to an English dress.
If a sufficient number of people fluent in a
well-chosen foreign language are not available, stagnation must follow, amid
general discontent, and a haphazard grasping at reforms, a confusion of insufficiently
thought-out experiments, a chaotic state involving the ruin of the old
civilisation and a retreat back through several generations to the level at
which the native language suffices. The process would take the form of a
recurring series of upheavals, always followed by another halt. I doubt if
there can be revolutions more dangerous than linguistic ones.
The historical importance of languages is thus
extreme, and their influence incomparably greater than that of race. And what
was out of place in the case of race is entirely in order in referring to
languages: there exists a hierarchy of languages, according to the degree of
their capacity for development. Philology will one day list this hierarchy—a
list of the stronger and blunter tools of civilisation. But this will not be a
table, of different civilisations since the same language may serve two
civilisations.
Civilisations are not formed, established and
differentiated according to language. Kinds of civilisation do not depend on
kinds of language,, but levels in all kinds do. Although language is a
spiritual element, it does not determine kinds of civilisation.
Let us now take up the most spiritual
factor—religion.
If a system of communal life is to be catholic,
it must embrace religion.[586]
Life without religion cannot be complete—however many-sided, it will fall short
of universality. On the other hand, anti-religious life is opposed to the
development of civilisation and must have an immediately unfortunate effect on
ethics as well as on the fine arts, and after a short period, on other
categories of being. Because of the links between the physical and spiritual
categories, any crippling of the latter brings in its train deficiencies and
even abnormalities in material categories also. A civilisation which makes
light of religion will begin to creak everywhere.
In the present consideration of the
relationship arising between civilisation and religion it is not intended to examine
civilisation from the point of view of religion, nor relgion from the point of
view of civilisation, but only to prepare material which will help the solution
of the following problem: do the resemblances and differences between
civilisations result from resemblances and differences of religion; if so is
differentiation in civilisation the result of the variety of religions, and are
religions therefore the creators of civilisations, i.e. of systems for the
organisation of communal life?
For the sake of precision. I define what I mean
by religion. which is a system embracing the relation of the natural to the
supernatural world. Until recently stereotyped methods were employed for the
investigation of religions in the belief that it was possible to deal with them
all at once. This produced fantastic theories. Today nobody believes that
religions emerged from ancestor-worship, and "astral" religion and
the "Babylonian outlook" are treated as nonsense by serious scholars.[587]
The relation of every religion to civilisation
ought to be investigated separately, so that it is the more necessary to
distinguish between them. Religions are of three kinds—local, tribal and
universal in membership; three also in essence—with monolatry alongside with
polytheism-and monotheism.
After proto-historic monotheism, religions
became local and so fell into monolatry, for no monotheist religion can be
local; by the logic of things monotheism is linked with universality. Monolatry
is something basically different. If it had obtained among the majority: of
peoples, each would honour its own separate god and none of these gods would be
the god of even two peoples. From the total of monolatries polytheism would
then have developed—a team of tribal gods not even making up a mythology. because
all totally alien to each other.
In classical times, the Romans discovered one
of the ways of ruling Italy permanently was to centre on Rome the cults of
numerous local religions. Local and tribal religions were also associated with
the expeditions of Alexander the Great, who offered sacrifice to all the gods
along his route.
A local religion is attached to territory; in
the event of a change of population, it is transferred from one people to
another, from one race to another. The opposite is true of a tribal religion,
which is attached to a people regardless of its place of abode. Tribal
religions arose among nomads who, bringing constantly changing gods, realised
that in fact they had none of their own. Not distinguishing monolatry but
mistakenly reckoning it as monotheism, a whole series of scholars reached the
fantastic conclusion that monotheism was the prerogative of nomads.
Evidently neither a local nor a tribal religion
can be true. True monotheism proclaims only one God common to all peoples, and
to each of them separately, identical for all: monotheism and universal
religion go together. Brahminism,
universal in principle, never lived up to itself, never went outside India, but
deteriorated into a polytheistic religion, local even although the locality is
a vast region. Unquestionably universal are Islam, Buddhism and Christianity.
If local and tribal are lower than universal,
do adherents of universal religions automatically belong to higher
civilisations? What has historical induction to teach us on the matter?
Through monotheism the Arabs and the Jews
attained a superior level of civilisation, but it is also certain that the
pagan Scipios stood above them; if the Scipios had possessed belief in the One
True God, they would have risen to a still higher level of civilisation. It is
equally beyond doubt that monotheists would be falling to a lower level if they
returned to polytheism. But such movement, whether lower or higher, takes place
within the frame of the civilisation to which those concerned already belong. A
monotheist Roman would never have become Jewish by civilisation, since it would
have meant a lowering of his cultural level. In this matter there can be
discussion only of levels, not of kinds of civilisation.
In following links with civilisations,
conclusions from external resemblances between religions are to be guarded
against. For example, there have
always been processions, prayer-strings, etc. There were processions to
Eleusis, and today flocks of pilgrims cross the Tibetan mountains, while in
China a "fleet of junks" sails to the sacred island Pu-Tu, and
"processional boats" are no rarity. In Constantinople rosaries are to
be seen "wound round the hand of a fashionable gentleman distinguishable from
the average European only by his fez, and round the hand of the hamal who
carries loads in the port". In
Japan "every sect has different prayerstrings, as St. Francis Xavier
noticed".[588]
All this has no connection with the relationship of religions to civilisations.
In the Old Testament external resemblances can
be found with the religion of old Persia, while "the later Mithraism,
through the medium of the Persian religion, borrowed very many of the religious
beliefs and practices of monotheism".[589]
But it would be necessary to investigate separately whether influences on the
organisation of communal life followed the same paths.
We face a great problem—the extent to which
religion creates civilisation or civilisation religion. Buckle asserted that
"religion is the consequence of the perfecting of humanity and not the
cause of it".[590]
On the other hand. Fustel de Coulanges argued that social always follows
religious progress, and is evoked by it.[591]
The recently deceased Durkheim held that religion is the mother of all
institutions. The contemporary P. J. Andre is of opinion that "the birth
of a new religion means the birth of a new civilisation".[592]
Le Bon went furthest in this direction, emphasising that even tha slightest
change in religious beliefs brings a whole series of changes in the life of a
people.[593]
And yet the religious changes in sixteenth
century England certainly did not effect changes in the five categories of
being. The Englishman who is converted
to Catholicism at the present day does not change his civilisation; he belonged
to Latin civilisation as an Anglican and continues to do so as a Catholic.
Undoubtedly a man who passes from paganism to Christianity changes a great
deal;
which is also the case if he rejects it by
passing over to Islam— very important changes took place on such occasions in
North Africa and later in the Balkans. But against this may be set facts from
the decline of the Roman Empire, when the flower of the Roman intelligentsia,
in accepting baptism, remained within Roman civilisation and strove to carry it
on. Thus there is no general rule;
the matter must be investigated in the case of
each religion separately.
Religion creates civilisation only when it
draws under its sacral legislation the five categories of being, when it is the
determining factor not only for morals but also in categories of health, the
struggle for existence, art and learning.
"By age and office", because of its
age and record, it is with Judaism that we should begin. It is a mistaken idea that the Jewish
religion has no history, but represents something constant and unchanging in
the procession of the centuries. Like all the peoples of the world, at first
the Jews too were monotheist, but we have no information about them from that
epoch. It is impossible to know whether any differentiation at all had then
taken place between the Hebrews and the proto-Semitic ethnic mass. The epoch is
open to guesses which here are indifferent to us.
From the time they entered history in Palestine
the Jews always had several systems embracing the relation of the natural to
the supernatural world. Instead of speaking of Jewish religion, the plural,
Jewish religions should be used. They
adopted various idolatries up to Hellenistic times. The evidence is in a mass
of Biblical texts, particularly the Prophets. Moreover revealed monotheism
survived only among few people, while the true tradition of the Covenant with
the Lord flowed in a narrow stream. What did they do with revealed monotheism?
Catholic Biblical scholars long ago discovered
the religious duality of the Jews of old, and refer to a loose monotheism, a
materialist conception of the Covenant; but they tend to go round in circles
and employ long drawn-out descriptive terms. Scientific accuracy clearly
suffers because of the lack of an exact terminology. Since, however, the
majority of Jews regarded Israel's relationship to Jehovah as contractual (on
this scholars are generally agreed), and the condition of the contract that
Jehovah should protect Israel from all other peoples destined to be its
"footstool"—and since only a co-religionist was a neighbour — it is
plain that this Jehovah is only a Jewish god and not the universal God. So here
too is a distinct tribal moholatry. The Jews very quickly threw off their mission
as elect, abandoning monotheism and adopting monolatry with their materialistic
Messianism—in so far as they did not sink into polytheism.
Bloody sacrifices continued until the
destruction of Jerusalem. Having destroyed the Jewish Temple, the Romans did
not transfer the cult of Jehovah to Rome, the sole exception to this Roman
practice. They despised the cult, and left not a stone upon a stone of the
Temple (also contrary to their custom) because in their eyes it was a centre of
barbarism unworthy of the age of Titus and Vespasian. In it the blood of
victims flowed ankle-deep: Official parish sacrifices alone accounted every
year for 1093 lambs, 113 calves, 37 grown rams and 32 goats. Adding as many
again for private offerings, we reaclTa total of 2550, so that on the average
seven animals were slaughtered daily on Ac altar. There were surely milder
days, but how blood gushed on solemn festivals—and this was still done,
although they knew bloodless sacrifices .and offered them also.
History distinguishes several levels of
sacrifice. At the beginning there is human sacrifice, then comes the period of
bloody animal offerings, followed by symbolical offerings limited in the end to
fruit and flowers. Thus Israel remained at. a low level and was unable to rise
above it until forced to do so by the Romans.
The extent of the confusion in religious
concepts in Palestine is witnessed by the second royal public temple, of the
State of Israel at Betel, the present Betin, three hours' journey north of
Jerusalem. For Samaria was only the secular capital of this State, the
religious was Betel. This was a temple equipped with extreme splendour, with a
complicated system of sacrifice. It is typical that doubts can exist about
exactly what religion was served there. On one occasion the "cult of the
calf" is mentioned, on another "the ritual which the law of Moses
prescribed", and the cult of Jehovah, although differently named: but a
text of the Prophet Amos suggests the conclusion that local gods were in
question.[594]
After the destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem there was an end to all sacrifices, so that prayer only remained. The
break came suddenly and radically, as if the leaders of Israel were glad at
last to be able to extricate themselves. The principle was proclaimed that sacrifice
could only be offered in the Temple at Jerusalem— which by no means followed
from the sacred books. The renewal of sacrifice was therefore postponed until
the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, which has never been and is not
,now attempted.
The priestly status of the tribe of Aaron is
still recognised, and its members have certain privileges in the synagogues,
but are without occupation. They were never religious guides, only men who made
offerings; the guides were and are those learned in the Scriptures, the rabbis,
who are legal advisers in a contractual religion, but entirely without priestly
character. A priest had to be bom. a rabbi had to leam. Moreover synagogues do
not have the character of temples and are not houses of God. A house of prayer
may be founded by anyone, but the founder remains the owner and enjoys all the
rights of ownership and may even take payment. The Jews do not regard any
synagogue as God's sanctuary. A religion without temples and without a
priesthood developed (the same is true of Islam).
This was a basic break with the past.
particularly as Palestine played a decreasingly important part in Jewish
lives. Outside Palestine they freed
themselves of many of the demands of the Law, on the strength of a new doctrine
that the whole Law was only binding in the Promised Land, and outside it only
in so far as this was feasible. A factor unknown to any other religion—
geographical relativity—had appeared.
The Law of Moses, written down in the
Pentateuch as the commandments of Jehovah, embraces family, marriage,
inheritance, property, and contract law, in a word the whole of civil and penal
law, the organisation of the judicature, legal procedure, genealogy and all
social institutions, rules for farming and cattle-rearing. ploughing, reaping,
vintage-gathering, orchards, even birds' nests; attitudes to art and learning
are defined and rules of hygiene included; neither international and political
law nor State institutions are overlooked. And so the whole of community
life—the whole structure of Jewish civilisation with a mass of detail—is
contained in the rules of the Old Testament. It is a sacral civilisation.
The Old Testament is poor in passages relating
to the sciences and arts. We encounter only liturgical music, singing to the
lute and hieraic dancing. Sculpture was forbidden; nothing is known about the
existence of painting. Of the sciences, Jehova's followers recognised law and
as much mathematics and astronomy as was needed to observe the moon; medicine
was condemned. Thus it was a defective civilisation, with the tiniest provision
of the intellectual categories of being.
To this was added in time a second source-book
of Jewish religion and civilisation—the Talmud. This vast collective work was
produced by two thousand rabbis between the second and the sixth centuries A.D.
It may safely be said that there is nothing in heaven or earth which is not
debated there, but always exclusively from the sacral angle. The Talmud is a
commentary on the Old Testament with added detail. Not a comer of life escapes
the restraint of rules allegedly coming from Jehovah. Jewish civilisation would
become even more strongly sacral.
But the Jews scattered over the wide world
before the Talmud was written. The Jews of the oldest forced settlements —
Assyrian. Persian, certain branches of the emigration in the Diadochian States,
also in Arabia, India. Abyssinia, the Caucasus and on certain African
coasts—knew nothing of its appearance. Absence of knowledge of the Talmud is
the surest evidence of the antiquity of a settlement. There existed an
extensive non-Talmud because pre-Talmud diaspora.
In addition, others who do in fact know the
Talmud, do not acknowledge its authority. These are the so-called Karaites, who
had their origin in the mid-eight century in Babylon itself, where the Talmud
itself emerged. Until the end of the ninth century the authority of the Talmud
was under heavy attack, then came hesitations increasingly favourable to the
Talmudists. The fight for the Talmud took place mainly under the aegis of
Arab-Jewish universalism. The Karaites were the first Jews to begin writing in
Arabic, the Talmudists were obliged to copy them in this. and in assimilating
secular knowledge from Arab culture. From the middle of the twelfth century,
the pillars .of Jewish learning were already in the Talmudist camp.
The Karaites were the first to agree to equal
rights for women in family law. The resulting monogamy—proposed and already
practised by the Karaites—was in the eleventh century enjoined upon the Talmudists
of Alsace, where the Rabbi of Metz, Gerson, laid a curse on Jews who forced a
divorce upon their wives against the latters[595]
will.
Is not monogamous civilisation different from
polygamous? And yet Jewish civilisation did not split up. The Law only permitted
polygamy, but did not impose it, and did not ban monogamy; and so the Law
remained untouched and there was no derogation from the sacral character of
Jewish civilisation.
Meanwhile a third source of religion and
civilisation, still sacral, had made its appearance, the cabbala. It began in
the eighth or ninth century A.D. with study of the secret powers of the letters
of the sacred Hebrew alphabet; gematria, consisting in specific operations with
numbers expressed by letters of the alphabet—a Greek game which the cabbalists
took seriously—was added; then came the doctrine of systematic manifestations
of divine attributes from which "cabbalistic philosophy" (oddly close
to the avatars of the Brahmins)10 developed.
The'cabbala helped to uphold the Talmud,
covering over the absurdities with cabbalistic interpretation, so that all
proved comprehensible and holy. Rabbi Nachman (1195-1270) undertook this task.
proclaiming cabbala to be the most sacred science. The basic book of Jewish
cabbala is the Sohar of Moses ben Shemtob from the, Spanish province of Leon
(1250-1305) .
Cabbalistic methods were at ones adopted in
small circles-of scholars as an attractive "philosophy" leading to
control of nature, and the issue, of commands to her. And when belief in the
possibility of influence on the external world by secret but religious means
became popular, and moreover accessible only to Jews, to what .end would a Jew
use this power if not to hasten the coming of the Messiah? The cabbala also won
hearts and minds by alleged partial realisations of the Messiah with the help
of Messianic men, local Messiahs.
Cabbalistic fantasies adapted to Messianism
were to acquire practical significance; but before this happened, a beginning
was made with the adaption of the Talmud to the new conditions of the diaspora.
From the thirteenth century the vastness of ; these books was reduced, what
could only concern Palestine and what could in no wise be carried out omitted,
and the learned arguments cut almost to the conclusions alone, the commands and
prohibitions. These labours, which began with the famous Maimonides
(1135-1204), who dealt karaism the final blows, lasted to the middle of the
sixteenth century. In the year 1565 the Rabbi of Jerusalem, Jacob Karo,
completed an edition of the Talmud entitled Shulchan-Aruch. with supplementary
remarks by the contemporary Cracow Rabbi Isserles (1525-1572). This book is
still binding; all Talmudic works of the more recent period are based on it. A
thousand years divided the big Talmud from the small. from Shulchan-Aruch.
Today it is still required in the name. of religion that the whole course .of
life be ordered in accordance with rules nearly fifteen hundred years old,
where sacral power is held to be inexhaustible.
It should be noted that the Shulchan
consistently proclaims monolatry. Jehovah appears as the enemy of all mankind,
and protector of the Jewish people alone; one's neighbour is a Jew only. The
resulting double ethic is blatant in the Shulchan. Is this monotheism?
But in cabbala the concept of God was reduced
even further. Fantastic speculation :is mingled with practice of the .crudest,
superstition. And simultaneously with Shulchan-Aruch appeared the so-called
"practical" (mashiit) cabbala, drawn up in Palestine, by a certain
Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Ways were devised of discovering when the Messiah
would appear, and with him Jewish hegemony, over the whole world. On several
occasions a date was expressly indicated (1525, 1568, and .most important,
1648).
Meanwhile at the turn of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries came a discovery which was to hasten the Messiah. The mosr famous of Isserles's pupils. Rabbi
Jacob, later on in Prague called "the Pole", worked out a new method
of study and prayer known as pylpul.
This consists in constant' movements of the wholieFbody, but in
particular of waving of the Tight hand with fist clenched and thumb extended
obliquely. The significance, of this movement was and is variously explained to
the uninitiated. The truth is that pylpul is associated with the branch of
cabbala which explains even the supernatural world by differences of sex.
Among cabbalists in. Poland the. old doctrine
about Shechin. the female element among the divine attributes, became dominant,
and in Volhynia at the time of King Augustus III Rabbi Eliezer, founder of
Hassidism,. based himself on it. la doing so he created a cheerful religion,
for what more agreeable to Jehovah than the cheerfulness, of his chosen-people;
cheerful prayers were even brought into the synagogue, origin of
the'.proverbial commotion there. Scandalised Talmudist misnagdim put them under
interdict, but were afterwards .compelled to retreat from whole provinces. Only
in VUno the Hassidim were refused entry by the famous Elias, creator of a new
school and spiritual father of Lithuanian Jewry. To tsadyk, the divinely elect
of Hassidism, was ascribed a definite influence on human affairs and on nature.
A tsadyk is a wonder-worker and a local' Messianic man. It is the Messianic concept
fragmented.
By this tune, however, the eastern Sephardim
(descendants of the old exiles from Spain) already had their Messiah. His
arrival had been forecast for the year 1648, and on this occasion he appeared.
For the eastern cabbalists he was Sabbatay Zwi, who proclaimed himself the
"incarnation" of the Torah and was already winning adherents in
Poland by the year 1666. Incarnation of the Torah became hereditary, passing to
the son, and grandson of Sabbatay (to the year 1740), Blood descendants then failing
the idea passed to Jacob ben Jehuda ben Leib of Czerniowce (Cemauti), known to
history as Frank. He was active in Turkey for fifteen years, then in 1755 moved
to Poland.
Sabatay and all his successors enjoined
monogamy.
In Poland Frank found a fierce struggle between
Talmud and Sohar in progress. The
Frankists went so far as publicly to accuse the Talmudists of ritual murder.
Frank used all means to win the favour of court and higher clergy, in 1759
accepting baptism with 24,000 of his followers. At stake was a grant of
administration over a considerable area in Podolia, a grant which would enable
the Messiah to rule somewhere at last. This first project of Judaeo-Polonia
might have succeeded had not Frank broken with the Talmudists, who avenged themselves
by causing Frank to be interned in the fortress of Czestochowa, whence he
succeeded in leaving for Germany only in 1773.
But cabbalistic speculations continued to
spread among Talmudists, and after Rabbi Bynem of Przysucha (died 1817). study
of the cabbala and of the Talmud became one, against a background of Hassidism.
There arose in Poland a kind of synthesis of Jewry.
In principle, recognition of the Torah does not
bring with it recognition of the Talmud, and a man who recognises the Talmud
need not recognise the cabbala, and not every cabbalist need be a Hassid. In
the outer world also, four divisions of Jews developed, on the following plan:
Torah |
without Talmud
and without cabbala |
||
with Talmud |
without cabbala |
||
with cabala |
old cabbala |
||
Chassidism |
The line from I to IV on this table may be
regarded in two ways: as representing progress or retreat, one religion or
four. If. despite everything, the verdict is one religion, what is the common
bond? Only Messmnism—faith that all must end with the Jews ruling the world.
There is no other commonwealth here. Incidentally, where is the common ground
between Hassidism or even the cabbala and the Pentateuch? All recognise the
Torah, but they do not have foundations in it; and if they turn to it, that
also has a Messianic basis. There lies the source of the sacral argument for
Messianism.
Across all the centuries and through all
changes, and vicissitudes, Jewish civilisation has never ceased to be
sacral—Kosher rules for slaughtering and cooking are in force unchanged, and so
is the double ethic.
It is sometimes heard that
"Nee-Judaism" represents a break with this. But the founder of
so-called Neo-Judaism, Mendelsohn (1729-86), clothed Judaism with the forms of
modem life and nothing more. He was an excellent Talmudist, and his handbook of
Jewish law (1778) keeps to the Talmud in everything, not even hesitating over
the double ethic. So-called
Neo-Judaism only provided new forms for the old Talmudist spirit.
In 1855 it was claimed in Germany that
"only he is a Jew who scrupulously fulfils the rules of the mediaeval
rabbis, of Shulchan-Aruch and its commentators". Those who made this pronouncement were dressed in frockcoats and
bad organs in their synagogues. Similarly in 1870 the learned lawyer Auerbach
acknowledged the law of the Talmud to be the law of God. And in our days Jewish
literature in the German language has even pronounced in favour of Hassidism (Buber.
1908), and feelers of Hassidism already reach out to England, where old Jewish
families, English by language, are turning again to Jewish sacralism.
Jewish civilisation was and is sacral.[596]
Brahminism is often confused with Buddhism, but
these are distinct religions, and it is only historically that their affairs
have become linked: Buddhism derives from Brahminism, but represents a reaction
against it. Both religions regard life as basically evil, both believe in
reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, but Buddhism rejects the sacred
books, the Veddas, and does not recognise castes, whereas Brahminism is in fact
a religion of castes. Brahminism developed in India and has never spread
outside India. Buddhism also arose in India, where it was long the dominant
religion. Now it barely holds out in Nepal? and that in a veritable caricature.
The two religions have in common a kind of begging clergy, which often confuses
travellers. In Brahminism a third of the Brahmins really beg, but a Brahmin is
born a Brahmin and is not obliged to beg, since he belongs always and
absolutely to the supreme caste, and may be even a minister— whereas the
Buddhist monk may come from any caste and is obliged to beg.
The holy books of the Vedda do not contain a
strictly defined religion: "The Aryan hymns oscillate among the most
varied concepts of religion. Everything is found there: adoration of the forces
of nature, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism".[597]
"The expression religion has an entirely different meaning for a Hindu and
for a European".[598]
If it were to be said that every caste has its religion, this would not be far
from the truth. The higher the caste, the more the metaphysical side of
Brahminism reveals itself.
The law of Manu (of the second, third or even
eighth century B.C.) lays down in detail the duties and reciprocal relations of
the castes, regulating daily life under the sanction of religion. The Brahmins interpret the sacred books and
watch over the organisation of society.
The fact is that of the religion of the Vedda
generally speaking nothing remains, but a whole range of faiths arose, from
monotheism to the cult of animals.[599]
Polytheism was shaped during long centuries, as it were a pictorial-popular
allegory of real religion. Brahma himself, the protoplast of all transformed
into the supreme god, has never been and is not the object of a cult because he
has no "special followers", and "in the whole of India there are
perhaps no more than one or two temples dedicated to him".[600]
Incarnations of divine attributes, avatars,
became in time separate deities. Since their number is unlimited, the number of
Hindu deities may also multiply without end. Brahmins accept polytheism, with
the reservation that the actual images of the gods must not be defied.
The adherent of, Brahminism is surrounded by
countless religous and caste regulations, to such an extent that the most
scrupulous cannot be sure that they have not fallen into sin. Constant
unceasing fear of sin, of "uncleanness", is a feature of Brahminism.
These regulations cover family and property law, ritual ceremonial and prayers,
penances and purgations, and in addition all the customs of daily life, laid
down in the most minute detail for each caste separately. All the legislative
side of the Vedda was retained, and supplemented by thousands of tiny details:
sacral legislation embraces the whole of life and every moment of it.
There is a way of getting outside caste—by
renouncing the world and becoming a sannyasee, homeless, possessing nothing and
wanting nothing. Such a man is raised absolutely above all the requirements and
duties of cult and caste.[601]
There obviously cannot be many of these sancyasee philosophers, but the popular
and quite unintelligent yogas are numerous. And anybody may become a full
sannyasee or yoga, since it is open to everyone at any time to leave family or
office for this sacred purpose. In Brahminism it is permissible at any time to
revolt against the duties of a life in which nothing is sacred, which is no
more than a conglomeration of evil. Anybody who rejects the world is not bound
by any duty previously undertaken. Put
simply, the road to sanctity leads through rejection of all duty.
In all the observances of religion, in every
caste there reigns an absolutely terrifying formalism. Magical power superior to that of the gods
is attributed to rites. The smallest external aspect of the cult is carried out
with extreme scrupulosity. "No people has shown itself as strict in the
carrying out of its religious duties as the Hindu".[602]
But nor has any people so entirely separated
religion from morality. These "most religious" Hindus are at the same
time the least moral. The professing Brahmin does not forget the gods in his
trifling activities, and is occupied without cease in endeavours to win their
favour for himself—but "he would be extremely surprised if it were
suggested to him that the gods are interested even slightly in the uprightness
of his dealings with his neighbours, in the purity of his life, the integrity
of his speech and conduct, or that these all-powerful beings have even the
slightest wish to frown on a Hindu who seizes his neighbour's goods or commits
child-murder. Of course, their revenge might seriously affect a man who omits
to say a prayer, to read the sacred Jbooks, to take part in religious
ceremonies or to carry out the required acts of purification, if for example he
does not wash his hands before eating or his lips after a meal. These are sins
which rouse the anger of the gods".[603]
Provided the thousands of external rites are observed at every turn, they pay
no heed to the rest. The rest is a matter for men, is the material,
utilitarian, practical side of lifc, far below the concern of the gods".
For that matter the Hindu pantheon is not composed of moralists.[604]
In Manu legislation, tortures and even the
death penalty are provided for neglect of ritual, whereas only light
punishments follow robberies and murders. And irregularities in sexual life
call for punishment only in so far as they are dangerous to the purity of the
race—and this is for the Hindu the sole serious sin. Killing is a serious sin
when a Brahmin or a cow is concerned, otherwise it is a peccadillo, while the
killing of daughters is no sin at all.[605]
"The Hindu walks, sits, drinks and eats, works and sleeps
religiously"—but "morality has not yet been born in India"[606]
Every step of a Hindu is formalistically sacred. Thus Brahminism contains
within itself the -whole external side of civilisation, and of the internal
side defines family and property law (in the Vedda and finally in the laws of
Manu).
Le Bon describes this state of affairs
accurately: "In India religious beliefs are the basis of all social
institutions; they are in reality nothing but religious institutions."[607]
Of the categories of being controlled and
exactly defined by Brahminism there are the bodily categories of health and the
struggle for material existence, also art (limited to architecture and
sculpture for the temple). The Brahmin religion does not know the category of moral
good, nor does Brahminism cultivate learning outside the study of the sacred
books and—here is a significant phenomenon —: Brahmin civilisation does not
know these categories either. What is lacking in Brahminism is lacking in Hindu
civilisation which, positive and negative, consists in Brahminism and derives
from it. What is not sacral is not accessible to the professing Brahmin. In
Brahminism civilisation and religion are one.,
But there is a certain aspect under which the
relation of Brahminism to civilisation deserves separate investigation.
Brahmins themselves have noticed the contradiction between Brahmin theory and
practice. This is explained by the system, known as vedanta, which asserts that
all the variety of life is a simple illusion. The wide world of appearances and
illusions is under the power of the extremely fickle goddess Maya, who is able
to conceal truth from minds without the necessary training. The whole Hindu
pantheon belongs to this domain of Maya; how much the professing vedantist chooses
to take from it and accepts is his personal affair.[608]
This system (propagated among Christians) is
clearly not a religion, since it permits the rejection of all religion—and as a
philosophical system it is simply nihilism. The more vedanta, the less civilisation,
since the vedanta kills all civilisation.
"The vedantist synthesis has caused and
causes stagnation in whole departments of life. A man realising the identity of
his being with the supreme, sole and absolute Being, attains in time interiorly
and as an individual the highest possible goal of all existence. It is the
peak, but at the same time a halt. for it excludes for the future any factor of
striving and effort."[609]
In the middle of the sixth century before
Christ appeared Goutama Buddha, a prince of one of the peoples of North-East
India. Long a pupil of the Brahmins, he abandoned position and family, became a
sannyassee and wandered through a large part of India. His teaching wan not
revolutionary in Brahmin metaphysics, since he retained the two chief doctrines
of Brahminism —life treated as an evil and the transmigration of souls. The
difference was that he did not concern himself with the question of the first
beginnings of things; he was not concerned with God or gods and did not accept
the immortality of the soul. Belief in the soul was early condemned in pure
Buddhism as the "heresy of individuality". Similarly pure Buddhism
does not accept the efficacy of prayer.
All this would not have caused a religious revolution in Asia. The fundamental difference for communal life lies in the fact that Buddha overthrew the principle of Brahmin ethics, according to which spiritual victories are only to be attained through bodily renunciations. Buddhism also attaches no importance to castes, does not fill life with penances, even abolishes sacrifice. So at least Prince Sakyamuni. Gautama Buddha taught.
Neither Brahminism nor Buddhism strives to
remove evil. The constant migration of the soul, the wandering of the human
individual forced to adopt a new body and to live (and so suffer) again without
end, is an unceasingly moving "circle of desires and anxieties", a
hunting for non-existent happiness. The nature of the reincarnation is decided
by karma, that is a reckoning of moral pluses and minuses in the previous life.
The transmigration of souls lasts until moral excellence, consisting in
complete annihilation of all attachment to being, is achieved. At this point
the karma of the individual concerned is exhausted and a new one is not formed.
Then follows the divine state of nirvana, which accompanies the last life of
the perfect man. This is "a sinless, peaceful state of soul". It is
possible to reach this state relatively quickly, but it may also take thousands
of years. Approach to nirvana or increasing distance from it is determined by
the degree of morality of the last karma.
Gautama Buddha opposed Brahminism decisively by
creating a morality. A true Buddhist must be a good man and be victorious over
himself. ABuddhist is not allowed to reject his responsibilities. The example
of Sakyamuni, still based on Brahminism, did not survive in face of the
morality which he himself later preached. The begging order, in which from the
beginning caste was not recognised, became the characteristic feature of
Buddhism. Begging and constant wandering are obligatory. Monks are in addition
bound by special moral regulation?[610]
The begging of the Buddhist order is not, however, intended to honour poverty,
but to show that the bsggar aims at nothing in external life. that he really
does not possess this life, and so cannot attach himself to anything. This
state approaches the perfection of nirvana.
It is a state of complete a-civilisation. Pure
Buddhism remained indifferent to the five categories of life: the human
quincunx means Evil. Buddhism cannot of itself create any civilisation. It
builds nothing because it is not allowed to want anything. An active attitude
to life is ruled out. Perfection consists in the disappearance of the
categories of life.
For the generality. Buddhism contains only five
rules: do not kill (not even animals!), do not steal, do not lie, do not get
drunk and keep clean. There are other rules for monks only. Sacral law is
non-existent; pure Buddhism contains nothing sacral.
Despite everything. Buddhism could have created
its own civilisation in India if it had continued to take the firm stand for
the abolition of the caste system to which its rapid initial spread was due.
But in time Buddhism grew reconciled to castes. The history of Buddhism in
India covers a whole millenium from the fifth century before Christ to the
seventh after Christ. When it accepted the caste system, other breaches
followed and it began again to resemble tBrahminism. Buddhism then ceased to
act as a leaven, ceased to operate creatively in the history of India. Ceasing
to reform, it became unnecessary to the Indians. Brahminism was better suited
to castes, and castes to Brahminism. About the beginning of the Christian era,
India was again divided between the two religions; from the seventh century
there was a renewed predominance of Brahmiiijism, until finally Buddhism
disappeared. In the eleventh century some Indian rulers still supported it, but
by the twelfth century, when the Moslems conquered Kashmir, there were hardly
any Buddhists left. Yet Brahminism held its own even against Islam.
Exterminated in its homeland. Buddhism
nevertheless became a universal religion. In the fifth century it reached
Ceylon and thence spread to Burma, Siam, Java and on to Sumatra. By the road
leading from India through Eastern Turkestan it reached beyond the Himalayan
crests, and on the other side as far as China, where Buddhism became the State
religion in the fourth century, and Korea, which adopted Buddhism at the same
time. In 552 Buddhism reached Japan, and then penetrated back across the
Himalayas to conquer Nepal and Tibet.
But what kind of Buddhism was it? It spread by
compromises, and increasingly serious ones, until in the end for the mass of
believers whole mythologies arose, and under the appearance of Buddhism the
forces of nature were honoured, evil spirits worshipped and sorcery,
incantation and witchcraft practised. Compromises entered into even the
monasteries. True Buddhism, the Buddhism of Gautama-Buddha, is almost without
adherents. Some sects, the polytheist Jains, for example, reject even a genetic
link with it In China also. Buddhism has changed so much that scholars long
regarded it not as Buddhism but as a separate religion.
And so there is Buddhism and Buddhism — a
plurality of Buddhisms.
Lamaism would wish to be regarded as the most
legitimate Buddhism, but its characteristic feature, overgrown monasticism, is
organised in open violation of Buddhism, because hierarchically, and in Tibet
is coupled with the exercise 'of theocratic government. In lamaism the sacral
principle has grown to such an extent that it extends to the whole of life,
which it is hard even to glimpse apart from the sacral.
Among peoples of a low standard of civilisation
monasticism has become a caricature. The Mongolians, for example, are divided
into two rites, red and yellow, with the red not regarding celibacy as a
condition of their estate. And in Nepal the Tantra system "poor in form,
repulsive and unworthy in content"[611]
belongs to the worship paid the god Shiva. In these lands Buddhism has
certainly not raised the standard of civilisation.
Buddhism adapted itself to every civilisation
it encountered, not excluding the lowest levels. It is possible with and
without castes. and so under diametrically opposed systems of community life:
evidently it contains within itself no system.
Buddhism is as the civilisation is. Civilisations do not adapt themselves to
Buddhism. but it to them. Theoretically, from the point of view of civilisation
it contains nothing, in practice everything.
The religious thread is so weak, so barely
visible that it needs to be supported and supplemented by other beliefs if
Buddhism is to become a positive religion. These additions give adherents of
Buddhism organisation and form the base of civilisation:
frequently also an existing base is taken over,
as it were the outer Buddhist garment cut to the local civilisation.[612]
In Islam there is strangely little theology, a
minimal amount. "It reduced theology to basic elements and lowers it to
the level of the coarsest natures." Islam does not permit the offering of
sacrifice, while the "Turkish mosque is a great prayer hall without an
altar". There is also no clergy, only prayer-leaders, the imams. Mahomet
himself was an imam, and so are all caliphs on behalf of all the faithfull, and
someone in every mosque who knows how to read. An ornamental niche in the
mosque indicates the direction of Mecca—close to the pulpit. The preacher may
be anyone who knows how to read and interpret the Koran, for which it is
however necessary to know the Arabic tongue; for the Koran may not be
translated. In the larger mosques there is a permanent preacher, khatib,
generally the local judge, kadi, who is invited (there is no obligation) to
undertake the task. A mosque is not God's sanctuary; God is not present through
prayer in the mosque.
The sources of belief are the Koran and
tradition, called Sunna. In the composition of the Koran there is no slightest
order or arrangement: any plan among its 114 chapters (sunna) comes from the
commentators. The style and exposition of the Koran are the opposite of the
simplicity and clarity of the Gospels; and beside them of an unbridled
loquacity. The Sunna is composed of the oldest commentators and various notes.
The Sunnites are orthodox, while the Shiitcs reject tradition and do not
recognise the three first Caliphs. Shiite territory is Persia, India, Mongolia
and the oases of the Algerian Sahara.
It is not easy to find dogmatic principles in the
Koran. God has ninety-nine epithets, the hundredth is the invocation Allah! The
greatest of the prophets before Mahomet is Jesus. He was conceived by divine
inspiration; Mary is a Virgin. But Jesus is not recognised as the Son of God,
for if God could have sons, there would be more gods. At first even Christians
were not forced into Islam, intolerance against them appearing only in Turkish
times. The old historic link with Judaism is shown by the sacral killing of
cattle and the ban on pork. Angelology was adopted from the Persians and
Talmudists. The immortality of the soul and future life after the Last Judgment
are also accepted. The physical pleasures of the saved will be without number,
but Mahomet regarded as the greatest grace of God the possiblity of seeing Him
for all eternity face to face.[613]
In the Koran the concepts of free will or
predestination are unclear. There is much exageration of the absolute fatalism
of Islam. It is possible to doubt whether the idea of banning representations
of living beings is original, whether it did not reach the Koran from
elsewhere. It appears to have been the Prophet's own idea to ban intoxicating
drinks and games of hazard.[614]
As a result of its rudimentary dogmatic side,
the whole of Moslem religion derives from the five basic duties of the moral
life: prayers, alms, pilgrimages, fasts and participation in holy wars. Various
ablutions accompany the prayers; for Mahomet often gave rules of hygiene sacral
sanction. There are many pilgrimages and in Moslem countries d proliferation of
graves of the most varied "saints". A new religious current, the
Wahabi, would like
to restore to pilgrimages the high religious
inspiration they once had.[615]
The bond of Islam is the religious brotherhood.
Almost every grown-up belongs to one. Some are in the nature of our Third
Orders. The oldest of the "orders". Sufism, practises an ascetic of
poverty, prolonged prayer, mortification and ecstasy. Since it is impossible to
approach God without a mediator, the elder and director of the brotherhood —
sheik, sufi, dervish or marabout — becomes the deputy of God on earth. The
result has been the appearance in the forefront of Moslem life of
"obedience to the sheik instead of the cult of Allah". "Orders
born of the divisions of Sufite teaching cover the whole Moslem world.[616]
Mahomet really only added the monotheist idea
to what he found in Arabia. Hsnce the permission for slavery and polygamy. Now
slavery is officially abolished, but what are slaves to do who sometimes for
hundreds oy years, generation by generation, have lived in the same household,
and have never earned their livelihood outside it? Incidentally, the Koran
recognises several ways in which slaves may gain liberty, but what to live on
once free?
It is extremely difficult to improve the
institutions of community life under'Islam, since the Koran has served to
perpetuate and popularise low-grade institutions as if they had been rooted in
it,. Let us bear in mind that as a rule a Moslem does not know the Koran at
all. Thus polygamy is not really an essential feature of Islam, but it was
accepted .as such. so that Moslems themselves almost until yesterday considered
it an essential matter. Marriage is not a religious act, but a civil contract.
The imam repeats a prayer with a blessing, but neither he nor the mosque are
necessary for the contraction of marriage. It is permissible legally to possess
four wives: slaves are bound to submissiveness. An adulterous wife may be
punished by death. Woman is not man's equal, and does not even stand beside him
in the mosque. Only the husband may divorce his wife. The veil and the sack
dress are not prescribed by the Koran. Countrywomen do not know them at all,[617]
and neither the nomadic Turkmen and Kurd[618]
women nor the Kabyle women hide their faces.[619]
Nowadays the great majority of Moslems live in monogamy, while in Turkey
polygamy has been banned for several years. Islam found slavery and polygamy,
and would not have been accepted if it had not recognised Aese institutions. It
thus adapted itself to the civilisation it found.
On the other hand, it cannot be claimed that in
the Koran there are no injunctions influencing the organisation of communal
life. The Koran is full of regulations in the field of hygiene, and contains an
exact family and property law, entering into even minor details;[620]
it also contains an ethical system. The use of the fine arts is assessed
precisely, although foi the most part negatively.
And so the Koran touches upon the categories of
health, prosperity, beauty, goodness. In the category of Truth, it is little
concerned with the supernatural (theology negligible beyond expression!) and
with the natural hardly at all—only to the extent that family and property law
constitute the whole of jurisprudence. But the Koran's shortcomings from the
angle of civilisation go deeper. All its injunctions are concerned with family
life alone, at most with that of the clan, and it knows only private law.
There is no law of government in the Koran, so
how could government bs based on the Koran? Government is left to the will and
pleasure of authority, so that the arbitrary will of the ruler becomes an
indispensable part of the law. From this it is one step, and an inevitable one,
to the arbitrary will of every official. It also becomes necessary to stretch
the Koran to meet the needs of the State. Military service was kept up in the
name of the holy war. Taxation came under the duty of almsgiving. Obligatory
alms for the poor was made a State concern, and later, under Caliph Omar, five
kinds of such alms taxes were fixed.[621]
Of Moslem government it may be said that it was
patched with the Koran and lined with self-will, and accordingly unable to
dispense with terror. Such Government consisted in the application of private
law (magnified) to public affairs. A separate public law could not emerge until
a break was made with the principle that the Koran is the source of all law.
Two schools developed. one for which only what is contained in Koran or Sunna
is worthy, the other claiming that everything which is not condemned by the
Koran is allowed. In this way as far back as the eighth century a philosophy of
law emerged (Abu-Hanif died 772).[622]
Against the background of these two basic trends numerous sects have emerged.
No Moslem country is without sects, in some the
orthodox Sunnites are entirely absent. There is yet another reason for the
differentiation of Islam: Arabic Islam is not the same as Persian or Indian
Islam. In India Islam has become polytheist; for fifty million Indian Moslems,
Mahomet and the Islamic saints are new gods added to the thousand older ones.
Elsewhere Islam spread because it preached equality; but in India it has
retained the castes. Islam displays individual features in the Sultanates of
the Indian Ocean, in Zanzibar and Madagascar, in Indo-China and in Japan (where
there are three million Moslems) and to an even greater extent in Abyssinia and
China (all Chinese Jews were converted to Islam).
It has been said with truth that "every
race adapted an Islam according to its own character".[623]
Where Islam encountered ground fertile from the
point of view of civilisation, and where the upper hand was taken by that
interpretation of the Koran according to which everything is permissible which
is not expressly forbidden—Islam quickened civilisations into abundant growth.
It'was thus that the flower of Islam, Arabic civilisation. arose, so-called
after the Arabic language and not after the Arabic ethnic element with which it
was in no way linked. Recent research into the role of the Arabs in spreading
Islam is negative.[624]
But their language, thanks to the Koran, became
the language of a brilliant civilisation of an intellectual splendour extended
considerably beyond the frame of the Koran.
The scholarliness of Arabic civilisation (they
rescued Aristotle) is often erroneously extended to Islam as such. Some even
regard Islam as a religion (and civilisation) which is specifically
intellectual, "directed exclusively to pure reason".[625]
But not everything "Arab" belongs to the whole of Islam, and not all
that is Moslem to Arabic civilisation!
It is also necessary to distinguish peoples who received the Koran from
Arabs and from Turanians. These are two worlds as far as civilisation goes. For
example, Arab scholars regard Turks as something worse than giaours, as the
barbarians of Islam. And between them there is a whole range of Islamic
cultures: Baghdad. Persian, Hindu, Kipchak and Dzungarian (in China).
In Islam such great shifts and changes are
permissible that it is not possible to speak of a necessary identity between
religion and civilisation as is the case with Jews and Brahmins. The fully
sacral civilisation seems to appear only in the most extreme of the Shiito
sects, among the Mozabites of the oases in the Algerian Sahara. Ethnically
these are Berbers. They are indissolubly bound to their holy cities; emigrating
temporarily for business reasons they must return, because it is not permitted
their women to leave. Here too the face is covered as closely as possible. In
their towns there are no cafes, it is not permitted to smoke tobacco. The
supreme authority, to be appealed to in all matters, is the college of men
learned in the Koran (tolba) existing in every town.[626]
Apart from this single example, Islam is not in
itself a distinct civilisation, but is compatible with various civilisations.
Whenever a trend emerges in Islam which would make of it a civilisation, the
latter is always defective.
A beginning has barely been made with the
research which would make it possible to say what influence the eastern
Christian sects had on Brahmin, Buddhist and later Islamic sects, and in return
what in these religions influenced the sectarianism of the eastern Christians.
On eastern ground Christianity loses
immeasurably much, in particular its positiveness and organised character, the
single exception being Catholicism, which did not, however, organise itself. in
the East and remains an imported plant there.
From the point of view of civilisation the very
interesting Monophysite sect (which historically became African) acquired in
the course of centuries numerous Byzantine, Coptic, Jewish and even pagan
superstitions, including fetishism from half-wild Ethiopian and neighbouring
nomads. Hierarchically the Ethidpian Church is dependent on the Coptic in
Egypt, and as late as 1864 Coptic monasteries were furnishing eunuchs for
Moslem harems. We shall not be surprised that in the course of their seven
centuries' rule these Copts reduced Ethiopia to a waste. The result was an
amalgam of several different civilisations, mechanically superimposed on
survivals of ancient Egypt, and all on the lowest possible level.[627]
In Africa, too, appeared the Donatist sect, laying the foundation of a fatal
social revolution, which undermined Roman civilisation and made easier the
Vandals' work of destruction.
Asiatic Christianity was characterised by a
submissiveness towards local civilisations which resulted in a strange
Christianity, defective, truly crippled. Historically the most considerable
sect in Asia was the Nestorian. In the eighth century it reached China, but did
not last long; sinking culturally ever lower, it fell below the level of the
Chinese intellect. Nestorians were of
incomparably greater importance among the Turanians, in the Oygur culture and
in the Mongol State of the Genghis Khans, several of whom were Nestorian. There
were Nestorian as well as Catholic crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land.
These same Christians were the most ardent supporters of the expansion of the
Mongol Empire (they decided the battle of Legnica).[628]
In Kipchak there were also Nestorian rulers, and the great Tartar Khanate fell
because of the rivalry of Islam, Yassak (Mongolian) and Nestorianism; finally
Buddhism was victorious in Mongolia and Islam in Kipchak. The Nestorians were
imbued in Turanian civilisation and the Oygur culture, adopted from the
"blue" Mongols.[629]
At the Khan's court, nomadic in summer, in
winter at Saray, resided the permanent representative of Slavonic-Greek
Orthodoxy, of the Metropolitan of "Kiev and all Ruthenia", the
so-called Bishop of Saray. It is a fact that at the Khan's court Orthodoxy was
not distinguished from Nestorianism and on the Orthodoxy side the error was
never corrected. Nestorianism exerted considerable influence on this branch of
Orthodoxy. Both faiths delight in the cult of St. Nicholas and points in the
Orthodox marriage law for priests, the veal and other issues derive from
Nestorianism.
Orthodoxy also stands from the point of view of
civilisation close to Asiatic Christianity,[630]
and historically is not Ruthenian and Russian culture closely associated with
Mongol and Turanian civilisations in general? Moscow adopted her ideas of the
State from the Mongols, her administration from the Tartars and from Kazan the
customs of her upper classes (the tyerem, etc.). Orthodox building derives from
the Asiatic East.
On the other hand, Byzantine influences on
Ruthenian-Russian Orthodoxy were weak, and on its concepts of State and
spiritual life more tenuous still. It is an error to include Muscovy in
Byzantino civilisation. In Turkey there was incomparably more of Byzantium than
in Russia.
The nest of Byzantine influences was Mount
Athos, with all its monkish anarchy. Lavra Petcherska in Kiev, from which at
the beginning of the twelfth century came the so-called Chronical of Nestor,
was a daughter-house. This Chronicle played a decisive role in the breaking-off
of relations with Rome and the spreading of an elemental hatred to Latinity.
From Athos came the skoptsy; the first appeared in Kiev in 1004, and afterwards
there were skoptsy who were bishops.[631]
Everywhere in the East the moral element is
subordinated to material strength. In Byzantium, this is linked with the
attribution of superiority to form over content, and accompanied by a strong
impulse to uniformity; Byzantinism does not understand unity without
uniformity. The Eastern Church quite lost the ability to understand trends
towards differentiation within the framework of unity (hence only one religious
order, the Basilian). The universality of Christianity is also differently
understood: Catholicism aims at it in the name of a basic objective, despite
variety in details, whereas the Byzantines understand all universality only as
uniformity, as the absolute dominance of a certain type which may even employ
force to strengthen its ascendancy.
Uniformity cannot be maintained without
compulsion, and compulsion belongs to the State. In consequence everything is
permissible to the State. A man was a free citizen under the Byzantine Emperor
in so far as the authority of the State allowed. Society had no say in face of
the authority of the State.
The Byzantine schism was affected by all
this. The Church adapted itself
slavishly to Byzantine civilisation after it broke unity with Rome, after it
ceased to be Catholic.
There was a time when Byzantine civilisation
covered Europe, reaching as far as Spain. Then came a return wave washing away
the traces (mainly thanks to the Cluniac reforms), but a considerable part of
Germany remained under Byzantine influences and a Byzantine-German culture was
formed. A manifestation of this was the attitude of the Emperors to the Pope,
particularly in the Italian campaigns, the struggle over investiture and most
of all the so-called "Reformation". Protestantism introduced a
Byzantine hegemony of the State over the Church, even to proclamation of the
principle cuius regio illius religio. A further consequence was Josephinism.
Even German Catholicism was infected. A stage was reached when the State was
openly deified.[632]
The history of Protestantism is at several
points bound up with the history of Orthodoxy. On several occasions they stood
together against Catholicism. The
influence of the Reformation reached deep into Metropolitan Kiev and Orthodoxy
was thoroughly confused by the "novelties". When later the wave of
the Reformation ebbed, the gentry of the Ruthenian territories did not return
to schism, but were converted to Catholicism. After this came the grafting of
Latin civilisation on to Ruthenia. a process which stopped at the
Lithuanian-Muscovite frontier. On the
other side of the frontier, a printing-press was destroyed in Moscow as "a
work of Satan". The clergy exerted themselves to this end through "popular"
disturbances, out of fear that they might be compelled to read printed books.
And then raskoł[633]
with the purpose not to correct errors in texts hitherto used by the Church, to
cross oneself with two fingers, to write Isus instead of Jisus, and lastly to
be or not to be clean-shaven.
A new period of Protestant influences on
Orthodoxy began in 1698, with the germanization of official Russia. The Tsar
proclaimed himself head of the Church, secularised much and introduced the
German "Synod" with Oberprokurator. A Protestant form of organisation
was introduced into Orthodoxy, which theologically had nothing in common with
Protestantism. An incurable dissonance necessarily developed.[634]
This series of facts shows that similarities
and differences of faith even inside Christianity itself by no means bring in
their train similarities or differences in civilisation. Theologically so close
to Catholicism, Orthodoxy is, under the aspect of civilisation, even further
from it than German Byzantinism. Nor does religious union mean a change in
civilisation; religion is one thing and civilisation another.
Thus we see that Christianity does not
constitute a kind of civilisation. If we compare the method of communal life of
the Mongolian Nestorians, the Byzantines, the English and the French, we shall
be hard put to it to find anything common to their civilisations.
The Byzantine Church determines civilisation to
no small extent. In its canons there are fundamental ideas on the State and
art. Byzantine Orthodoxy is from the point of view of civilisation closer to
the Asiatic Churches than to the Catholic Church. From the point of view of
religion how much closer to Catholicism is the Byzantine than the Calvinist,
and yet if religion were as one with civilisation, the katsap from Tula
gubernya must be closer to us in civilisation than the Vilno Calvinist.
In the branches of Oriental Christianity there
are confessions, but there is no Monophysite, Nestorian, schismatic
civilisation. Nestorianism shares the
fate of Oygur, the Constantinople schism goes with Byzantine civilisation, and
the Muscovy schism is rooted in Turanian civilisation. Eastern Christianity
adapts itself to every kind of civilisation: the Christianity is as the
civilisation is.
And now let us pass to Catholicism.
The Gospels do not provide directives for the
arrangement of communal life, and yet there is no department of existence in
which appeal to them would be impossible. There is a complete absence in the
New Testament of any prescription for the cultivation of learning and art, for
the administration of a State, for safeguarding health or for setting about the
struggle for prosperity; nor are there any rules for ordering one's day,
directives on food or drink or clothing and not a single directive on conduct
in conjugal life. Of the quincunx of earthly being only one category is
referred to in the Gospels, but this suffices for all, from the management of
daily life to State institutions. As with a cloak, the Gospel wraps and
protects everything in the category of the Good, in morality, ethics. In this category
the New Testament provides plain signposts.
Almost at the end of the Middle Ages the theory
of social economy was taken up in the Church against a background of search for
the justum pretium, but as a supplement to scholastic philosophy as a whole and
the Church's concern only indirectly, because cultivated by clergymen in the
absence at that time of lay spokesmen. No opinions put forward on the just
price derived from dogma or were regarded as part of religion. When later Oresmius and Copernicus, both
clergymen, produced their economic theses, neither made any claim to shelter
behind the power of the Church. Something of these old discussions survived in
tradition until modem times, when the issue between just profit and
exploitation has involved all the pillars of the social structure. A number of recent Papal encyclicals crown
this search for the just price. It is a fruit which has ripened in silence, but
so wholly and entirely that it may and even should be linked with the Papacy
and so with the Church. All these Papal pronouncements rest exclusively on
Catholic ethics derived from the Gospels and do not go beyond themThe rest is
left to reason supported by the ethics of the Gospel.
Even the truths of the faith may be examined in
the light of reason. The Church herself founded those theological faculties
where religious issues are examined. With reasoning permissible in matters of a
supernatural order, a free hand is accorded investigators of the natural world.
Without establishing a sacral civilisation,
Catholicism does nevertheless contain within itself strong all-round civilising
influences. The evidence of this is everywhere, in the history of art, in the
history of philosophy and of so many branches of learning. in the consideration
of everything that is human; everywhere and in everything Catholicism implants
ethical elements.
The most important thing is that the Church
derives law from ethics. In the Gospels there is no law at all. whether private
or public. In the Church there has never been a shortage of lawyers, but canon
law is limited to matters pertaining to and strictly connected with the Church,
and moreover law must develop beside. but not in the Church. This is expressed in the time-honoured
technical term according to which law was not and is not sacral among
Catholics, is not possessed of a religious character. There is a link with
Roman civilisation, for it was among the Romans that law first ceased to be
sacral. The Church accepted this state of affairs, giving the faithful a free
hand in the secular development of law.
There exists, it is true, the Catholic question
de civitate Dei, and Catholic philosophy has devoted much labour to the
investigation of what a Christian society and State should be—but the Church
has never selected the forms of any State or community in order to identify
herself with them and to condemn others. And such investigation is always based
on ethics and not directly on dogmatics.
On ethical grounds the Church rejected the old
Roman State system, although it adopted much from Roman and in general from
classical civilisation. Scholastic and neo-scholastic philosophy was based on
Aristotle. The classical world from Aristotle to Boethius looked out through
Catholicism as if restored. Ths Church saved this civilisation—on what a scale
may be observed by walking through the Vatican Museum. She tended or allowed to be tended various
of its features on the sole condition that not a crumb of her religious matter
was thereby lost Neither in doctrine nor ethics did she ever adapt herself to
the classical world, nor did she provide occasion for any dvoyevyerys; and she
has never taken part in efforts at so-called religious syntheses.[635]
Very many Roman concepts and institutions suffered rejection.
Nevertheless the Church herself created the
civilisation of Catholic Europe, and all admit that she "brought up the
nations". She evolved a Christian-classical civilisation. She saved at
Viviarium and Monte Cassino whatever of the classical spirit could be reconciled
with the ethics of the Gospels, and a very strong civilisationat combination
emerged; but it was the combination of a Catholicism unreduced and
uncompromising with a classicism cut according to Catholic ideas. Thus arose
the Christian-classical civilisation which we may call briefly Latin. The
Church created this civilisation, and yet is not identified with it, is not
confined to it. She does not press it upon any of the newly-converted peoples.
Let us take as an example a civilisation which
is outstanding and entirely distinct, the Chinese, as it were the opposite pole
to the Latin. Learned missionaries have long laboured in China for the
intellectual benefit not of Latin but emphatically of Chinese civilisation. In
the, catalogue of Chinese books published in Chinese by the Jesuit Fathers in
the years 1584-1684 there are more than fifty treatises on astronomy and
philosophy. The Jesuit Adam Schall
(died 1669) reformed the Chinese calendar.[636]
And now there is a summons to China for "a master of one of the art schools,
so that he may become acquainted on the spot with the art of Eastern Asia and
create a suitable Eastern-Asiatic church style".[637]
It is known that there exists a Chinese and
Japanese and even an Annamite indigenous Catholic hierarchy; there are even local
Trappists.[638] Do these
converts abandon the civilisation to which they belonged before? Is Latin
civilisation imposed on them? On the contrary, as the Church once treated
classical civilisation, so she treats all, ready to take under her wings
everything which can be reconciled with the demands of Catholic ethics. How
characteristic in this regard arc some remarks by Father Peter Charles S.J., in
which we read the following words, both wise and lofty:
"It is possible that there near Mandalay (in Upper Burma) or in Ku-ling (in the Chinese province of Kiagsi) you have prepared for us. Lord, a great Christian theologian, who will give us a spiritual exposition of the Sermon on the Mount and teach us the most elevated^method of prayer. After all, was it not once very improbable that Tagasta would produce Saint Augustine ? Could anyone have imagined that to translate the Holy Bible you would summon a Dalmatian (Saint Jerome) or that an unprepossessing little Jew from Tarsus in Qlicia would be the apostle of the nations? Was Plato closer to You than Sakyamuni? And yet Plato was useful to Christianity and the Catholic philosophy of St. Thomas rests on Aristotle".[639]
Catholicism is also the most philosophical of
religions; to understand it adequately no slight degree of philosophical
training is necessary. It is the only learned religion. The high standing of
Catholicism grew out of the cultivation of learning, as the decline of Eastern
Christianity came from its ignorance. Catholicism is the religion of the
intellect.
In recent year (1925) the worthy Dr. Aleksander
Żychlinski, made this point in plain terms: "True Catholic culture does
not consist in a certain sum of information from the catechism, nor in certain
religious practices, not even in the reading of religious books. Catholic
culture is rather the firmly grounded and thoroughly thought-out Catholic view
of the world, giving effective orientation to the whole moral life of a
man".[640]
Is Catholicism a religion of the intellect
only? What of feeling? But 1 am not in favour of emotional discussion of
emotion, and I pass at once to the place of emotion in religion. There is no
doubt that, the simpleton sometimes understands—and better than the wise
man—the reality of Christianity. We explain this by feeling, thus explaining
one unknown by another. We shall be helped by a comparison of Catholicism with
religions of a lower type, by an examination of ordinary life against religious
background. The history of Catholicism is a history of the constant
'curtailment of ritual and formality; formalism retreats into an increasingly
distant background and diminishes steadily in quantity. According to our ideas,
the religious life is an inner life. In view of this, ethics is based in the
first place not on the act itself but on the intention behind the act. This
subtlely is not found except in Western Christianity. It may very well be that
this concept of intention will bring new "barbarians" to the Church
without the least loss to her.
Catholicism is a religion of intellect and intention.
Here are two capital means of "sanctification"—both possible in more
than one civilisation, but neither themselves constituting one.
Catholic ethics have been mentioned here
several times. Let us consider concretely and from a strictly secular viewpoint
what that ethic means for all the civilisations summoned alike to place
themselves in the common sheep-fold. Collecting and critically examining facts
from the history of societies as well as of the Church itself and from
missionary memoirs of various countries of the world, I have become convinced
that this question can be put briefly, clearly and also with complete accuracy,
thus:
In communal life Catholic ethics everywhere
introduce four postulates, always the same and from the beginnings to the present
day identical for all kinds and levels of civilisation. Four wedges are driven
into every civilisation: life-long monogamous marriage; pressure for the
abolition of slavery; abolition of revenge which is entrusted to a public
judicature; finally, the Church's independence of the State, to prevent
dependence by the spiritual factor on physical power. The tBesis of the basic
superiority of spiritual over material power was enriched, thanks to the
Cluniac school, by an ethical superstructure, according to which in certain
cases material power must be resisted in the name of spiritual. Is not this the
climax of Latin civilisation, the thought of greatest genius to which man has
attained?
These four postulates exert an enormous
influence on every civilisation. Life-long monogamy raises the position of
woman to such an extent that the aim of equal rights is a simple consequence.
strongly supported by the Church. This brings changes in family and inheritance
law, different views on family and home. And the Church insists on this
postulate firmly and radically: she does not give baptism to anybody who
refuses consent to it. Monogamy is introduced at once, without delay.
But no missionary abolishes slavery at once.
Long tolerated— right into the' Middle Ages—it was nevertheless subjected to
increasing restriction, so that in Catholic Europe by the ninth century slaves
had to be brought from a distance, the trade being confined to Jews, until
finally it was not permissible for a Christian to acquire a slave from a Jew. A
slow and gradual process was indicated out of concern for the good of the
slaves. We have seen the social disorder created by the Young Turks when they
abolished slavery radically and at once. It had to remain "on paper",
for where would the slave get his daily bread if he were exposed to expulsion
from the family in which his father and grandfather had found their keep?
The endeavour to abolish slavery lies in nuce
in St. Paul's declaration "If any man will not work. neither let him
eat". Not everybody is capable of
intellectual work, and equally, not everybody of physical; but the ancients
despised the physical. The pronouncement by the apostle of the nations implies
a moral obligation to work; it enriches ethics with a new postulate, since work—obligatory
in the interest of public morality—becomes an ethical ordinance. A man unsuited
to work with his intellect fulfils the ethical requirement by physical work.
And since such work has entered the field of ethics, since it has become an
ethical activity. it accordingly becomes worthy of respect. Not only the slave
may devote himself to it; physical work no longer shames a free man.
It is worth reflecting whether we do not have
here the secret of the development of handicrafts, and subsequently of all that
we call technique. And did not the classical world remain at a low level of
technical development—although it did not lack scientific inventions—because it
loaded with contempt the physical labour from which techniques could have
emerged? It appears to me that St.
Paul is the father of invention. There would have been no "epoch of great
discoveries" without respect for the manual worker.
The missionary is as heavily engaged in the
struggle against revenge as in the struggle against polygamy. Here is neither tha place nor time to raise
doubts on the advisability of this radicalism; I only allow myself the
observation that missionaries do not realise that what is involved is not
normal killing and murder but the fulfilment of a serious ethical postulate—according
to the reasoning of the peoples concerned.
Abolishing revenge, the Church must aim at a
public judicature and so at the beginnings of government. There is thus no
factor more creative of States than the Catholic Church, while the princely
court of law is fundamental to State-making. But do not let us imagine that it
is easy to convince a chieftain that he ought to become a judge. Everywhere—and in Europe—the position was
surely much the same as in Kiev in 996.
The Bishops wanted Prince Vladimir to introduce
the office of criminal judge. For the Byzantine Greeks and Bulgarians occupying
Church offices in the newly-converted country it was a barbarity that murders,
husband-murder and even robberies were left to the private law krvina. They represented,
therefore, to Vladimir that it was his duty to pursue and punish criminals
simply by the strength of his authority, on behalf of the State, and that they
ought to be punished even if only by outlawry. The theory of State courts was.
however, quite incomprehensible to the baptised Kiev kagan. Having just taught
him "Thou shalt not kill" now they were ordering him to do just that.
He did not feel injured, why then was he to revenge himself? He did not feel
himself to -be a representative of the people's interests, in this case of the
safety of their lives and property, and so did not feel any obligations.
Generations were needed before this was understood. Tradition puts into
Vladimir's mouth a significant reply to the bishops' proposition: "I fear
a sin". And when the bishops decided for the time being to stop, provided
at least brigandage was made punishable in court, the prince agreed. but
immediately incurred the disfavour of the elders. He therefore summoned a joint
conference of ecclesiastical and lay notabilities, at which a compromise
resolution was passed. For robbery there was to be vira (a fine, which the
Vargengians brought from Scandinavia), but since it was to be a princely court,
the vira would be due not to the injured party but to the princely treasury. In
this way the bishops saved the principle that the State imposes punishment for
crime—for the time being at least for robbery, as the worst of crimes. But this
compromise theoretical position was only a cover for the bishops' defeat. For
as the prince did not pursue robbers and did not even appoint any servant for
the purpose, how could he extract vira! Practice also followed the old
road—"and Vladimir acted according to the customs of his father and
grandfather"—as the Chronicle of Nestor assures us.[641]
Exaction of revenge by the clan was a duty.
decisive for its honour; clans do not easily allow themselves to be deprived of
the right to honour. Corsica and the Balkans have enjoyed this expression of
natural ethics for a very long time. So let us not be surprised that among
coloured neophytes opposition is customarily the more determined for being the
outcome of a big misunderstanding. The Church combats this radically, and
thereby impels converted communities towards statehood, that is, to devise
institutions of government. In more than one part of the globe, the genesis of
a State is attributable to Christian missions.
The fourth point of Catholic ethics, regularly
inculcated by the Church throughout the world, is her independence of the secular
power. This enters deep into issues of public law; I shall therefore leave it
for the place in the next chapter where it will be proper to speak of the
relation of various civilisations to private and public law. In the questions
which have been raised so far, only private law has been involved; the question
of revenge also has a root in private law, whence it is desired to pull it into
the public sphere.
If religion were simultaneously civilisation,
there would be as many civilisations as there are religions. But history shows
how a certain religion, being universal, may spread to various civilisations
and how, on the contrary, a certain civilisation may contain adherents of
various religions. The terms Christian, Moslem, Buddhist civilisation are
simple expressions of current speech without importance for science—as is also
the expression European civilisation (there are four civilisations in Europe).
Civilisations are not ordered according to
religion, but it cannot be doubted that religion is everywhere the most
important part of civilisation, since it exerts an enormous influence on
abstract concepts.[642]
How significant it is that the Chinese (and the Japanese) are commonly
reproached with a lack of capacity for abstraction! It may be related with the
fact that the whole of Chinese civilisation is a-religious.
Even the lowest of religions has an abstract
side, since it contains a system embracing the attitude of the natural to the
supernatural world. The very recognition of a supernatural world must lead to
the formation of abstract concepts. Every religion, even Shamanism, is
concerned with the action of spiritual forces among material forces, and with
the exercise of influence on matter in the name of spirit. This tendency may
appear in caricature, as among the Shamans, the Jains and Tantrists, but some
rudiment of it exists. Implicitly it also contains a conviction of the
superiority of the supernatural world. Every religion wants to bring something
from that world to earth, in order to perfect earthly life by instilling into
it something of the other-worldly. In every religion there is an impulse
towards the spiritualisation of life.
But examining this common characteristic more
closely, we notice enormous differences in methods of formulation, and in
consequence a very dissimilar relation between religions and civilisations.
Here the inequality of religions becomes glaringly apparent. The thesis of the
equality of religions was bom under "enlightened absolutism", and then
became a fundamental tenet of liberalism; it has permeated almost all
legislation since the middle of the nineteenth century, and to the present day
constitutes one of the certainties of the average "intellectual". It
is a crowning error, and perhaps nowhere more forcibly felt than in the study
of civilisation. If religions were in principle equal to each other, they would
in principle influence civilisations identically; differences of quantity, not
quality would arise.
The ideal of a religion calling forth the fulness
of life was tha dream of Egyptian priests, and then of the strongest heads in
Hellenistic civilisation. They dreamed of a synthesis of two or even of several
religions, they tried an artificial religion to help in the attainment of
higher levels of civilisation and to unite peoples. But the experiment of
Ptolemy I of Egypt and of his son-in-law Lysimach of Thrace, then also ruling
in Phrygia, failed. Tymoteus Eumolpida
of Eleusis, reformer of the cults of Isida and Attis, was summoned from Greece.
Serapis was transformed into Zeus and there was an attempted synthesis of
Hellenistic and Asiatic beliefs, the Asiatic element being reduced where
opportunity offered. The subjects of the Diadochs were said to accept this
synthesis, and outwardly it was accepted, but constant additions drawn from all
hands in the interest of the development of the synthesis resulted in unworthy
and debasing absurdities. Ptolemy and Timoteus of Eleusis wanted to provide a
ready developed civilisation with a religion "suitable" to perpetuate
and elevate it—but the result was the opposite.[643]
They supposed that as civilisation is stronger than religion, the latter would
lend itself to adjustment—which in reality does happen; but religion can never
be artificially created.
Then the first Ghengis Khan, Temuchin, tried to
found a political religion for the generality of his State. The title Sutu
Bogdo adopted by him in 1189 means no less than incarnation of god. Nestorian
and Buddhist influences mingled in this religion of the "bright hind".
But the idea was a failure, and the universal Mongol State disintegrated later
precisely for religious reasons, on account of the struggle between Islam,
Mongol Yassak and Nestorianism. In the end even Kipchak (Eurasia from the
Yenisei to the Don) fell because of Islamic, Mongolian "Yassak" and
Nestorian rivalry.[644]
On this occasion religions proved stronger than civilisations.
Dreams of a synthesis of religions have not
been lacking down to contemporary Hitlerism's testing of its strength in the
workshop of artificial religion. The question thus arises whether religion
creates civilisation, or civilisation religion.
We have seen how certain civilisations
developed Buddhism— and Islam also—entirely after their own fashion, and
adapted to their needs; we have seen how Buddhism may even become polytheist.
and Islam in India contribute to an increase in the number of gods; we have
learned that Coptic and Abyssinian Christianity shamed the Cross. And alongside
these is Catholicism, creating the splendid Latin civilisation and raising all
those with which it comes in contact by its four ethical postulates for the
organisation of communal life.
Religions are thus most unequal in their
relation—passive and active—to civilisations. Religions close to one another theologically
may be in opposite camps where civilisation is concerned, for instance
Catholicism and the Byzantine schism; but, on the other hand, adherents of
religions theologically foreign to each other may belong to the same
civilisation. If religion were one with civilisation that katsap from Tula
would of necessity be closer to us in civilisation than the Vilno Calvinist.
Between Orthodox and Catholic on Polish territory the division in civilisation
amounted to a precipice, but has anybody noticed a division in civilisation
between the Catholic and the Evangelical in the Duchy of Cieszyn?
On the subject of religious interference in
civilisation, Islam interferes more than Christianity as a whole, and
incomparably more than Catholicism; but this is true only of the old school
which considers that a true believer is allowed only what the Koran explicitly
permits. On the other hand, a second school, asserting that everything which
the Koran does not explicitly forbid is permitted, gives to communal life an almost
Christian freedom, at least in principle. Such men were always in a minority in
the Moslem world, but there were and are such. In either case the Moslem
receives considerably more numerous religious directives in the sphere of
civilisation than the Catholic.
If a test of religion were to be religious
legislation in matters of health, the struggle for existence, learning, art,
government, if that were to constitute the ideal of religion, then the Brahmin
and the Jewish would stand highest, for both create whole civilisations on an
exclusively religious basis.
There ase thus sacral, semi-sacral, and
non-sacral civilisations. Since "by their fruits you shall know
them", let us consider the consequences of massive interference by
religion in civilisation. State institutions among Jews and Hindus came to a
standstill at a very elementary level, and the two peoples have revealed a
total incapacity to create States of any size. Even their material culture was
acquired by Jews from the Gentiles, and among adherents of Brahmins to this day
only a few in every thousand are not beggars. In their thousands of years of
history the Jews have written few pages in the intellectual development of the
nations, and those thanks to a retreat from sacralism "among the nations".
It is only in the last generation that Hindus have taken up educational work.
In sacral civilisations religion acts as a
brake on progress. A religion which defines everything in categories of being
must at the same time petrify everything, and in consequence its adherents are
often helpless in face of new currents emerging in the process of time. Where
everything is established a priori, where there is no doubt and no inquiry,
progress is excluded and instead there is danger of stagnation. The Jews saved
their civilisation thanks only to their departure from Palestine and the
introduction into religion of a geographical relativity. The Hindus, on the
other hand, constitute a classic example of complete helplessness.
Of the considerable civilisations, I regard two
only as certainly sacral. The Tibetan is doubtful. We know that it is a
theocracy. but not its departments or scale of operation. The ruling class is
the clergy, but does the social organisation possess no autonomy? What kind of
clan is there, and what kind of clan law do they have with their polyandry? And
what of the triple law, concepts of property, and the property and inheritance
law? These are unknowns, and until the gaps are filled, it is not possible to
discuss this civilisation. Unfortunately, travellers and missionaries prefer to
specialise in accounts of wedding and funeral rites, and in the externals of
life generally, in the belief that they are engaged in serious study: it is a
rare bird among them who pays attention to the fundamental matters I have
mentioned. It may be that Tibetan civilisation is semi-sacral, like the Arabic.
The magnitude of the fall of the Moslem
peoples, which rouses the astonishment of scholars, was due to the cramping
effect of an Islam unequal to the problems of historical development; at the
most involved moments of his history for the Moslem religion ceased to be the
lever of life. The highest cultures in Arabic civilisation, the Baghdad and the
Cordoban, sometimes leant outside Islam, whence came a split between the higher
and lower classes, which often developed into a conflict dividing society and
destroying State institutions. In Turanian civilisation, on the other hand,
Islam encouraged Turanian camp-mindedness but nothing else and the wild
remained wild.
It amounts to this, that sacral-type
civilisations do arise, but the type is inferior. Identity of civilisation and
religion leads to under-development of civilisation; in such over-close
association standstill must be reached. Thus the power of religion's influence
on civilisation is apparent; power no less than that of language. As an
imperfect language in the end checks the development of a civilisation, in the
same way—but to an even greater extent — religion of an inferior order will
help to bring civilisation to a standstill. Significantly, only inferior
religions produce out of themselves sacral civilisations. The higher the level
of a religion the less of the sacral it imposes on communal life.
We have followed numerous lines of
investigation using very various materials. With what result? To what extent
have these inquiries served to uncover the causes of the variety of
civilisations? We have, so far. only investigated those manifestations of life
resulting from blood relationship and the triple law bound up with it. It is
true we have valuable pointers where the thread of the matter must next be
sought: examination of the problem of relation of religion to civilisation has
just brought us to the question of public law and so to a new theme, the
relation of society and State. But let us first sum up.
We have seen how the attitude of man to fire became the differentiating factor par excellence. Who can say whether more peoples will not be discovered who are unable even to kindle fire, or among whom the keeping of a fire is the exclusive privilege of authority? After all we do not know the interior of Borneo or of Australia, and many peoples are known simply "by sight". Information even on the triple law is extremely inexact in the case of the great majority of the peoples of the earth. Our knowledge in this field resembles a sieve, of which it can be said that it is made of holes. It is thus not easy to decide upon a systematization of civilisation, the more so that a second element of difficulty inherent in the very nature of the subject, enters in.
For does the triple law develop in straight
lines? In reality the outlines are often less distinct, with one feature
sometimes obscuring another, as in a mixture.
Life has more combinations than learning can digest schemes. But wishing
to keep to the paths of science, we must arrangs the material under certain
heads, striving to systematize, and that despite complete awareness that the
result can only be a sketch requiring the constant correction which will surely
be forthcoming as monographs on the various detailed problems begin to appear.
It is impossible to avoid the questions: what
civilisations there are, how many there are and in what their essential
differences consist. But as with races, the inquirer must answer the question
"when?".
Every epoch has its civilisations—some older,
dating from the previous epoch and some newly emerging. For example, Chinese
civilisation still flourishes, ancient Egyptian has completely disappeared. Nor
is the number of civilisations constant—they can only be counted in a
chronological framework. The question thus arises whether the number of
civilisations is increasing or decreasing as a majority of the peoples of the
earth attain higher levels.
As with races and languages, once there were
more civilisations than today. The more primitive conditions, the narrower the
territory which suffices for a separate system of communal life, but also the
less permanent they are. How many civilisations have been lost because their
systems proved unsuited to wider development we shall never know. There are
unsuccessful, choked civilisations incapable of reaching higher levels, lacking
the conditions to evolve any tradition or to get round the feature which forces
them to a standstill. There are also those which are condemned from the first
to stagnate in their primitiveness: it is not easy to describe them,
particularly as among primitive peoples there is no uniformity in either
situation or opinions.
But it is not possible to achieve definition
even of undoubtedly historic civilisations of which only fragments remain. Here
and there one finds survivals of the great dark civilisation of ancient Egypt,
which reach to the Pamir and are for us today a real revelation. But the
discovery of a stray fragmentary survival cannot tell us even approximately to
what extent the influence of ancient Egyptian civilisation was felt in Central
Asia. Did there exist an entire
culture of this civilisation, or have we only caught hold of an imported item
without leal significance? What is to be said of the disjecta membra of
Etruscan civilisation? Or of the Phoenician? Or the Tokharian, recently dug out
of the desert sands of Eastern Turkestan? Could anyone, in the present state of
our knowledge, describe Tokharian triple law or even explain whether it was a
distinct civilisation or perhaps only a culture of the Turanian (although their
language was apparently Indo-European)? Does Turanian thus go back to distant
times or was it created only towards the end of the classical centuries, or
perhaps even later? How much is known of the civilisation called of Minusinsk,
a civilisation of an agricultural people in the Altai-Sayan region? And it is
only now that we are beginning to get our bearings in the redskin's
civilisations of Peru and Mexico.
There is thus a great probability that further
archaeological discoveries will add to the question marks. Numerous and
considerable gaps in our knowledge mean that the time has not yet come for
definitive systematization. But a modest sketch may be undertaken on a limited
scale. For it would of course be impossible to bring in every civilisation,
since so much in them is unknown territory. The unavoidable necessity of
limiting oneself to the few better known may be a useful lesson in humility.
It should be borne in mind that this sketch is
made because the advance of knowledge requires that some kind of order should
be introduced into the material of the scientific heritage at this time. In the
history of every science there are these stages of systematization. Although
the process is never finally complete and settled. there is no plainer
criterion of the state of a given science than the systematization of its branches.
It is impossible to argue whether such systematization is an essential part of
science or only a means of getting one's bearings; but it is certain that
without systematization no science is capable of emerging from swaddling
clothes.
It is indeed a fact that in all manifestations
of life reality is rarely in complete harmony with the scientific account of
it, but nobody draws the conclusion that Acre should be an end to the
cultivation of science. The margin of disagreement between the scientific account
and the reality is increased because science always inclines to simplify its
arguments, to generalise on the least possible number of types, scientifically
described and classified and allegedly of a superior order. The higher the
science climbs, the fewer such types it counts. There is always incomparably
more diversity in life than in a book. And yet... And yet although we know that
(classical) mechanics requires numerous and sometimes considerable corrections
in practical application—when, for example, it is a question of building a boat
or a power-station, nevertheless we also know for certain that the best sailor
or fitter will not build them, because they are not familiar with the theory.
Scientific systems do not necessarily give an
entirely adequate picture of life, but despite this they are indispensable for
a proper sense of direction, knowledge of where one is going—and in order that
life may be controlled and directed according to human possibilities. For
although the system is rarely exactly identical with^ the reality, reality
without system is even more rarely comprehensible.
With these reservations, I proceed to tentative
systematization. I can only deal with the best known civilisations, but in all
likelihood these civilisations, great and more studied, offer a sufficient
basis for argument, useful mutatis mutandis for the smaller and secondary
also.Provided we can reach certain guiding principles, the basic features of a
systematization, it will be easier for us afterwards to correct and supplement
it. Basic lines always keep their value for the continued development of the
study of civilisation.
We shall thus chiefly consider features of the
systems for the organisation of communal life which are contemporary to us. I
exclude Tibetan civilisation from further argument, because it is too little
investigated. An experimental field is provided by the seven main civilisations
in existence today—Jewish, Brahmin, Chinese, Turanian, Arabic, Byzantine and
Latin; others will serve here and there to supplement conclusions arising in
the course of discussion.
Examination of the relation of religions to
civilisations did not produce only negative results. While it proved that
religions do not cause the variety of civilisations, at the same time a bridge
appeared between associations of a higher order and supra-tribal associations.
Suddenly the horizon of our observations broadened far beyond the triple law
and high above it. And we reached
higher because raised by the abstract inherent in the very problem of religion,
from whatever angle it is examined. It was sufficient to touch the theme to bs
forced into the land of abstractions. For the first time in the argument of
this book appeared the concepts of society. State, nation. Let us use the
bridge and continue on the path indicated.
In the opening chapters it at once fell to be
stated that progress is more dependent on abstractions than on material
factors; moreover it proved that abstract ideas direct matter.Without abstract
ideas physical matters would often come to a standstill. For man educated
himself on abstractions, and as this can already be seen in prehistory, as
prehistory escapes in this way from the materialist -presentation of history,
its application to historical time and moreover to high levels of development
remains to be shown.
The progress of abstract ideas may be said to
begin with ths development of the concept of time. We touched upon the question
of time in Chapter II, at the end of the section devoted to prehistoric
economy. There we stopped at
measurements of time based on phenomena of nature. Even the cycle may subsist
at a very low level of civilisation, like the burning of the tacuara in the
Brazilian forests, which leads the cabocio to observe cycles of approximately
thirty years. The cycle most widespread in the world —of sixty years—emerged
theoretically in China long ages ago. at a still relatively low level in the
development of Chinese civilisation, and thence it spread "^to Korea, Mongolia
and Tibet. Among the Mongols it was still known in the old form as late as the
seventeenth century.[645]
Measures of lime resting on deliberate inquiry,
and so on scientific foundations, lead to the calendar. But actual possession
of a calendar does not constitute proof that the people concerned acquired a
superior grasp of time, and so increased their ability for abstraction. It
might have seemed that the calendar, creating awareness of the growth of the
years, must by simple logic lead to the era. But it was not so—neither the
ancient Egyptians nor the Chinese possessed or possess the era. Indication of
the passage of time by dynasties is after all child's play. But the Hindus have
no idea of any chronology, and European scholars regard themselves as "orientated"
when they can limit their chronological doubts on things Hindu to between five
and eight centuries—and that in the epoch contemporary with our Middle Ages,
not in dark ages. How careful about the calendar were (and are) the Jews— what
careful and subtle calculations when the "new moon" will appear in
Jerusalem over the Temple and when on the neighbouring hills; but they did not
invent the era for themselves, and Biblical scholars have perhaps no less
difficulty with chronology than the Hindu scholars. The Fifty-year jubilee
sacral cycle was not adopted, while they only invented the era of the creation
of the world in Roman times, in order to show how much more ancient they were
than those for whom it was sufficient to reckon "from the foundation of the
city". The Maya peoples were also outstanding as calendologists, and
employed an exact chronological order; but in the present state of research it
is hard to say whether they knew the era.
As the calendar does not everywhere lead to the
era, so the era does not necessarily lead to historical awareness. It is
impossible to do without these rungs, but it is possible not to make use of
them and to go no higher. Invention of the era (even if by imitation) did not
provide the Jews with the historical instinct, did not and still has not made
them even historically aware. Similarly deprived of the sense of history is
Arabic civilisation, although it has the era (hedzhrd). Adoption of Islam
(together with the hedzfira) by a considerable sector of Turanian civilisation
did nothing to bring these peoples closer to history; for instance Turkey was
always without the historical instinct.
For this the memory of csrtain events is not enough. Even the Malagasy
can indicate time according to "when Queen Rasuherin travelled among the
Betsile" or "when the French came here",[646]
but he has no means of telling when Rasuherin ruled, when the French appeared.
The tradition of facts without chronology is nothing; even chronology itself is
only a distant prelude.
Historic consciousness in a society and the
drawing by it of the conclusions which follow, is a peak in the development of
the relation of man to time. Only one of the ancient civilisations attained
this peak, namely the Roman, and it handed on this heritage to those societies which
are the heirs of Roman civilisation. And so even the era may be o more than a
measurement of time, differing from the day or month only quantitatively, not
qualitatively. It is some other factor which introduces the qualitative
difference.
The issue is control of time, as nature and
space are controlled. Does not the measurement of distance by time, practised
even at very primitive levels, contain a "fourth measure of
space"? It is an excellent auxiliary
means for the control of space; but a given area can only be regarded as under
control when a man may go in any direction according to a decision taken
beforehand, and return from any point by a road determined in advance. Here the
crude empricism is not enough; there must be an awareness of directions, and
that requires that a certain place be regarded as a starting point;
the relation of the sectors of a given area to
every point within it must be known. But with the increased controlof space
resulting from man's inventions, muscle-power counts for less, and spiritual
forces gain increasing preponderance—and command of the physical. However,
control of nature or space never represents reinforcement for ethics; of the
spiritual forces in this field only the intellect derives advantage. In all
intellectual activity morality is raised only indirectly». in so far as
"all is connected with all". If is in any case not difficult but
increasingly easy to recognise in the development of control over space the
development of abstract concepts also.
Control of space has more than one point in
common with control of time. As one consists in being able freely and
deliberately to move about a fixed space through places fixed in advance, so
control of time consists in something which can be dependent on human will happening
in accordance with one's intention, in the fraction of time fixed for it. The
ruler of time divides and spaces it along the paths of his life as he wills. A
date is to time what a goal is in space, and is the criterion of the degree of
control over time. For it is this which becomes the scaffolding of tradition,
through which development of the distorical sense takes place. But we must
understand that it is possible to know how to forecast an eclipse of the sun
and not to know how to control time and to remain entirely passive in face of
it. "
By fixing a date man limits his freedom and
marks a stage in his self-control. Control of time thus exercises the will,
fertilises the intellect and develops creative spiritual power. It is the road
along which to become master of one's life. The fixing of a date must lead to
efforts to save time. Thus the more intelligently fixed dates there are in a
man's scheme of life, the easier it is to achieve multiple use of time through
constant saving of it. Such a person comes to capitalise time (I believe the
expression will be accepted).
The number of degrees in the control of time is
uncounted, but in failure to control it relatively not so large. If we could
discover some measuring instrument on the model of the thermometer, below zero
there would be few degrees, but above zero many. Let us look for examples below
zero in various parts of the world. Passing over "savages" like the
Malagasys among whom time cannot be lost because for them it has the value of
last year's snow for us,[647]
let us look higher, to the Arabs, the Hindus and to Kamchatka. Colonel
Lawrence, the famous English agent of the First World War, says interestingly
of the Arabs, whom he knew well. "They seemed to have no unit of time
smaller than the half-day, or of distance between the span and the stage; and a
stage might be from six to sixteen hours according to the man's will and
camel."[648]
It is no better in India, where Le Bon
satisfied himself of the complete insensitivity of the Hindu to time. After the
building of the railways they would arrive at the station two or three hours
after the train had left, and now they arrive the same amount too early. Even
those educated at European universities are never punctual; nobody ever
presents himself exactly on time, whereas there is not an unpunctual Englishman
in India.[649] And it has
bsen said of Petropavlovsk, capital of Kamchatka, that it is "surrounded
as it were by a curtain of disorder, sloth and muddle. Time has no value. What
a man does today he could do equally will tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or
in a year's time. And herein lies the greatest danger for a European. Slowly,
inexorably, in course of time he grows muddled—and in my opinion somebody who
has spent ten years here is lost to civilisation and is incapable of any real
work".[650] The
Chinese scholar Ku-Hung-Ming, speaking of the turgidity of Chinese historical
tales, uses these words:
"Only Chinese mentality, v/hich enitiroly
ignores time, can compose and remember such stories".[651]
And for an example of the opposite case, let us take a country with a very
highly developed control of time, Sweden, where "throughout the land the
cult of the watch reigns".[652]
Between these countries do there not arise
diametrical differences in absolutely everything, with Sweden on one side and
China, Russia, India, Arabia on the other? For these are differences in
civilisation, and very great ones, differences confirmed by consideration of
time.
The degree to which opinions may differ on the
relation of man to time may be learned from the Argentine Creole who declared
in the presence of a Polish traveller: "People from Europe are very
strange, it is never possible to understand them. Even the simple Polish and
German colonists who come here arc very strange; they work a dozen or more
hours a day in order, as they often repeat. that their children may have
property. We do not understand that. Our children manage for themselves".[653]
This example leads us to the fundamental
difference in the consequences between control of space and of time. Despite
many analogies, the basic difference lies in the fact that ethics develops only
with control of time, which provides it with new departments —evidence that
morality is by no means without the capacity for development and progress. Entire
ethical spheres are incomprehensible to people not knowing how to control time.
In the interests of time-saving there emerge diligence, resource, thrift,
circumspection, thought for the future and finally, consciousness of duly
towards the succeeding generation. People looking further than their own
deaths, and carrying out the duties of life quicker than others, make progress
possible, for they permit their descendants to begin at the point they have
themselves managed to reach in their lives. The result is a willing readiness
for sacrifice in the interest of persons dear to the heart, growth of feeling,
ennoblement of thought and deed.
After the historical sense, altruism is the
other crown of the work of conquering time, bringing forth new flowers in this
ground. There is a wide field of application for controlled time in sociology,
u economics, in pedagogy, in almost all branches of existence— which is,
however, outside our immediate theme. On ths relation of human affairs to time
and their dependence on the degree to which it is controlled a large book could
be written.
A man content to measure time is quite
different from one who does not know how to control it and both are different
from one who does. These are not degrees but different kinds of civilisation.
The abstract concept of time is higher than that of space, has a deeper
influence on systems of communal life and the power of differentiating
civilisations.
But how is thisaccomplished? What do we know
about the question of time in relation to human existence? In recent years at
least a considerable philosophical movement has developed round the idea of
time, but it has not yet entered the awareness of scholars of other
professions, and no other branch of knowledge draws conclusions from it. I
consider that in this problem lies one of the deepest secrets of being—perhaps
even the deepest, but at present it cannot be used to learn about civilisation,
which would require a considerably higher development of our knowledge of time.
For the moment it is only possible to indicate the connection between the
subjects, admitting that in fact the present section is really a continuation
of the preceding, and making all the necessary reservations.
If one were to summon up one's courage and
allow oneself to be, led into a draft systematication of civilisations
according to the time issue, it would prove that Latin civilisation alone
posseses the historical sense.
Let us add the curious observation of the
philologists that in languages of the higher levels of civilisation more space
is devoted in the dictionaries than at lower levels to the concept of time.
Thus since the Japanese language does not possess temporal conjunctions,[654]
it carries within it the germ of stagnation. Have European experts on the
language anything to say?
Searching for features which differentiate
civilisations, we shall keep to the procession of abstract ideas, watching to
see which of them possess most influence on supra-tribal human associations.
The road to large associations opened before us when we were considering the
relation of religions to civilisations, and so in contact with the abstract—and
we shall not now leave this road.
I have raised this question of time at the
beginning because, for want of appropriate research and information, it stands
as it were on one side (like the question of polyandry in discussion of family
law) and cannot be used in further argument. It is to be hoped that this gap
will be remedied as quickly as possible, but for the moment there is no help
for it; so it seemed to me the most sensible way out to treat time entirely
separately.
And now let us return to the matter of the
kinds of relation between religion and civilisation. There are cases in which
it is possible to describe a civilisation exactly through religion and through
religion alone; for there are those which consist entirely in religious^ rules.
Undoubtedly civilisations divide primarily into sacral and non-sacral. In the
case of the sacral, acquaintance with the religion suffices to reveal the
civilisation by force of logic. On the other hand, the matter is highly
complicated in non-sacral civilisations, and must be considered ab ovo.
Let us remind ourselves once more. of the
oldest factors in the differentiation of civilisations. In communities already
completely in control of fire these factors are varying clan systems and
variety in the triple law, particularly marriage law.
Although the issue of monogamy or polygamy
causes great differences in communal life, a systcmatization cannot be based on
that criterion. Polygamy exists in the Turanian and Arab civilisations, and
half-heartedly in the Brahmin and Chinese, but this does not make the Chinese
as one with the Brahmin, the Arab with the Turanian. Some further
differentiating factor is required, and none will be found in the sphere of the
triple law.
But. let us look again, in connection with
another matter. Four civilisations still preserve the clan system, the
Turanian. Chinese, Brahmin and Arabic—the same four who practice polygamy or
semipolygamy. Polygamous or semi-polygamous societies have thus not gone beyond
the clan system. Monogamists who rise above a very primitive level (let us say
above the level of pygmies) always try at the same time to abolish this system,
whereas polygamists do not succeed in extricating themselves from the chains of
their primitive social structure. Although in certain respects they may achieve
higher levels, in certain others (as we shall see), the lowness of the
structure acts as a brake. In particular, they do not achieve separate public
law.
For the great majority of the peoples of the
earth manage without a separate system of public law, applying private law in
public life. In these cases public law rests on private law, so that the State
employs private law. This means that quantitative employment of private law
increases with the increase of clans in the tribe, in the tribal duchy, the
State, while qualitatively nothing is changed. Not a few States rest on the
private law of the ruler, as owner of the State and all its inhabitants and
their every possession, entirely in accordance with the norms set by clan
founders or despotic clan elders.
With this is connected the question of the
mutual relation of society and State. For such a mutual relation to exist, a
social organisation must exist alongside the State organisation. Not every
community is a society; it becomes so only through suitable-differentiation.
This does not take place in Turanian civilisation, among the regiment-peoples
organised exclusively in camping style or sunk in disorganisation. These are
simply communities which sometimes turn into an army, but never (at least until
now) into a society. For them the State is all, although in miniature and
caricature. Even in its best periods—in the Oighur culture, in the universal
State of Genghis Khan, and later at Kipchak among the Tartar hordes—this
civilisation always practised the camp system of communal life. The leader is a
demi-god, lord of life and death for every man without exception, and his
rights suffer no kind of diminution in peacetime. The community, however,
experiences stagnation and disorder, for peoples of ihis civilisation roi if
they are not waging war. The cult of the leader, that is of the man who in the
event of war would be their commander, continues uninterrupted. The whims of
his bad or good humour replace all public law. The sphere of his authority was
characterised in splendid Turanian style by the Khan of Kandzhut in Central
Asia, Safder-Alie, in a letter to General Grabczewski. "Know that you are
in a land where even the birds begin to have power in their wings only when
they have received my command".
Turanian civilisation reached Ruthenia and
Muscovy through Mongalian and Tartar influences. The military camp organisation
which finally crystallised in obligatory State service under Ivan III, began
with the Khazar centuries. In Russia a mixed civilisation developed, but with a
background which always remained Turanian. The Turanian mark lasts to this day.
When after the naval defeat at Tsushima the temper of the press over the loss
of the fleet was represented to Nicholas II, he exclaimed: "What does that
rabble want, why does it interfere? It is my fleet!"
In Brahmin civilisation social organisation
ends with the clan system in a caste framework. States emerging against the
background of this civilisation have always been despotic, but State authority
was and is limited (authority of maharajas) to matters outside clan-caste
organisation, for the latter has complete autonomy. In State affairs society
has no say, while the State has none in social matters. Unfortunately, in
Brahmin civilisation both are •under-developed. Whenever States of any size
have come into existence in India, they have belonged to civilisations brought
in from outside.
In Arab civilisation public law is also derived
from private, with the complication that it must somehow be deduced from the
Koran which contains only private law. In the preceding chapter it has already
been said that military service was deduced from the obligation of the holy
war, and taxes placed under the duty of almsgiving.
Then there was the rulers' will, that is the
arbitrary will of every official. This was a civilisation which, with its
luxuriance of State forms, did not permit the spontaneous development of
societies. The authority of the State might intervene at any time in any social
matter. In smaller organisations, the sheik still decides everything;
and the same authority served the rulers of the
great historic States. An exception is the Moorish culture in Spain, where the
free development of society was permitted and carried to the point of basing
State on society; but there too a breach occurred in civilisation and State
with the appearance of inequality in the categories of being.
In Chinese civilisation. State law Is based on
clan law. The Emperor was the clan elder of the entire population. China used
quite rightly to be spoken of as one vast family obeying its archpatriarch the
Emperor. Applying private law to everything, cases were settled
"paternally". As often happens in families, nobody may breathe until
the head of the family allows. Not for nothing did Ku-Hung-Ming call the
Confucian system a "religion of faithful servility". But in fact
Chinese civilisation gives complete autonomy to social organisations, only
precluding all influence by them on State affairs. The State and society—each
to their own. The State is also based not on society but on bureaucracy
(Mandarinism). From long ages of such conditions there results a complete
incapacity on the part of society to support State institutions; such
societies, coming into contact with affairs of State, know only how to make
revolutions.
So in these four civilisations a
man-worshipping conception emerged of the State as under personal, exclusive
control by one man or deputies authorized by him, and often as object of
somebody's personal property; in any event the State is the plaything of
authority, and all are convinced that it should be so and nobody supposes that
it could be otherwise. Let us now point to the curious fact that these
civilisations are polygamous or semi-polygamous, and remain at the clan system
level.
In looking for societies with a separate public
law we shall discover that they all belong to one and the same civilisation,
namely the Latin, and are at the same time strictly monogamous. And this
civilisation is composed entirely of societies which the Church brought up.
Here we miss Byzantine civilisation. In order
to explain this, we must return to classical antiquity. It is entirely
erroneous to speak of a synthesis of Hellas and Rome in Roman civilisation,
when what is in question is Rome's acceptance from Greece of the Beautiful and
of some Hellenistic learning. Athenian civilisation, decisive here, is an
example of the over-development of the intellect, and that dazzles us—us, the
modern intellectuals. But these matters constitute a very small part of man's
bsing. For the greater part Hellas and Rome are not materials for synthesis,
but opposites which cannot be reconciled.
The Greeks possessed several kinds of public
and even of private law, particularly on property. Every few miles there was a
different form of organisation, a different social structure—a plethora of systems
of communal life, systems which were mutually exclusive. Burdened with their
wavering triple law, the Greeks were unable to create an over-all association,
since it would have lacked commensurable development of the categories of
being.
In Greece everything which requires maximum
stability, constantly wavered. The only thing which was permanent was
revolution. In property law, for example, system followed system to the point
of complete chaos.[655]
At the same time the mutual relation of society and State also varied, with
Sparta and Athens as two poles. In face of such differences, how is it possible
to speak of Hellenic civilisation? It is only possible to do so in the plural,
for how are Athens and Sparta to be fitted into one civilisation? That is. unless
we are prepared to restrict civilisation to sculpture and books.
Rome did not want any synthesis with the
chronic state of revolution in Greece, and did not attempt any compromise. She
suppressed Greek disorder, imposing her own triple and public law. The Roman
Empire spread thanks to the Roman triple law. All over the world Roman
citizenship was sought for ths sake of Roman private law; men readily submitted
to Roman public law in order to acquire for themselves the rights and
privileges of Roman private law, guaranteed by the Roman State to every man who
became civis romaniis. Did the. pax romana not involve the spread of absolute
personal property, even including the right of testamentary disposal? Hands
reached out towards this beneficial law to win freedom from laws of a lower
type. And were there no Greeks who longed for the coming of the Roman legions?
The Romans possessed only one kind of triple
law and one kind of public law. Not all Greeks were reconciled to it. The
traditions of their own systems remained, so that learning knows "Greek
law" besides the already codified Roman law. In Byzantium a tendency to
synthesis developed, with the most varied results. The Roman concepts never
became part of the Greek mind. and reaction soon set in.
Many other—and well-known—factors also
contributed to the fact that in Byzantium a separate civilisation developed
which certainly did not become a continuation of the Roman. It was a compromise
creation between Rome, Greece and the Asiatic Orient with Syrian influences
weighing increasingly in the scales. Eastern ideas affected even Rome, causing
her downfall. Asiatic public law. not drawing back from man-worship, reached as
far as Rome.
The Empire transferred to Byzantium, and the
Italic branch passed under the influence of the Papacy. The Church began the
creation of Latin civilisation, based on the Roman of the preceding era, before
Rome had yet succumbed to Syrian gods and the arbitrary will of praetorian
Caesars. The Church collected the remains of authentic Roman civilisation; as
all know. It may be said of the civilising activity of the Church in Italy and
further to the West that she washed away Asiatic and Byzantine accretions. But
Byzantium continued to become more Oriental, and the identifiication of the
State with the person of each suceeding ruler was maintained.
Western ideas on State and society developed in
one way. Byzantine in another. In Byzantium society was only permitted to
organise under the control of the State, in so far as the State, which
prescribed both the competence and the form of the organisation, allowed.
Either society carried out the instructions of the State authorities or the
organisation concerned was regarded as anti-State and crushed by the State. The
Byzantine State rested not on society but on bureaucracy, and in the first
centuries of the Middle Ages Byzantine civilisation created etatisme. It is the
fatherland of etatisme, taxation by officials and the whole omnipresent State.
This is the reason why Byzantine civilisation cannot
really be included in the number of those in which public law emerges from
private—but why it also cannot be placed alongside the Latin, which
distinguished public from private law. Byzantium is something intermediate,
leaning in different matters sometimes to one side sometimes to the other.
Basically, what happened was a strange over-development of public law, but with
its expression in one man. He might be overthrown, exiled, even killed, yet by
whatever means somebody else succeeded him and continued as the supreme
expression of all Byzantium. So it was in Rome under praetorian rule. and in
Byzantium so it remained. Already in the time of Constantine the Great it was
ordained that Emperors be painted with the nimbus round their heads.[656]
And so it is that in this systematization,
which we have based on the distinction between private and public law,
Byzantium. theoretically closer to Latin civilisation, in practice must be
placed alongside Turanian.
In order to arrive at the causes of the
phenomena to which the preceding section was devoted, we must go higher in the
track of abstract ideas, and this we shall do unexpectedly simply by going back
in mind to the oldest abstract ideas, namely to ethics. Mention has already
been made of natural ethics and it has been explained in what the difference
between ethics and law consists, how under compulsion ethical obligations
change into obligations before the law. But this is a posteriori law, while
artifical, a priori law sanctions not for developing conditions but projected
conditions.
So much we discovered when considering ethics
among primitive peoples, and natural ethics in general. This same theme
nevertheless reveals new sides in new circumstances, and consideration of
questions of ethics and law among societies at a level of development which
enables them to create considerable States and to debate questions concerning
the relation of private to public law, will necessarily reveal new sides of the
problem of ethics and law. and sides of a higher order. To achieve a
clarification of the ensuing inevitable complexities, a new issue, that of the
sources of law, must be examined.
Primitive ethics tend to have reference only to
one's own people (kinsfolk, members of the same tribe, among Jews to
co-religionists), and the peculiarity of enjoining careful observance of many
details, while permiting things which are repulsive, like the right to murder
one's own children in .order for instance that their bodies may become the
comer-stone of a new building. In a review of the history of natural ethics
once again it falls to be recorded Jhat the Romans must be allowed not only the
first, but also an entirely separate place, in many instances close to
Christianity. After them, second place in the hierarchy of natural ethics is
held by the Japanese, who are, however, very far from Christian ethics. They
are similar to the Romans only in possessing a posteriori law, providing
sanctions for the postulates which follow from their ethics. In these two cases
the source of law is undoubtedly ethics.
There were and are differing views as to whence
law was born and who created it. In sacral civilisations, the sacred books and
the opinion of priests or those learned in the texts decide every detail. But
there is one case—the Wedda—where apparently nothing remains of the sacred
books, and only a few shibboleths continued to develop against a background of
beliefs ranging from monotheism to the cult of animals; out of this grew the
extremely strong Brahmin sacralism. Each caste has its particular sacralism.
Where a thing exceeds sacral norms, the source of law is the will of the
maharaja.
Jewish sacralism is more comprehensive.
Interpretation of the law belongs to the rabbis. In the event of a difference
of opinion, or where a problem is basically capable of differing solutions,
there is no higher authority, but each rabbi has a free choice of
interpretation. The source of law is the rabbi, the tsadyk—and the ruler, in so
far only as the rabbi recognises his competence.
It was the Romans who discovered and perfected
a lofty legislation completely separate from the sacral The source of law was
the free voice of the free citizen in councils and comitiae. For whole
centuries the State as such did not create laws, but was obliged to obey laws
passed by associations of citizens. Nobody could be above the law, not consul
nor pontifex maximus. The power of office consisted only in the devising of
ways to implement the law.
In the East of the same period the State was
all-powerful and sole source of law, personified in the person of the ruler.
These influences so far affected Rome that the principle came to be accepted
that law is quod principi placuit. The struggle between the two attitudes is
evident in the Pandecta and in the Codex. From it two ethics. Western and
Eastern, emerged, although both were presented in Roman dress.
In Turanian civilisation the head of the State
was always the sole source of law; this has survived even among Islamic members
of the civilisation. The whole of Arabic civilisation enjoys non-sacral law as
well; but Moslems of other civilisations recognise only sacral law, whose
interpretation is for the ruler. In Arabic civilisation the fount of law is in
principle learning, popularised with the aid of special schools of a'superior
type. Some recognise that law can exist outside the Koran, provided it is not
in conflict with it.
In Chinese civilisation the fount of law is
every father of a family, the clan elder, the superior of a trade union—and so
up to the Emperor (now transferred by the Japanese to the Manchurian State).
But the Emperor alone—supreme authority in everything—has the right to
interfere with custom; he alone is allowed to devise new laws. The discrepancy
between unparalleled conservatism of custom and the right granted State
authority to destroy it has turned into a struggle of two outlooks on the world
and life, in which there is also inherent something of the struggle of the two
ethics—and which in the history of China has always turned into violent
revolution.
In Turanian civilisation public life is in
general non-ethical, so that there occurs a constant ethical divergence between
the practice of the State, and private affairs which always need some kind of
ethic. It was this feature of the East which, on its arrival in Rome with the
Syrian gods, devastated Roman civilisation.
In Rome the two sets of ethics resulted in a
state of affairs where summum ius could become summa iniuria. The fall of Rome
began with the appearance of people who regarded as moral everything which was
legal. On the one hand a Caesarist State with a praetorian programme, on the
other consciousness that violence was being done to Rome. Honest people were
obliged to withdraw to private life, since public had become non-ethical. As a
result persons holding public positions dispensed with ethics in their private
lives also, the immoral type of people becoming prevailing among them. When the
principle finally emerged in public life that a man who kept the right side of
the law by the very fact has a clear conscience, there was not long to wait for
the conclusion that anyone knowing how to manage the law could forget about his
conscience. It was then a case not of two ethics, but of the nonethical against
any kind of ethic. In this way Rome grew easternised and fell into the ethical
division between State and private life—which seems to be a feature of the
development of natural ethics.
The Gospel arrived, Christian ethics shone out,
fhe Church created Latin civilisation in the West. A return was made to the old
Roman principle that the source of law is society, that is each estate for
itself, with the royal authority exercising control in the event of dispute
between estates. The aim of legislation was to approach ever closer to Catholic
ethics, and for that reason the Church was granted a say, in legislation.
It was different in Byzantium, in Orthodoxy.
There traditions dating from the epoch of the decline of Rome were preserved,
and the eastern despotisms copied. The worst of the tyrants of Rome were
content to nominate a horse senator and to found some exotic (for example
Syrian) temple in which it pleased Caesar to become a priest; only the
Byzantine Emperor considered himself ruler of the Church also, as cupreme interpreter
of conciliar canons. Only the Byzantine Emperors decided dogmatic disputes.
What was the origin of this? Orthodoxy did not
acknowledge Catholic ethics as a whole, namely the fourth basic postulate
(discussed in the section on Catholicism in the Chapter "Civilisation and
Religion"), that the authority of the Church should be independent of that
of the State. It was too contrary to the spirit of the East.
Thus in the West two kinds of power were
distinguished, following from the distinction of physical and spiritual forces.
On their mutual relation, and on which should have priority in the event of
active opposition between them—on all this a Catholic could have no doubts. The
answer inherent in Catholic ethics is that priority belongs to the moral force.
If Byzantine civilisation had not penetrated
deep into the West (in the tenth and eleventh centuries reaching Spain) there
would have been no struggle between Empire and Papacy, nor later,
Protestantism.[657]
Both would have been impossible had it not been for Byzantine ethics, implanted
in the very centre of Europe together with Byzantine ideas of the State. The
question of the superiority of Papacy or Empire was ethical, of the ethics of
public life. But meanwhile from the end of the fifteenth century it had been
proclaimed that politics could not be ethical, and in the seventeenth it was
added that it ought not to be. The Partitions of Poland put the seal on this
"progress". Later in Prussia this issue of issues was dubbed the
struggle of force against law, for by force it was already only physical force,
that was understood. In the end it was discovered that law itself was nothing
but a manifestation of force, all law being the law of the stronger. Law was
thus acknowledged the plaything of material forces, of violence, and so of what
in Catholic ethics is regarded as lawlessness. The first was the only real
authority, and the abstract idea of law was to disappear. Mention of ethics in
public life was regarded almost as a sign of mental illness.[658]
The progress of these differing outlooks and
the struggle between them took place at the same time as the relation of
society and State was being settled. A close connection arose between the two.
Society creates ethics, but law comes from the State. The State must use force,
and accordingly for it ethics is not sufficient; in the sphere of the State,
physical, material power must accompany spiritual power. Between these two
systems of power, harmony should reign. If, however, this is not the case in
the State and in public life generally, then which system is to have supremacy?
In other words, which organisation is to lead—society or State, and in the
given case. Church or State? From this emerges a second question: since ethics
are not enough for the State, are they necessary to it at all? Can, perhaps
even should public life not do without ethics? And so the question with ethics
or without is raised on many sides.
All those civilisations in which the State is
not based on society, and in which the will of the ruler is the source of law,
declared in favour of public life without ethics. More-over physical forces are
everywhere supreme, outside the one Latin civilisation. For where the State
only Dreys on society, the expulsion of morality from the life of the State is
a logical step, something extremely simple and highly desirable for the
supporters of such States. And physical forces have so many ways of making sure
of supremacy for themselves! In all civilisations except the Latin the aim is
also the complete subjection of spiritual forces by material. Such is the
actual state of this great matter, regardless of the theoretical argument put
forward here and there.
These arguments continue and even develop in
more than one country where deeds consistently belie all the arguments. In
China and in Korea incomparably more time and paper has been devoted to
discussion of moral themes than in Western Europe. From distant ages they have
known that virtue and wisdom are worth more than riches. In Korea the virtue of
officials has been a belowed subject of meditations in the field of practical
philosophy. But in China and Korea these are empty words, only in Japan have
certain institutions of a moral order been created. But in Japan also no
consideration is given to the relation of the two fundamental systems of power,
physical and spiritual, as a component in social or State institutions.
Nowhere in Turanian, Arabic or Chinese
civilisation is there any question at all about the supremacy of physical or
spiritual forces. In so far as account is taken of them, they are not
segregated; it is taken as self-evident that the spiritual accompany the
physical in public life: for the orders of the State are always moral and wise—
the immorality would be to doubt it. Thus in fact there is an enduring
supremacy of physical forces, as a result of which the authority of the tate
decides what is reasonable and moral. In Chinese civilisation for centuries
governments have arranged revolutions: society never.
Emancipation of spiritual forces from the
ascendancy of the physical has occurred nowhere where the emancipation of the
family has not been completed; so far and high reach the consequences of
monogamy. When the Spanish Moors began to adopt monogamy, immediately spiritual
forces organised separately, outside the State organisation. Where that
happens, a new opportunity is born for public life: the possibility of what in
our language is called opposition; legal opposition, morally permissible, not
constituting anything improper, and being a manifestation of the emancipation
of spiritual forces.
Spiritual forces have never emancipated
themselves where the State is based on private law. Such emancipation is
closely linked —as the course of history and the present state of affairs
teach— with the separate character of public law. And it is thus an outcome of
Roman civilisation.
Only an inconsiderable minority of humanity
knows of the existence of these problems. For if the average lama or Brahmin
were to learn that it is possible for us to hesitate in anything and about
anything, he would only draw a conclusion about the inadequacy of our sacred
books. On the other hand. Brahmins like Rabindranath Tagore, with a European
education, would retort that for them everything is always decided a priori in
favour of the spirit, for it is decided religiously, and so spiritually; thus
we are evidently materialists! An orthodox Jewish rabbi would rejoice in the
same way that there are no similar dissensions in his civilisation because
there is not that kind of problem. The question itself is really possible only
in non-sacral civilisations, since they alone make possible the emergence of
doubt.
Out of doubt all progress is bom. Thus amid the
hard intellectual struggles of the Middle Ages and against a background of
physical struggle for the supremacy of an ideal, a thought was bom, the
loftiest so far in the whole of history: that circumstances may arise in which
resistance must be offered to material forces for the_ good of the spiritual,
resistance to the State in the name of society. resistance to law based on
lawlessness in the name of ethics, resistance to secular authority in the name
of the Church. The supremacy of the
spiritual system of forces must be absolute.
Byzantinism developed differently on the ruins
of Latin civilisation: and brings with it (jisappearancs of social and
spiritual forces, disappearance of creativity and inevitable downfall for the
State, which may sink to the level of a Kandzut. No Byzantine State was ever
strong.
We have thus found the feature which above all
others differentiates civilisations, possession of spiritual forces, and their
emancipation from the physical.
Let us go further along the not very broad road
on which the relation of society and State is settled. Has the reader not been
struck by the fact that when speaking of these large associations I have so far
not once mentioned the nation?
I do not consider that the nation here
constitutes a kind of third factor beside the other two. Instead I assume that
where the State is based on society, the latter constitutes the basis both of
the State and the nation. These are the superstructures of society; the State
is the legal superstructure and the nation the ethical. Where ethics are
absent, national consciousness weakens, in so far as it exists; the more a man
fears ethics in public life the lower he rates ideas of nationality.
Unlike the State, which may be seen and
experienced physically, national consciousness is an abstraction, and national
allegiance can only be recognised voluntarily; thus this issue belongs to the
catsgory not of law but of ethics. A man voluntarily accepts the yoke of
obligations towards his nation, obligations incomparably more complicated than
obligations towards the State.
Nationality is not a ready-made force, natural
or anthropological, inborn in a certain ethnographical element, but an a
posteriori, acquired force, created by man and created only at a certain level
of culture. There are peoples among whom no nationality has taken shape. It is
impossible to foresee whether from given peoples one, two or more nationalities
will take shape, for in this field no inborn factors, no a priori data decide,
but historical development, to which certain natural factors contribute, and
the free human will which cannot be calculated. In the whole of Europe there is
not land of whose inhabitants it could be said that they were from the dawn of
history destined to belong to one nationality and not to another. Thus for
example it is not possible to draw any conclusions about how far to the west
Polish nationality might have reached if the Polabians had held out. It may be
that Poland would have been on the Elbe, but it may equally well be that Great
Poland would have belonged to one of the Polab'an nations. It was not settled
in advance that in the whole Vistula-Warta space one nation would emerge.
Ethnography and anthropology do not know
associations larger than peoples; history provides the nations. And this is why
nationality is so dear to us, as the incarnation of ideals of living, for it is
the product of labour, the prize of progress, the evidence of the improvement
achieved by the hard toil of generations amidst struggle, pain and
disappointment, but with the guiding intention of carrying to ever greater
perfection the ethnological material which history and the dignity of cultural
achievement assembled into nation.
I do not know a case where a nation is composed
of a single people.
The nation is an association above the people,
an association of peoples, and so it only appears where tribal life and the
joining together (usually in a State) of tribes to form a people belong to the
past. From this is follows that societies still at the clan or even at the
tribal stage cannot constitute a nation. Nationality can only appear after the
total emancipation of the family. This circumstance of itself excludes from the
idea of nationality the Turanian, Arabic, Brahmin and Chinese civilisation.
It is not possible to identify nationalities
with separate languages. It was shown in the Chapter on languages that entirely
distinct languages are the lot of associations smaller and lowlier than the
nation composed of peoples. Anyone defining nations according to language ought
to claim that nationality is an a priori force, given to man from above for the
ways of developing civilisation; that nations have existed from the beginning
of the world, that there was a multitude of them, but that in the pre-ages of
proto-history the weaker nations began to be destroyed by the stronger, these
by the still stronger until the present numbsr was reached—in other words, that
nationalities shared the fortunes of languages. In view of this identification,
the separate character of Provencal nationality (langue d'oc) would have to be
recognised although not because of any request by men regarding themselves as
French, and on the other hand North Americans would have to be included in the
English nation. But what could be done about the fact that Croats and Serbs
have the same language, while the population round Zagreb speaks not Croat but
Slovenian?
Nor is nationality identical with the idea of
the State, for one nation may create two or more States, while several nations
may belong to one State. A certain connection occurs between these ideas,
however, of which there are evidences in history.
Our Polish concept of the nation has passed
through significant changes. It was understood in one way in the fourteenth
century when, under Ladislas the Steadfast, a nation was created in Poland, and
in another under Sigismund Augustus, when the ideology of the "two
nations", Poland and Lithuania, was developed. Peter Skarga gave warning
that Poles were in danger of losing their nationality ("you will turn into
another nation"). Immediately after the Partitions there were widespread
complaints that "we have ceased to be a nation". Napoleonic times
restored to us our awareness ,of continued national existence (in precisely
this lies the significance of the "Napoleonic epic" in its Polish
edition), and we have not lost that consciousness; we have even created a
hitherto unknown notion of nationality outside the State, even without the
State. It is indeed true that our modem Polish notion of the nation dates only
from the nineteenth century.
Today it is one of the so-called generally
known facts that the English or French nation is not at all synonymous with our
narod. In the West they do not understand nation without State, because they
have not observed the phenomenon in their own history and have not studied
Polish. By "nation" they understand simply the national State; to
their way of thinking the nation is the association which creates a State.
Nationality is not traced to the State either
in the English language or anywhere else. An idea of the sort sometimes appears
in German literature, under the influence of Prussian ideology, but nowhere
else. And Prussianism holds a separate place among collective mentalities, on
which I cannot and do not see any need to dilate here.[659]
Beyond question nationality is not of State but
exclusively of social origin. It is not States which change into nations, but
societies—or those of them which have completed the emancipation of the family
and achieved a separate public law. But these conditions are not enough;
something more is necessary.
Since societies produced out of themselves the
concept of the national State, they must have been societies with the power,
drive and opportunity to create associations of a new and higher type which
determined or at least enormously influenced the character of the Slate. A
concept may be formed by a philosopher in isolation (and this is even usually
the case), but it can only be given body if the educated public accepts it, and
is itself already sufficiently numerous and influential. For the concept of the
nation to be accepted and produce effect, the elite of the society must have
been for it and moreover in a position to ensure the existence of the nation
alongside the State. This could be accomplished only by societies with
influence on the State, where the State did not swallow up society, but left it
freedom of development. Thus the concept of the nation could not have arisen in
Egyptian civilisation, nor later in Byzantine. The Jewish concept of the chosen
race as a means of indicating co-religionists has nothing at all to do with the
question occupying us here.
There remain Greece and Rome. The classical Greeks, at variance on the
triple law, were by the same token incapable of creating a general association.
Individuals arrived at the idea of a Hellenic nation (for instance the famous
passage in Herodotus), but it was never generally accepted.
The concept was born in Roman, and then
fostered by Latin civilisation. I do not know an example of a nation outside
that civilisation. They reach only as far as classical antiquity reached.
Peoples who remained historically outside the limits of Roman influences become
nations as soon as they accept Latin civilisation;
this has been the case with peoples of
completely different background, the Finns and Magyars for example, as soon as
they joined the Latin family.
I state the fact that history has not so far
pointed to national consciousness outside Latin civilisation.
Many things have radiated and radiate from one
civilisation to others, for mutual influences arise. In this way the concept of
the nation has sometimes reached out from the Latin sphere—but has it anywhere
been adopted lastingly and effectively? For the nation is an association, so
that its essence must consist in the system of communal life shared within that
association. In other words: A nation must belong in its entirity without the
slightest reservations to the same civilisation. A national association is a civilisational association.
If it were not this, it would be nothing. For
the nation is a voluntary association, in contrast to the State which is a
compulsory association and could not develop without compulsion; even a
national State must have the power to use force towards its citizens, towards
the people who created it. But the very suggestion of force in national affairs
would be an absurdity. We were by force Russian or Prussian citizens, but
remained Poles. Is it possible to be a member of any nation compulsorily?
Civilisation proceeds from good, unforced will;
conversely, a society exposed to compulsion in civilisation would be in danger
of a state of a-civilisation (prolonged captivity contains this danger).
The will of a society ripe for the shaping of a
nation cannot be divided in the direction of two civilisations; something of
the kind is possible only in the case of people who do not themselves yet know
what they want. Moreover without homogeneity in civilisation no voluntary and
at the same time extensive association will take shape. For these reasons a
lively national consciousness in two civilisations is a Utopian idea.
Let us now look for other features of
nationality. There will be agreement that the nation is a civilisational
association possessing a homeland and a native tongue. It is time for a
definition of these concepts.
It is often heard that the homeland is not only
the earth of the country one is bom in, but a whole, series of considerations
of a spiritual nature. I believe I am released from examination of this
question, since 1 have incorporated into the definition of nation the
expression "civilisational" (association)—and so regard that point as
dealt with. Nevertheless I maintain that all civilisational aspects of the
nation must be connected with some area, that is with the settlements of the
peoples forming the common nation, and so there will be no misunderstanding if
we call this particular area the homeland. This way of thinking, popularised
throughout the world, is entirely justified. The homeland is the compact
territory forming the permanent abode of the nation and stage of its history.
It follows indirectly that there is no nation without an historical sense—and
so it is in fact.
A man who possesses a homeland also possesses a
native tongue. As every man has only one homeland in the same way he cannot
have two native tongues. The Swiss regards as his native tongue the language of
his canton, and that alone.
Clearly the homeland is not a concept from the
sphere of private law, but emphatically from public; moreover homeland and
patriotism have nothing in common with private law. and so are not compatible
with the kind of public law which bases itself on private law. Thus a nation
can only emerge in societies which possess a separate public law and where the
State is based on society. And so only in Latin civilisation.
Again there forms before our eyes the same
order of civilisations which has already faced us on several occasions. There
is no polygamous nation, no nation exists before the emancipation of the
family, nor without liberties for society nor without a separate public law.
And the various systems for organising the way of life of the community still
fall into the same order.
A word on "supra-national"
associations. It is an enormous misunderstanding to. suppose that there belong
here those mediaeval dreams about the "family of rulers and Christian
peoples" and the several later forms, largely theoretical, down to the
Prussian programme for a pax germanica and the contemporary misfit and great
falsification of universal history which is the so-called League of Nations.
These were and are supra-State associations, or attempts at such associations.
Confusion of the concepts of State and nation leads here to unnecessary
complications and immensely increased difficulties. Until the misunderstanding
is removed no step forward will be made towards the creation of an effective
supraState association.
A supra-national association is an absurdity,
because of the inescapable differences in homeland and native tongue. It is
possible to imagine a universal State, but will some kind of universal language
be native to everybody? Is it possible to have one's homeland everywhere and
anywhere? These are blatantly anti-national suppositions. Anybody who plans a
supra-national association aims at the abolition of nationality, and so at the
abolition of Latin civilisation.
National consciousness represents great
progress in the history of the societies of Latin civilisation; without it that
civilisation would be incomplete. For its highest criterion is the supremacy of
spiritual forces. On what is this supremacy to rest, where to find its
guarantees? The State offers compulsory means but this supremacy can only be
acknowledged voluntarily, from conviction, to which nobody forces or willJorce
a man. So it also can rest only on a large and voluntary association, and such
is the nation.
Only through the nations does Latin
civilisation reach its heights.
I have ended what I had to say in the matter of
a tentative systematization of civilisations, and shall not advance beyond that
question. I have been concerned only with their differences, wishing to bring
out their multiplicity and systematize it. I have not described any of them. A
description of any given civilisation requires a separate volume—a large work
entering into details. A description of the seven civilisations I have worked
with here would need seven volumes.[660]
The results of this book can be expressed in
the small table below:
Civilisations |
|||||
Sacral |
Non-sacral
with supremacy for |
||||
Jewish Brahmin |
physical forces. Public
life based on law: |
Spiritual forces |
|||
private law |
public
law |
Latin |
|||
Camp
system |
social
system |
Byzantine |
|||
|
polygamy |
quasi-polygamy |
|||
Turanian |
Arabic |
Chinese |
|
||
In this plan Latin civilisation immediately
stands out; but does so only at the end if we make a table by the opposite
method, progressing from features of less weight to the greatest:
Clan System |
||
Turanian,
Brahmin, Chinese Arabic civilisations |
Family Emancipation |
|
Separate public
law |
||
Society oppressed |
Society free |
|
Byzantine |
Emancipation of spiritual forces |
|
Latin |
Let us sketch out one more table showing the
time relationship:
Measurement of Time |
||
Calendar Brahmin |
Control of Time Date Historical consciousness Latin |
|
Cycles |
||
Chinese |
Turanian |
|
Era |
||
Arabic |
Byzantine |
From
whatever, angle we have attempted a systematization, Latin civilisation always
holds a place apart, never in line with any other.
I repeat that I regard these tables as
"provisional with reservations". To complete the problem there is
need of a more exact study of the variations occurring in the relation of man
to time, as well as more detailed information about the clan systems (of which
in Chapter III I enumerated five, for I only have data for five, but we cannot
exclude the possibility that there are more).It may be^ that absolutely all
higher and highest forms up to the supremacy of spiritual forces are inherent
in nuce in a certain system of clan organisation; it may be that the halting of
development somewhere below the highest level depends on the kind of clan
organisation from which a society came; it may be that in the same way as
certain peoples are victims of a language unsuited to development beyond a
certain level, there may enter into the matter a kind of predestination
depending on the clan element; but it may also be that none of these
suppositions is correct; and equally it may be that some are correct and others
not; we must wait until the science of civilisation develops—that science to
which the present treatise is intended as an initial contribution.
As a conclusion to this tentative
systematization, let us take the features which link or divide the chief
civilisations. (Jewish civilisation, which is variable, will be discussed in
the next section.)
Brahmin civilisation is sacral, with its clan
and caste organisation, its measurement of time confined to the calendar, with
a tendency to polygamy, autonomous in social matters, despotic and without
ethics in State affairs.
Turanian civilisation has the clan
organisation, is polygamous, measures time up to the cycle, is composed of
communities which have not become differentiated into societies, organises
public life on camp lines with anthropolatry of the leader-ruler, is without
ethics in public life.
Chinese civilisation with its clan organisation
loosening up in the towns, knowns the cycle, is polygamous, autonomous in
social matters, anthropolatrous and without ethics in those of the State.
Arabic civilisation with its clan organisation
achieving emancipation of the family in the Cordovan culture, knowns the era
but has no historical awareness, is polygamous, despotic in public life. but
subjects the ruler to the supreme authority of the Koran.
Byzantine civilisation with its emancipation of
the family is monogamous, knows the era but is not historically conscious,
subjects society to bureaucracy, creates etatisme, is anthropolatrous,
worshipping the person of the ruler in the name of the omnipotence of the State
although—unlike all the civilisations already mentioned—it possesses a separate
public law; in public life without ethics. It does not produce nationality
(resembling in this all the preceding civilisations).
Latin civilisation has family emancipation and
monogamy, historical and national consciousness, rests the State on society,
demands ethics in public life and recognises the supremacy of spiritual forces.
How splendidly the last sentence of the
previous section sounds. —but who has seen the reality? Where in Latin
civilisation is the magic land where ethics are demanded in public life as part
of a full acknowledgement of the supremacy of spiritual forces? In the
territories of this civilisation it might be easier to point to the kind of
country in which the principle of "enlightened" absolutism holds:
Sieuer zahlen und Maul hallen, where spying and informing flourish, raised to
the dignity of State institutions, where censorship creates its ravages but is
never employed against pornography, where the independence of judges is
suspended. Where then is this Latin civilisation hiding while in more than one
place in her territories sprouts something which looks rather like a variation
on Turanian, or even on Chinese civilisation?
Let us remind ourselves of what has already
been said on the relationship of learned schemes to life, and let us try to
bring into focus this apparent arbitrariness of reality. It will prove that
alongside the plan, without which we could not argue at all, certain historic
laws exist which in no small measure explain our confusion and doubts.
Let us bear in mind first of all that
everything which is living is changing, and s-o civilisation is neither a
brittle bone nor an immobile clod. While it lives it is subject to changes;
sometimes for the better, because it perfects itself, and sometimes for the
worse, for it declines; periods of development and decline may set in
unexpectedly for hidden but deep reasons. Changes, may be quantitative but also
qualitative. These must be carefully distinguished; a change in the levels
through which every civilisation passes is one thing, and a basic change in civilisation
something quite different. The number of levels is. unlimited, but has nothing
to do with the actual kind of civilisation, which may remain the same from the
most primitive'to the highest stages of development. These are exclusively
quantitative changes. Qualitative, basic changes in civilisation may have a
varied range: some fit into the frame of the civilisation concerned, others
obtrude The first are born naturally of
the vital force of the civilisation, the second may derive from the influences
of foreign civilisations. The result of the meeting of various currents of
Civilisation may be a novelty that is positive, but also one which is negative,
and even a caricature; progress is possible but also degeneration. It seems to
me that the science of civilisation offers means to enable us to recognise the
one from the other; and occasionally a table of characteristic features may be
a help. A table is only a lable, but it is sometimes a desirable key for
distinguishing things and problems.
As was shown in the fourth section of Chapter
IV, civilisations are divided into cultures which are variations on them. Here
even considerable differences may arise. For example Latin civilisation based
itself on feudalism, but Poland accepted that civilisation without feudalism,
which was of no use to us. Thus a distinct culture of Latin civilisation
developed in Poland. Rejection of feudalism did not infringe the unity of our
civilisation, any more than the downfall of feudalism infringed it in the West.
In our table, feudalism does not occur; it is a secondary, not a basic feature.
And all the basic features of Latin civilisation can appear as well under
feudalism as without it. since the same system of organising communal life may
be preserved. Feudalism obtained in Mecklenburg until 1918, but there are few
who know it; even among the German intelligenstia at the time this knowledge
was rare.
Many changes may occur which do not involve
changes of civilisation. Have the Turks, for example, changed their (Turanian)
civilisation because they have abandoned the lunar year and adopted the solar?
Once the lunar year was used everywhere—including Poland. Perhaps traces could
still be found of lunar time-measurements? On this we have curious information
from the village of Zaiasowa. between Tarnow and Tuchow, for the years 1896:
"The oldest generation does not know our
way of reckoning time; it is true that it knows the names of the twelve months,
but it indicates their length not by number of days but from new moon to new
moon; and since the lunar year is shorter than the solar, in order to make it
equal to the ordinary year beginning with the New Year, every second year they
count a thirteenth month, which they insert between February and March and call
podmarczyk ("nearMarch"), and then the new moon of the new year will
fall at New Year. that is on December 31 or January I."[661]
A change of calendar means nothing, nor does
even the variety of calendar possible within the same civilisation; only
historical awareness bslongs. to our table. Not a few similar changes and
variations could be quoted. Every civilisation, every culture even has features
which are exclusively, characteristically its own, but do not affect the
principle itself in any way.
Nevertheless among civilisations there is one
which has pasasd through changes which in any other would certainly be regarded
as basic, and which despite this has nevertheless remained itself. This is the
more singular in that Jewish civilisation is sacral, and so not prone to change.
In the field of marriage law, no existing religious law forbids polygamy and
there are polygamous Jews. In Europe Jews nevertheless adopted monogamy—in the
West from the middle of the eleventh century under the influence of Rabbi
Gerson of Metz, in the Balkans in the middle of the seventeenth century on the
orders of "Messias" Sabatay Zwi (the "Frankists" belonged
to this school). For polygamy became impossible in the European diaspora, and
moreover caused scandal among Christians, bui under Napoleon I there was a
Government inquiry into the question whether Jews were polygamists. But do we
know of any society—apart from the Roman—which was never polygamist? As a rule
such a change brings about considerable changes in civilisation, and it must
have caused them among the Jews also, but nevertheless they have kept their
civilisation, although passing subsequently through still other changes. They
have kept it precisely because it was and is sacral, and changes have taken
place without touching the supreme principle that they are a privileged nation.
called to rule over the whole earth (Jewish Messianism). If this feature were
to collapse, Jewish civilisation would collapse: but while they believe this
everything may change. In the same way, no change in Brahmin civilisation means
anything as long as the caste system and the doctrine of avatars survive.
The Jews passed through changes in civilisation
as a result of their dispersal' among other civilisations. Civilisations
obviously exercise a reciprocal influence on one another, and the Jewish has
left its imprint on societies of Latin civilisation.
Every civilisation, while it remains vital,
aims at expansion: so that wherever two vital civilisations meet they must
fight each other. Every vital civilisation which is not dying is aggressive.
The struggle lasts until one of the fighting civilisations is destroyed; actual
acquisition of the position of ruling civilisation does not end it. If
civilisations existing side by side sit side by side in peaceful indifference,
evidently both are without vital force. A case of this kind often ends in some
compromise mechanical mixture, stagnation ensues on both hands, and in time a
real swamp of a-civilisation develops.
It was ihus. that the civilisation of mighty
Persia fell, unable to remove the Hellenic wedge driven into her. Soon Syria,
having collected brief laurels in the category of semi-corporeal Beauty, but
otherwise achieving absolutely nothing under Hellenistic civilisation, began to
revert to the wild. On the other hand, Pergamon and Alexandria were long
combined, for there Greek civilisation overlaid and suppressed all others.
In antiquity we also have instances of many
kinds of civilisation subsisting in the same place. The first instance should
be Antioch. But every single piece of information about her is unfavourable.
expressive of indignation and disgust at local ideas and customs. In our own
times there are places in the East where various civilisations live together
without conflict, in "complete agreement". About one of them. Port
Said, a traveller has written:
"The external aspect of the town is
international; it recalls a whore who has been given each item of her wardrobe
by a different guest and has only a chemise of her own. and that dirty".[662]
Where then is the field for syntheses of
civilisations? If the thing were possible it would necessarily occur everywhere
differing civilisations meet. A synthesis of syntheses has had time to emerge
in India out of the six local civilisations, and in Poland a tolerable one
should likewise have arisen. But instead four civilisations— Jewish, Byzantine,
Turanian and Latin—fight one another with all their strength; the three
first-named commonly join together in wartime alliance to attack the Latin with
joint forces, but apart from that they too struggle and wrestle with one
another.
Synthesis is possible only between cultures of
the same civilisation,[663]
not between civilisations. While Rome honoured various Italic gods. it grew
strong; it began to decline when Syrian gods were admitted into the City. In
Italy one civilisation held sway, dividing into local variants, small Italic
cultures whose synthesis Was in Roman civilisation; but when the attempt was
made to repeat the process with different civilisations, it proved death-dealing.
Between civilisations, only a mechanical
mixture is possible. This happens rarely, but always leads to the lowering of
the civilisation, sometimes to its downfall, to a state directly
a-civilisational.
Whenever a "synthesis between West and East"
has been sought in Poland, the East has always emerged the victor. In the
upshot we turned from the West and under the Saxon kings devoted ourselves to
spreading Turanian civilisation westwards. Sunk in oriental ignorance we could
not keep public law separate from private. By hard effort we have returned to
Latin civilisation, having lost our independence in the struggle.
A typical experimental field for so-called
syntheses of civilisations was Russia, Rus as a whole. Since the dawn of Kievan
history Latin and Byzantine civilisation have been in combat there, with the
victory going to—Turanian. The upper hand was taken by those who served
Polovtsians, then Mongols and Tartars, until in the end towards the close of
the reign of Ivan III the struggle ceased for a long^ period, for Turanian
civilisation had won complete victory. In 'the seventeenth century there was a
new wave of Latin, Polish influences—and at the same time total ruin of
Lithuania. There even emerged a "Latin learning" in Russia, while the
introduction of compulsory Latin for candidates for leading position in the
State (1682) was an event more far-reaching than all the subsequent reforms of
Peter the Great. The latter introduced a strong current of Byzantinism from
Germany, and soon the Partitions of Poland strengthened Latin influences to
such extent that something of national consciousness strayed in. European
science also penetrated to Russia. Who will deny the presence there of truly
European types, but was not a genuinely Turanian type common besides?
Byzantinism entered into all this from two directions: Oriental in the case of
Turkish-Byzantine culture and Western in that of German-Byzantine. In the last
two generations the heads of educated Russians were furnished, to paraphrase
Bishop Krasicki, with pieces in all styles. A synthesis? It was a highroad to
nihilism of every kind.
There are no syntheses, but only poisonous
mixtures. All Europe is now ill of the mixing of civilisations; here lies the
cause of all "crises". For how is it possible to look in two ways, in
three ways (and in Poland even in four ways) on good and evil, on beauty and
ugliness, on loss and gain, on the relation of society and State, of State and
Church; how is it possible to have at the same time a four-fold ethic,
four-fold pedagogy? Down this road the only possibility is decline into an
a-civilisational state, which holds within itself incapacity for a culture of
action. The sequel is the going round in circles, preying upon one another
which is a picture of Europe today.
And if in a given society the victor among
fighting civilisations is not the one which has hitherto held sway, and a
change of civilisation follows, as a rule the society collapses into an
a-civilisational state. The Magyars passed through this. the Finns passed
through ii (from Turanian to Latin) and emerged victorious. And we? Stumbling
in the opposite direction, we were a-civilisational under the Saxon Augustus
III, and are in a very similar position at the present day. Do not let us
suppose that Latin civilisation will fall; we shall fall. Do not let us suppose
that a new civilisation will arise; barbarism will follow.
I do not know a greater absurdity than the
doctrine of the fall of civilisations as a result of old age: the Jewish and
Chinese go on. The introduction into history of a biological point of view is a
very gross philosophical error. Yet we have seen even level heads reckoning how
long a given civilisation can go on flourishing, after what period it must
yield the field to a "new" one. No civilisation need either decline
or die of old age, but it may poison itself with a mixture of civilisations at
any time. All the theories about historical cycles also depend on the error of
historical biology, and all are false.[664]
Nor is it at all necessary for the decline of a
civilisation to be preceded by a period of high development ("masculine
age*') since a fall is possible from every level. Sometimes unripe fruit rots
on the tree. And the argument that civilisations fall "having completed
their task" is a literary cliche which sounds well but is scientifically
void.
Civilisations fall for the same reason as all
associations: when their structure is spoiled. This structure consists in a
uniform system of association ruled by certain co-ordinated norms in such a way
that one does not exclude the other. In a word, civilisation declines when it
comes to lack the condition of commensurability. Civilisation is an association
and so is subject to this law of associations.
Civilisation would be the only possible
supra-national association. It will not be created artificially, nor the
outcome of any a priori theory. But also precisely because it is an association
of a higher order than the nation, it is impossible to supposeJhat_every nation
has its civilisation. Are there to be as many civilisations as nations? The
"national" civilisation of a given nation is the one in which the
nation wasformed and grew—Poland's national civilisation, for example, is
Latin. Within it Poles have created a separate Latin-Polish culture, but they
might have lacked this originality and would still have belonged to Latin
civilisation. The emergence of a culture is not to be explained by distinctions
of nationality. There are nations which have created no separate culture but
this does not derogate in the least from their separateness as nations;
national characteristics are one thing, those of civilisations another.
I can barely touch here upon the various
problems which arise, and on which adequate light could only be cast in the
course of a description of a particular civilisation. But it seems to me that I
have nevertheless indicated several historical truths—and I should like to
underline the highest of them.
If it is true, as I have argued throughout this
book, that the success of an association depends on the suitability and
uniformity of its system, that no lasting and strong association can be
organised on conflicting systems, then what I regard in history as the law of
laws—for me the achievement and outcome of the labours of an entire life—must
also be true:
It is not possible to be civilised in two ways.
The study of civilisation is a superior level
of history. In 1921 I allowed myself to assert that "it will only be
possible to draw up universal history against a background of conflicts of
civilisations and unlucky attempts at syntheses of civilisations", and
that in place of a turgid, wishy-washy so-called history of culture "there
will appear a clear science of civilisations, fruit of every sort of variety of
historical investigation, the highest rung in historical science".[665]
I had, however, begun work connected with the present book four years
previously, in 1917, in that year of severest trials and restrictions when,
despite everything, belief in the restoration of Poland did not lose actuality
even for a moment. The starting point was reflection on our relation to Europe,
our value for civilisation in. general.[666]
The area of investigation then widened from year to year, the theme expanded
and deepened at once. I owe much to my ten-year stay in Vimo, whose narrow
streets may be said to be full of broad problems of universal history. There
too, in Vilno, the original version of this work formed the subject of lectures
at the university during the academic year 1927-28.
In fact a methodical science of civilisation is
yet to be. I myself am helping towards it considerably less than I would wish
and (as I believe) might have done. (Let the smallness of the harvest be
explained by the circumstance that throughout life I have been isolated in
Polish science. I worked without any help).
Scientific research advances in two ways: now
through specialisation, now by generalisation; but if the latter were to be
impossible, the other would in my view be superfluous. The relation of these
two procedures in science is for me the relation of means and end. It is
necessary first to be well provided with means, and anyone who has not worked
long and hard on the analysis of a specialised topic has no access to the structure
of synthesis.
I would ardently wish that the views of one of
the masters of European science, Fustel de Coulanges, might become known in
Poland. He said three things. First, the basic pattern of all scientific work:
pour un jour de synthese il faut des annees d'analyse. However at the same time
he had no faith in the depth of knowledge of specialists who restrict their
studies over-much in time and place; hs claimed that an historian must base his
investigations on a period of time of some length. In his view a man who limits
himself to only one sector of history exposes himself to errors even in the
only section open to him, even though he has devoted his whole life to his
minor ultra-speciality, because the age in which a thing blossoms is hardly ever
the age in which it takes its rise. And in yet another place he warns
historians that I'fustoire n'etudie pas settlement les faits materiels et les
institutions; son veritable objet d'etude est I'dme humaine.[667]
I do not disparage any point of view, for all
observation undertaken from a new vantage-point may provide results most worthy
of note; in consequence I also defend myself against exclusive claims for any
field of observation. If it were possible to embrace all of them, may be that
from a critical review a synthesis might somehow automatically be born. The sum
of all points of observation would undoubtedly give exact sight of the whole,
but only on condition that one looked from all simultaneously, to avoid the
effects of change caused by time. This is unfortunately impossible, but we do
approach adequate coverage of the whole by employing differing points of
observation. The results of such observation must be reduced to a common
denominator by the historical method well fitted for the task, since created
amid diversity for the purpose of investigating it.
Success in elucidating the problem of the
difference of civilisations would result in a new view of universal history,
which must define the mutual relations of civilisations. Universal history should
be treated as the history of the struggles of civilisations and of attempted
syntheses of civilisations, the history of their expansion and disappearance,
the history of the emergence of cultures and of their interaction within the
same civilisation or submission to a foreign civilisation, and so the history
of the reciprocal positive and negative influences of civilisations. Universal
history will become the history of systems for the organisation of communal
living— and in that event will certainly include all manifestations of
historical life, the whole fullness of that life.
Then a basics will also have been acquired for
the comparison of historical phenomena and the critical examination of causes
and effects, means and ends, possibilities and impossibilities. We shall learn
at last what is at stake in the milleniums of mankind's good and evil fortunes.
We shall know the use of those laborious searches after trifling details on the
lower rungs of History—which at present are presumably an end to themselves,
for nobody is yet able to connect them into a whole otherwise than
mechanically, and then always restricted within the limits of a single
department of being. The history of every category of being now vegetates in
isolation; linked by a general idea emerging from the science of civilisation,
they will give a synthesis.
Generalisation becomes an irresistible impulse
for the investigator who discerns that in science everything has a connection
witheverything else. Of this the true scholar must be aware. It is of course
and old thesis, known to Buckle,[668]
and high time that it at last became generally known. For me there is no doubt that knowledge is the sum of the
connections arising between sciences, and that the highest level of the
structure is a general view on everything, an outlook on the world. It is
possible to climb to this height wherever one begins; there is no science which
cannot be selected as a starting-point. Let me add that to climb towards the
heights is a duty; and if a man is too weak himself, let him at least not
hinder others who are stronger.
For long the formulation of outlooks on the
world has been as it were the monopoly of naturalists. Historical life has been
subjected to biological laws. Clio herself is not a little to blame for her
degradation to a fifth wheel in Nature's chariot. The decline of the humanist
sciences has also given and gives everincreasing scope to every kind of
chariatanism in public life. Yet these sciences are now provided with highly
perfected methods;
why, therefore, not make good what has been
neglected and venture an outlook on the world based on humanist investigations?
Thus I proclaim a renaissance of the humanist
sciences. I believe they will no longer yield in anything to the "exact
knowledge" of the natural sciences. History is capable of discovering and
demonstrating her "axioms" and "laws" by her own method. I
part company with those who would make of history something in the likeness of
the natural sciences. The adoption of this attitude I should regard as an
aberration threatening continued degeneration. But the efforts made by some
historians to perfect History by modelling her in this way on the natural
sciences are due to a misunderstanding which will surely be short-lived.
Naturalist and humanist, each to his own, each must work in his way, by his own
methods. Only then shall we find ourselves on a fair way to those uplands where
everything fits together, where the connections binding all things together are
known.
I believe I have succeeded in indicating the
direction of a new road for those on the pilgrimage to Truth. The issue is one
of finding the method of the science of civilisation. I wish that the book may
prove worthy of being corrected, and provide a thread for further discussions.
I know that here I am offering only a sketch. I console myself with the hope
that the questions raised will be-come familiar in Polish learning. With such a
result I should be more than content, regardless how much of my work survives,
or is invalidated by the more exact investigations of my successors. And there
is the word to express my dreams—I would wish to have successors.
But when the time comes for synthesis leading
to effective investigation of historical laws, then the individual departments
of history will also acquire the features of exact knowledge, and the question
whether history is a science will no longer be heard.
And History in its further development will
serve the creative discussion of the great problems of man and humanity,
climbing by the rungs of abstract ideas to the ante-room of the supernatural,
debating by its own method the relation of Thought and Being.
Ending, I permit myself to turn once more to
the shade of Kołłątaj, and finish in his words:
"Let us begin without looking round to see
who will correct us afterwards".
Cracow, September, 1934.
*)Latin, because it embraces all the peoples which in the Middle Ages
used the Latin language in their liturgies.
*) Koneczny used in
Polish the word "metoda". In
the English translation of his book the word "system" has been used.
[1] Rene Grousset "Bilan de 1'histoire", Paris 1946, p. 226, uses the same expression
[2] Koneczny strives to prove that Russia, in spite of her Byzantine Christianity, belongs juridically and sociologically positively to the Turanian world. We know that this opinion of bis meets often a strong opposition. We should not forget, however, that Koneczny as a Pole is at the same time a "Westerner on the outpost". He observes the meeting of different civilisations in Poland's "Kresy", the Polish Eastern provinces; he explains it in the most acute terms from the viewpoint of his teaching on civilisations, if only with the aim of sharpening the Latin and Western consciousness of his compatriots. His presentation of the Turanian character of Muscovitism is in the highest grade original; he puts emphasis mainly on political, juridico-historical and sociological arguments.
[3] The briefness of this article does not allow, unfortunately, to dwell longer upon Koneczny's critique of the possible objections against this opinion.
[4] Koneczny follows the Polish distinctions between the linguistical community, people, nation (naród) and State. The terms mean something different from those used in German. But the dividing lines between the Polish ideas are much sharper also than in the Romanic languaees or in English.
[5] The word "previous" should be taken "cum grano salis". Koneczny's doctrine, as we already said before, is substantially older than the doctrine of Oswald Spengler. Koneczny conceived the fundamental ideas of his doctrine already in the 1890s. Later, he only formulated it more clearly and verified his inductive method on more and more abundant material of historical facts.
[6] Spengler's civilisations are in a mystical sense, undefined and probably (indefinable, functions of space; they are something grown up from the "mother ground", developed like plants from the earth, inseparable from the space to which they belong; and this forms the men. Koneczny's civilisations, on the contrary, are like spiritual fluids, which rise "over" the spaces and morally keep the men in their power, but without any fatalist or determinist compulsion, because they are created by the men themselves, they are products of human spirit. As spiritual fluids they are also flowing, they are something incomparably more mobile than Spengler's earth-attached civilisations, they are agile like everything which is of the spirit. And these fluids put out tentacles, they are not closed in themselves, separated from each other like those of Spengler; they struggle with each other and they "must" struggle against each other and try to repel each other.
[7] In considering
this radical thesis of Koneczny, which may surprise many, we should remember
Koneczny's definition of civilisation. Civilisation is for Koneczny primarily
something sociological, a complex of principles and structural forms which form
a harmonious whole and from which one cannot take out isolated parts or
portions. — We have also to remember to which geographical space Koneczny
belonged; his eyes, the eyes of a Pole, of a man from the eastern borderland of
the West, were in a particular way open to everything alien, to all which a Westerner
meets at the eastern frontier of Poland. He saw there different and often
diametrally opposed ethical and juridical principles and sociological mentalities, between which a
synthesis is truly impossible. The experience of Polish history seemed to leach
him in a particular way to be distrustful of all experiments of synthesis.
It is obvious that there are problems and questions here which need further examination. Let us think about mixtures of styles in art, which appear everywhere two civilisations meet each other; but even here one can ask oneself, if Koneczny's radical negation does not contain a grain of truth.
[8] A review of this kind formed the subject of a year's lecture-course. intended as an introduction to the study of civilisation, at Wilno University in 1926/27.
[9] (2) Descartes. "Discours de la Methode". Edition classique. Paris 1861, pp. 12 ; 17.
[10] J. A. Concordet. "Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de 1'esprit humain". Bibliotheque nationale, IIIrd ed.. November 1867. p. 78. J6zef M. Hoene-Wronski. "Development progress.f et but final de I'humanite". Paris 1861, p. 403.
[11] See: "The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Cornell University Press Ithaca, New York. 1948. The author quotes the Polish translation by Antoni Lange, Warsaw 1916, vol. I., pp. 23,137,206,209,77, plate after P. 60. Having no access to this edition the editors of this volume are unable to quote the correct pages in the American edition.
[12] "Oeuvres du Turgot", nouvelle edition, avec les notes de Dupont-Nemours... par Eueene Daire et Hippolite Dussard. Paris 1844. vol. II. pp. 586-599, 642-667.
[13] (6) Voltaire: "La philosophic de 1'bistoire". Geneva edition of 1765, pp 18-20. The curious literary-bibliographical history of this book does not belong here.
[14] Herder's "Saemtliche Werke",
hrsgg. v. Suphan, vol. XIV, Berlin 1887, p. 39.
[15] ibid., pp. 492,. 493.
[16] Hegel, "Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Geschichte". F. Brunstaed's edition. Leipzig 1907. (Reclam). Pp. 42,46.47,117,435,439,555 and the ending of the book.
[17] (10) ibid.. pp. 439-441. wicklungsgange
seit dem Jahre 1775 bis auf die neuesten Zeiten". Vorwort III-VI, pp.
355-359, 365.
[18] Carl Ludwig Michelet. "Die
Geschichte der Menschheit in ihrem Ent
[19] Friedrich von Schlegel. "Philosophic der Geschichte" in 18 Vorlesungen gehalten zu Wien i. J. 1828, in "Saemtliche Werke", zweite Original Ausgabe, Vienna 1846, vol. XIII, Vorrede, pp. V, VI. VII, IX, then 11, 94, 196-198.
[20] J. M. Hoene-Wronski, op. cit.. pp. 403-407.
[21] Aueuste Comte, "Cours de la philosophic positive". Quatrieme ed.,Paris 1877 sq. Vol. IV, pp. 6. 12, 162, 185, 205-207, 274, 275, 292, 504. S06, 508, 510.
[22] ibid., vol. V, pp. 6-9.
[23] ibid., vol. VI, pp. 573, 589, 590, 621, 670, 760.
[24] Jozef Supinski. "Mvsl ogolna fizyologii powszechnej".
Warsaw 1860, Preface and pp. 14, 18. 37, 125. 162-165, 281.
[25] (18) Immanuel Kant. "Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht", hrsgg. und eriautert von J. H. v. Kirchmann (Philosophische Bibliothek, Band XIV). Berlin 1869, pp. 1, 3 and footnote on p. 4.
[26] Quoted in Ludwik Krzywicki "Ludv. Zarys antropologii etnicznej".Warsaw 1893, p. IV.
[27] "Anthropologie". Unter Leitung
von S. Schwalbe and E. Fischer, bearbeitet von E. Fischer, R. F. Graebner, M.
Hoemes, Th. Mollison. A. Ploetz, G. Schwalbe. Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin,
1923. In the Library "Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ihre Entwicklung and ihre
Ziele", herausgg. von Paul Hinneberg. Part III: "Mathematic,
Naturwissenschaften, Medizin. Fifth Section:
"Anthropologie". Pp.
655, 656. And:"Grundriss der menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und
Rassenhygiene", von Erwin Bauer, Eugen Fischer und Fritz Lenz. Munich
1921. Pp. 293, 298.
[28] Eugene Pittard. "Les races et I'histoire. Introduction ethnologic ue a Fhistoire". Paris 1924. In "L'evolution de Fhumanite", No. 5, pp. V, XVII.
[29] Jacques Morgan. "Les premieres civilisations". Paris 1909, p. 15.
[30] Jan Czekanowski. "Wstep do historii Slowian. Perspektywy antropologiczne, prehistoryczne i jezykoznawcze". Lw6w 1927, p. 14.
[31] ibid., p. 39. Czekanowski also had a most fortunate approach to anthropology as an applied science; much more so than Pittard, not to mention German scholars. For example such an observation: "The larger the peasant farm, the taller the recruit although there are fewer sons of land-owning families among them". P. 40.
[32] Paul Barth. "Die
Philosophic der Geschichte als Soziologie". Erster Tei'"Grundlegung
Und kritische Uebersicht". Zweite, durchgesehene und sehr erweiterte
Auflage. Leipzig 1915, p. 63.
[33] Edmonde Demolins. "Les grandes routes des peuples. Essai de geographie sociale. Comment la route cree le type social" etc. Paris 1901, 1903. The author quotes the Polish translation by L. Krzywicki, Warsaw 1902.
[34] (27) Erazm Majewski. "Nauka o cywilizacji". Warsaw 1908-1923. Vol. I, p. 17.
[35] Eduard Meyer "Zur Theorie und
Methodik der Geschichte. GeschichtsphHosophische Untersuchungen". Halle
a/S., 1902, pp. 5, 6, 26, 36, 38.
[36] (29) Floryan Znaniecki. "Wstep do socjologii". Poznan 1922, pp. 25, 253, 267. 304.
[37] (30) Oswald Spengler. "Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umriss einer Morphologic der Weltgeschichte". Vol. I, pp. 29, 39, 133, 152.
[38] ibid., vol. I, pp. 159-160.
[39] ibid. vol. I, pp. 159-161 and vol. II, p. 237.
[40] ibid. vol. I, po. 37, 287, 289, vol. II, pp. 50, 68.
[41] ibid. vol. I, pp. 51, 52, 209.
[42] ibid. vol. I, p. 153,
[43] ibid. vol. II, pp. 234, 236. vol. II, p. 623.
[44] The reader may be surprised that I have passed over the ten-volume "Voelkerpsychologie" of Wilhelm Wundt (completed 1920). It must sorrowfully be said that this gigantic work, while arousing deepest respect for the author's person, provides no scientific results at all. His trichotomy of speech, myth (here are found art and religion) and custom (here is the whole of sociology, historiosophy and the philosophy of law) was a pattern thought up in his youth, to which he afterwards sacrificed his whole life. Wundt wanders among contradictions and reaches no synthesis.
[45] Erazm Majewski, op. cit.. vol. II, p. 244.
[46] (39) ibid., vol. I, p. 304.
[47] (40) ibid., vol. II, p. 304 and vol. I, p. 232.
[48] (41) ibid.. vol. I, pp. 11, 331.
[49] St. Pawlowski and E. Romer ,,Geografia i podroznictwo". In "Polska w kulturze powszechnej", vol. II, p. 192.
[50] (43) X. Hugo Kołłątaj. "Rozbior krytyczny zasad historyi o poczatkach rodu ludzkiego". Published from manuscript by Ferdynand Kojsiewicz. Cracow 1842. Vol. I, p. 55.
[51] (44) ibid., vol. I, pp. 57-59.
[52] (45) ibid., vol. I, p. 60.
[53] (46) ibid., vol. I, 63-64. ',47).
[54] ibid., vol. I, p. 85
[55] (48) ibid.. vol. II, p. 263. 285-291 and some places in the following paragraph V, pp. 292-317.
[56] (49) ibid., vol. II, p. 177.
[57] A collection of authors cited has served me as one yardstick. In addition to classical authors and authors of ordinary descriptions of travel, Kollataj quotes the following:
Naturalists almost half of them astronomers: d'Alembert, Bailly. Bernouille, Blaff. Bomare, Boyle, Buffon, Burmet, Chardin, Condillac. Condamine, Deluc, Freret, Goguet, Hamilton, Helvetius, Jundzilt, Kepler, Kirwan, Lalande, Laplace, de Lisle, Montealegri, Newton, Niebur, Pallas, Pluche, Ray, Riccioli, Scheuchzer, Schuten, Jan and Jedrzej Śniadecki, Szymonowicz Roman. Veidlern, Voss us Izaak, Werner, Whiston. Woodwart — 40 names in all.
Humanists: Anguetil, d'Anville. Bannier. Beccaria, Boulanger, Brun, Calmet, Cassini, Esour-Vedan, Gentil, Gibelin, Hugo Grotius, Herbelot, Hyde, Kempfer, Kircher, Lafiteau, Leibnitz, Linde, Mallet, Martinice, Montelle, Pinkerton, Rabaud, Roussier, Sperlingius, Synlell, Thevenat. Tiraboschi, Varennius, Volney — 31 names in all.
In the Critical Examination of the Principles of the History of the Beginnings of the Human Race there are the names of 71 authors.
[58] "Ideen zur Philosophic der
Geschichte".
[59] With linguistic knowledge in the stage it then was, all argument with a philological basis was wasted. In the legion of such works, including some of outstanding scholarship, there is not one in which a considerable part is not played by philological conclusions all suitable only to be forgotten. Kołłątaj in this followed the habit of bis age and with the same result.
[60] Wundt declared for polygeny in 1920 (Wilhelm Wundt, "Voelkerpsychologie", vol. X, "Kultur und Geschichte", Leipzig 1920, page 377) in the erroneous belief that the question had been settled in anthropology. To-day monogeny is generally accepted.
[61] Misje Katolickie", a monthly in Cracow. 1924, p. 68.
[62] M. B. Lepecki: "W krainie jaguarów. Przygody oficera polskiego w dżunglach i stepach Brazylii". "Biblioteka dzieł wyborowych", Warsaw, 1924, vol. X. The "legend" itself in Mieczyslaw Fularski. Argentyna, Paragwaj. Boliwia. Wrazenia z podrozy". Warsaw 1929, p. 186.
[63] Levis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) whom I call the elder as opposed to the contemporary Jacques Morgan.
[64] Kazimierz Moszynski. "Kultura ludowa Slowian". Part I. "Kultura materialna". Cracow 1921, p. 224.
[65] J. Deniker. "Les race<< et les peuples de la terre. Deuxieme edition revue et considerablment augmentee". Paris 1926. (The date in the "Avertissement", p. V), p. 173.
[66] "The Travels of Marco Polo". The author quotes the Polish translation by M. Twardowski, Lodz, s.a., p. 122.
[67] Moszynski, op. cit.. Part I, p. 225.
[68] M. Fularski, op. cit., p. 114.
[69] Many are listed in Moszynski, op. cit, part I, p. 13.
[70] M. B. Lepecki. "Na cmentarzyskach Indian. Wrażenia z podróży po Paranie". "Biblioteka dziel wyborowych". Warsaw 1926. P. 41.
[71] Fularski, op.cit, pp. 112, 146.
[72] Wacław Sieroszewski. "Wśród kosmatych ludzi". Warsaw 1926, p. 47.
[73] Fularski, op. cit, p. 112.
[74] Knut Hamsun. "Pan. From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's Papers". English transl. by James W. McFarlane, London, Artemis Press, 1955. The author quotes the Polish transl. of 1903, p. 71.
[75] Waclaw Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat w kraju Jakutow. Wrazenia i notatki". With a map and 167 drawings. Warsaw 1900. Pp. 49 50.
[76] Wlodzimierz Korsak. "Ku indyjskiej rubiezy". Poznań 1926. P. '42.
[77] Antoni Jakubski. "W krainach slonca. Kartki z podrozy do Afryki Środkowej w latach 1909 i 1910". Lwów 1914. P. 45
[78] The "Letters" of Father Jan Beyzym, S.J., the apostle of the lepers in Madagascar. In Polish. Fifth edition. Cracow 1927. P. 283.
[79] M. B. Lepecki. "Oceanem, ladem, rzeka. Przygody z podr6zy po Argentynie". Warsaw 1929. P. 153.
[80] (Moszyński, op. cit.. Part I, p. 609
[81] Ludwik Krzywicki. "Ludy. Zarys antropologii etnicznej". Warsaw 1893. Pp. 70, 128.
[82] Jacques Morgan. "L'humanite prehistorique. Esquisse de prehistoire generale". Paris 1924. P. XII.
[83] Father Kosibowicz, S.J. "Problem ludow pigmejskich". Cracow. Wydawnictwo Ksiezy Jezuitow. 1927. P. 76; neither Deniker nor Jacques Morgan knew this.
[84] Den:ker. op. cit., pp. 174-177 with extremely interesting drawings. Compare the drawings from White Ruthenia and Russia in Moszynski, op. cit.. Part I, p. 237.
[85] J. C. Poestion. "Island. Das Land und seine Bewolmer. Nach den neuesten Quellen". Vienna 1885. P. 296.
[86] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p. 222.
[87] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat w kraju Jakutow", op. cit., p. 50.
[88] Jakubski, op. cit.
[89] Bronisław Grabczewski. "Podroze". Warsaw 1924. Vol. I, p. 153.
[90] Jakubski, op. cit., p. 45.
[91] Krzywicki. "Ludy", on. cit., n. 82.
[92] ibid., p. 97.
[93] Ernest Psichari. "Les voix qui orient dans Ie desert. Souvenirs d'Afrique". Paris 1920. The author quotes the Polish transl. by Z. Morstinowa. Poznan 1925, pp 146, 147.
[94] Grabczewski, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 60.
[95] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit., p. 66. Deniker believe the "dingo" of New Holland, whose portrait is to be found in the second edition of "Les races et peoples de la terre" (1926), p. 239, to be the ancestor of the household dog.
[96] Moszynski, op. cit., Part I, p. 66.
[97] Leopold Adametz. "Hodowla og61na zwierzat domowych", transl. from the manuscript in German by Zdzislaw Zabielski. Cracow. Akademia Umiejetnosci, 1925, pp. 42, 46.
[98] Eduard Meyer. "Geschichte des Altertums". Second edition. I Band, I Halfte; "Einleitung: Elemente der Anthropologie". Stuttgart 1907.
[99] Antoni Ossendowski. "Przez kraj ludzi. zwierzat i bogow.. Konno przez Azje Centralna". Warsaw 1923. P. 243.
[100] Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. "Pozoga. Wspomnienia z Wołynia 19l7-1919r.". Second edition, Cracow 1923. P. 60.
[101] Grabczewski, op. cit., vol. II. p. 184, vol. Ill, p. 133, 184.
[102] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, 1924, p. 67.
[103] Adametz, op. cit., p. 3.
[104] Autochtonous Californians stand lowest. A. Maurizio. "Die GetreideNahrung im Wandel
der Zeiten". Zurich 1916. P.I.
[105] Jan Czekanowski. "Rasy i ludy". Cracow 1932. P. 131.
[106] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit., p. 49.
[107] Grabczewski, op. cit., vol. II. pp. 189-193.
[108] ibid., vol. II. p. 195, vol. Ill, pp. 86, 87.
[109] Sieroszewski, "Dwanascie lat", op. cit.. p. 341.
[110] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 93, 97. A correction should be made here, because the name "gohar" does not signify a people, but a caste, the pastoral.
[111] Psichari, op. cit., p. 233.
[112] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, 1925, p. 389.
[113] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit. Pp. 64, 85, 124, 125, 126, 128, 145, 147, 148, 149 160, 161, 162. "Lyze", now vulgo "narty" or "ski". from the Norwegian (Danish). The expression "narty" is of FinnoUgrian origin, but in the original it is the shorter "rty". In the Russian "Year Records of the Northern Collection (Letopis Potnogo Sobranya)" it may often be read how the warriors of the many Yugrian tribes arrive over the snow on "rty". The Russian neologism arose from the combination of the preposition and noun, and entering Polish, has displaced the native "tyze" and "kosle". There is an interesting passago on skis in Moszynski, op. cit. Part I, pp .627-8.
[114] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit., pp. 69, 70.
[115] W. Melcer-Rutkowska. "Turcja dzisiejsza. Biblioteka dziel wyborowych". Vol. 30. 1925. P. 44.
[116] Jerzy Chmielcwski. "Angola". Warsaw 1929. P. 146.
[117] "Anthropologie". Unter Leitung
von S. Schwalbe und E. Fischer, bearbeitet von E. Fischer, R. F. Graebner, M.
Hoernes, Th. Mollison, A. Ploetz, G. Schwalbe. (In the collection: "Die
Kultur der Gegenwart, ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele", herausgegeben von
Paul Hinneberg. Dritter Tcil: "Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften,
Medizin". Funfte Abteilung: "Anthropologie".) Leipzig and Berlin.
Teubner Verlag. 1923. P. 540.
[118] Jakubski, op. cit., pp. 80, 261.
[119] Krzywicki. "Ludy". Op. cit., p. 128.
[120] "Anthropologie", op. cit., p. 527.
[121] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, p. 363.
[122] ibid, 1926, p. 93.
[123] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p. 122.
[124] Fularski, op. cit., pp. 79, 155-157.
[125] Moszynski, op. cit., Part I, pp. 128-130.
[126] W. Wundt is still occupied with this in the last volume of his
"Volkerpsychologie", op. cit. (e.g. p. 149).
[127] Grabczewski. op. cit., vol. II, pp. 95, 114, 115. illustrations 114, 115.
[128] Stanistaw Gerlach. "Z Taszkientu do Krakowa naokolo swiata. Pamietnik ucieczki oficera Polaka z niewoli rosyjskiej". Two parts. Warsaw 1923. Par: I, p. 288.
[129] Adolf Bartels. "Der Bauer in dcr deutschen Vergangenheit Monographien zur deutschen Kulturgeschicbte", hersgg. v. Georg Steinhausen, vol. VI, Leipzig 1900. Original illustrations 12 and 13 dating from 1473, 1479 and 1486; from the sixteenth century on page 59.
[130] Pawel Popiel. "Pamietniki 1807-1892". Cracow 1927. P. 137.
[131] As in a picture by Aleksander Laszenko shown at Poznan at the beginning of 1927 and bought for the palace of the Khedive d'Abdine in Cairo. I may add in paranthesis that this Egyptian method was forbidden to the Jews in the Pentateuch.
[132] Waclaw Sieroszewski. "Dalaj Lama". Two volumes. Vol. I, p. 66.
[133] Feliks Koneczny. "Dzieje Rosji (History of Russia)", vol. I.
[134] Psichari, op. cit.. p.
194.
[135] Grabczewski, op.. cit., vol. I, pp. 131, 132.
[136] Antoni Debczynski. "Dwa lata w Kongo (1925-1927)". Warsaw 1928. P. 186.
[137] Moszynski, op. cit.. Part I, p. 266.
[138] In the opinion of Moszynski, op. cit., part I, p. 227, among the Slavs "salting of meat for preservative purposes is undoubtedly of more recent origin than drying and pickling".
[139] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, 1924, pp. 95, 99.
[140] Maurizio, op. cit., pp. 4, 7, 20 devotes separate passages to this. The Chukchi still know 23 cditible plants. Poestion, op. cit., p. 336, provides a whole list from Iceland alone, together with accounts of how to prepare them. Now the fishermen of Hercegovina know how to make the greatest number of "wild" plants edible. Moszynski, op. cit, part I, p. 12.
[141] Let us remember that two-fifth of humanity live on rice.
[142] This has long been known, and is difficult to doubt, since the most recent travellers also confirm it. In 1915 Bronislaw Malinowski justly observed that "such notions must of necessity exercise a decisive influence on a number of social institutions". (Bronislaw Malinowski. "Wicrzenia picrwotne i formy ustroju spolecznego. Poglad na gencze religii zc szczeg61nym uwzglednieniem totemizmu". Cracow 1915. P. 6.) Strange that this fact was not used for the matriarchy hypothesis. In any event adherents of matriarchy might make special investigations about such people, possibly saving this single case for the theory. The question would however grow more involved if it proved that even such peoples possess the sense of property, for there would at once arise the question whose the woman was and whose property the children were. I shall return to the question of matriarchy later (in notes).
[143] Father Kosibowicz, SJ., op. cit., pp. 13, 14. 16, 17, 27, 33, 35, 36.
[144] "Misje Katolickie". Cracow, 1925, p. 508.
[145] "Anthropologie", op. cit., p. 541.
[146] ibid., pp. 195, 196; Wundt, op. cit.,
vol. VII, "Die Gesellschaft", Leipzig 1917, pp. 114, 139 and on 263
begins a separate sections: "Die Monogamie des Primitivcn Mcnschen".
[147] Wundt, op. cit, voL VII, p. 205.
[148] Father Kosibowicz,op.cit,p.ll7.
[149] Wundt, voL VII, pp. 103, 206, 421.
[150] On Kubary, see "Polska w kulturze powszechnej".
[151] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit, pp. 222-224.
[152] "Semaine internationalc d'ethnologie rdigieuse". V Session. Luxembourg, 11-22 Sept. 1929). Paris 1931. P. 337.
[153] Meyer, op. cit, pp. 21, 23. In addition to this the law of family inheritance plays a part, of which below.
[154] Meyer, op. cit, p. 31.
[155] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit.
[156] Bronislaw Malinowski. "Mutterliche Famine und Ocdipus-Komplex. Eine ethnologish-psychoanalitishe Studie". Vienna 1924. P. 46.
[157] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 58, 76, 77, 78. In Krzywicki's old book this question was explained, not entirely correctly it is true, but incomparably better and more clearly than in "Anthropologie", op. cit. (1923) thirty years later. The "classes" were taken up with particular satisfaction by adherents of totemism, and they liked best the Australian Arunta people. What chaos reigns in the matter may be seen from the last account of it G. Davy and A. Moret (also in 1923 "Des clans aux empires. L'organisation socialc chez les primitifs et dans Forient ancicn". Paris, 1923. "L'evolution de Fhumanite" No. 6, pp. 22, 26 and 32) present the seclusions of the Arunta in a most involved manner amidst a labyrinth of classes, brotherhoods, tribes, clans, and totems too. Following (on this occasion) Krzywicki I simplified the division even more and halved the number of "classes", not seeing any reason for artificially differentiating what nature has very well distinguished by sex. To .turn each seclusion into two—masculine and feminine—complicates the argument and leads nowhere.
[158] Father A. Tonelli, Sal. "La famiglia presso i Bororo-Orari del Matto Grosso". In "Semaine intern, d'ethnologic rel.", op. cit., p. 303.
[159] "The Koran". The author quotes a German translation bv Dr
Samuel Friedrich Gucnthcr Wahl. Halle 1828. P. 67.
[160] L. Ehrlich. "Die Familie bei den Tschuktschen, Jukagiren, Korjakcn und Itelmen". In "Semaine internationale d'cthnologie religicuse" op cit., pp. 183, 188.
[161] Meyer, op. cit., p. 19.
[162] Among primitive peoples, this law is often conditional, applicable
in exceptional circumstances only, e.g. among Bushmen in the case of mother's
death, injury, collective flight etc. L. Walk. "Die Familie in Sudafrika", in "Semaine
internationale d'ethnologie religieusc", op. cit., p. 257.
[163] Percival LoweU. "The Soul of the Far East". Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass., 1888. The author quotes the Polish translation by J. G. H. Pawlikowski. Lw6w 1922. ("Wiedza i zyde", seria IV, torn 12). Pp. 21. 23.
[164] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow 1925, pp. 400, 401, 451, 452.
[165] Father Georg Hoeltker, S.V.D. "Die
Familie bei den Aztekcn und Maya", in "Semaine Internationale
d'ethnologie religieuse, op. cit., p. 320.
[166] Tonelli, op. dt, p. 310.
[167] Hoeltker, op. dt, p. 319.
[168] Sieroszewski. "Dwanasde lat", op. dt., p. 294.
[169] Gustave Le Bon. "Les dvilisations de 1'Inde". Nouvelle edition. Paris 1900. P. 318.
[170] Jadwiga Marcinkowska. "W upalnym sercu Wschodu. Wrazenia z podrózy po Egipcie, Indiach, Cejlonie i Jawie". Lw6w 1925. Pp. 222, 223.
[171] I do not know where the horrid opinion we have of geishas comes from. The geisha must preserve her virginity, otherwise she loses her right to wear the double fold on the shoulder, the honourable sign of her important guild, and is obliged to wear a red camellia in her hair. Japanese prostitues are called "joro". Ferdynand Ossendowski. "Cud bogini Kwan-Non. Z zyda Japonii." Poznan 1924. P. 53.
[172] Father Wladyslaw Szczepanski. "Najstarsze cywilizacje Wschodu klasyczncgo". VoL II. "BabiW. Lw6w 1922-23. P. 154.
[173] Sieroszewski. "Korea. Klucz Dalekiego Wschodu". Warsaw 1905. P. 277.
[174] Walk, op. cit, p. 259.
[175] Unless perhaps through lack of realisation of the effects of "coitus", of which I have already spoken. Malinowski assumes such unawareness among inhabitants of the island of Tobrianda and speaks incidentally of the behaviour of the women "from the first moment of pregnancy" ("Mutterrecndiche Famine", op. cit, p. 17). How in that case do they know about that first moment? And besides, a woman points to the father of her child by living with him and, with children, being kept by him. This island of Tobrianda passes for the classical land of matriarchy. It may be said in paranthesis that Malinowski gives its position as north-east of New-Guinea or north-west Melanesia, whereas it lies south-east of New Guinea and in central Melanesia.
[176] On them "Anthropologie", op. cit, p. 526.
[177] For example, the division of scythe and sickle. On the femininity of the sickle see Adam Szymanski's "Aksinia".
[178] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit, p. 293.
[179] Of the emancipation of the family from the clan there will be more later.
[180] Lowell, op. cit., pp. 21, 23.
[181] Father Kosibowicz, op. cit, pp.,97, 185.
[182] Marcinkowska, op. cit.,-p. 201.
[183] Bastian. "Die Rechtsverhaltnisse bei vcrschiedenen Volkern der Erde. Bin Beitrag zur vergleichenden Ethnologic". Berlin. 1872. Jakubski, op. cit Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 125, 164.
[184] Ehriich, op. cit, pp. 183, 184.
[185] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 74, 75.
[186] ibid. Note p. 76, p. 82.
[187] Perdynand Goetel. "Przez ptonacy Wschod". Warsaw 1925. P. 73.
[188] Deniker, op. cit, pp. 146, 147. p
[189] Sieroszewski, "Dwanaście lat", op. cit., pp. 51, 118, 121.
[190] Chmielewski, op. cit, p. 142.
[191] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow. 1926, pp. 77, 8Z.
[192] ibid. 1925, pp. 446;-447.
[193] Ehrlicb, op. cit., p. 183.
[194] Erazm Majewski. "Nauka o cywilizacji". Warsaw 1908-1923. Vol. IV, pp. 138, 140, 141, 150, 151; 152, 166, 172.
[195] For the way in which this discovery of Majewski's was beginning to crystallise in Polish science, see Adam Szelagowski. "Wschod i Zachod. Zagadnienia z dziejów cywilizacji". Lw6w 1912. Pp. 495, 496.
[196] Majewski as above.
[197] This was noted long ago, but in Polish writings only since 1915, thanks to Bronistaw Malinowsld. "Wierzenia pierwotne", op. dt, p. 6.
[198] Sieroszewski,"Korea",op.cit.,p.46.
[199] Lepecki. "W krainic jaguar6w". op. cit, p. 2L
[200] "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, 1926, .p. 79.
[201] Jakubski. op. cit.. pp. 31, 32, 45, 152, 225.
[202] Jakubski, op. cit., pp. 152. 240. "Misje Katolickie", Cracow, 1925, pp. 314, 315.
[203] Lepecki, "W krainic jaguarow", op. cit., p. 83.
[204] F. Graebner. "Ethnologic". In "Anthropologie", op. cit., p. 577.
[205] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., p. 217.
[206] Poestion. "Island", op. cit., p. 283.
[207] Sieroszcwski, "Dwanascie lat", op. cit, pp. 73, 74, 140, 143.
[208] Eugcn Fischer. "Specielle
Anthropologie oder Rassenlehre". In "Anthropologie". Pp. 184, 185.
[209] Maurizio, op. cit, pp. 5, 17, 18. From this work a mass of evidence could be cited showing how identical states of pre-agriculturc—and of agriculture also—are associated with very dissimilar levels of civilisation, and vice-versa.
[210] Moszynski, op. cit, part I, p. 143.
[211] Jakubski. op. cit, pp. 31, 113.
[212] "Misje Katolickie", 1924, April.
[213] Moszynski, op. cit.. Part I, pp. 166, 167, 174, 175.
[214] Wilhelm Depping. "Japan". Polish translation from third edition. (Biblioteka Dziel Wyborowych, Warsaw 1904, two volumes Nr. 326 and 327.) Pp. 93, 97.
[215] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit., p. 160.
[216] Father Szczepan Mazurek in "Misje Katolickic", 1924, p. 112.
[217] Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski. "W ludzkiej i Icsnej kniei". Warsaw 1923. P. 230. This is caused by a special fungus.
[218] Jan Czekanowski. "Rasy i Ludy", op. cit., p. 74.
[219] ibid., p. 110.
[220] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit., pp. 141, 143, 189; Lepecki. "Na cmcntarzyskach Indian", op. cit., p. 74; Lepecki. "^ krainie jaguar6w", '' op. cit., p. 75; Jakubski, op. cit., p. 121; "Misje Katolickie", 1925. pp. 389, 556; ibid 1926. p. 13.
[221] J6zef Bieniasz describes this in his "Edukacja", Lw6w 1933, vol. .1, p. 124.
[222] Father Szczepariski, op. cit.. Vol. I, "Egipt", p. 183; Grabczewski, op. cit, voL III, p. 45.
[223] Lepecki. "W krainie jaguardw", op. cit, p. 55; Sieroszewski. Dwana^cie lat". op. cit, p. 95; Sieroszewski. "Korea", op. cit., p. 387. J6zef Rostafinski. "Swiat i ludzie Algeru". Second edition. Cracow 1896. P. 191.
[224] Moszynski, op. cit., part I, p. 596.
[225] ibid, part I, pp. 630-632.
[226] ibid, part I, p. 632.
[227] For the history of the wheel, see ibid, part I, pp. 634-637.
[228] ibid, part I, pp. 637, 638.
[229] "Misje Katolickie", 1928. p. 129.
[230] Julian Talko-Hryncewicz. "Z przezytych dni (1850-1903)". Warsaw 1930, p. 239.
[231] Gerlach, op. cit., p. 178, with an account of large teams; Jakubski, op. cit., pp. 220, 271; Lepecki, "W krainie jaguar6w", op. cit.. p. 99; Sven Hcdin, "Bagdad, Babylon, Waive, Leipzig 1918, p. 284 sketch;Witold Szyszlo, "Pod zwrotnikami. Porto-Rico", (Biblioteka Dziel Wyborowych, Nr. 679-680. no date, but before 1914), p. 62; Ossendowski, "Przez kraj ludzi, zwierzat i bog6w", op. cit, p. 73; Fularski, op. cit, p. 129.
[232] "Misje Katolickie", 1924, pp. 251, 253, 256, 365, with interesting data on harnessing and driving.
[233] Moszynski, op. cit., part I, p. 647.
[234] Poestion, op. cit., p. 296.
[235] "Letters" of Father Beyzym, op. cit, p. 33. "(nsyLepecki. "W krainie jaguardw", op. cit., p. 86. (177) Debczynski, op. cit, p. 195.
[236] Lepecki, „W krainie jaguarów”, op. cit., p. 33.
[237] Dębczyński, op. cit., p. 195.
[238] Wladyslaw Kotwicz. "0 chronologii mongolskiej". A reprint from "Rocznik Orientalistyczny", vol. IV. Lw6w, 1928. Pp. 2, 3.
[239] (179) Lepecki."W krainie jaguarów", op. cit.
[240] Deniker, op. cit. F. Graebner. "Das Weltbild der Primitiven. Munich, 1924.
[241] Davy et Moret, op. cit.
[242] Similarly in the shortened "Elemente der Volkerpsychologie".
[243] Meyer, op. cit., p. 96. It is a curious fact that totemism was opposed without quarter (by Goldenweiser in 1910) soon after the publication of Frazer's fundamental work Totemism and Exogamy", but totemism blossomed again reinforced by Freud. Since the tribes of Central Australia arc not exogamous, yet are regarded as the classic example of totemism (Malinowski, "Wierzenia picrwotne", op. cit, p. 7), the totem has evidently nothing to do with endoor exogamy.
[244] Lotar Dargun. "Ursprung und Entwicklungsgeschichtc des Eigentums". ("Zcitschrift fiir vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft", vol. V, 1884.) P. 1 sq. He also wrote in Polish in the publications of the Cracow Academy. The memory of his nationality has somehow become effaced and Germans regard him as theirs without justification. (I knew him personally in Cracow in youth.)
[245] Wundt, op. cit., vol. VIII, p. 75.
[246] It is a great mistake to confuse "zadruga" with the Russian "mir", which is of Turanian origin and not based on kinship.
[247] Meyer, op. cit., p. 69: "der Besitz
gemeinsam nach Familien
[248] Gustavc Le Bon, "Les civilisations de llnde**, op. dt, pp. 653-^6.
[249] P. J. Andre, capitaine d'infanteric colonialc (Pierre Reden). "L'islam et les races". Paris 1922. Vol. I, p. 82.
[250] "Anthropologie", op. cit, p. 542, D^bczyriski, op. cit., p. 213. Le Bon, "Les civilisations de 1'Inde", op cit., p. 652.
[251] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. rit, p. 220.
[252] Bastian, op. dt., pp. XIV,
XV, 185.
[253] Feliks Koneczny. "Dzieje Rosji"
("History of Russia"), vol. I, p. 289>
[254] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p. 222,
223.
[255] Feliks Koneczny. "History of Russia". Vol. I, pp. 97, 98.
[256] Wundt, op. c»L, vol. VH,
p. 108.
[257] Sieroszewski. "Dwanaście lat", op.
cit., p. 338.
[258] Debczynski, op. cit., p. 207; the author sees in this "traces of the matriarchal system".
[259] ibid, p. 208.
[260] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit, p. 87.
[261] ibid, p. 218. Fromthis the author concludes that "the communist principle plays a considerable r61e in family life". If living in one building is a manifestation of communism, towns are populated entirely by communists!
[262] ibid, p. 220.
[263] Father Tonelli, op. cit, pp. 300 and 312. Here there is an evident tendency towards emancipation of the family, but Tonelli sees it as an instance of matriarchy.
[264] "Misje Katoliddc", 1925, p. 342.
[265] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., p. 223.
[266] ibid, p. 243.
[267] Psichari, op. cit., pp. 65, 81. In the Polish translation the confusion in nomenclature is even worse than in the original.
[268] Fularski, op. cit, p. 148.
[269] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., p. 88. Nomenclature everywhere very inconsistent.
[270] "Misje Katolidue**, 1925 p. 403.
[271] Jan St Bystron. "Alger". Lw6w 1934. Pp. 124. 125, 127, 130, 131.
[272] ibid, pp. 232-234.
[273] ibid, pp. 231. 232.
[274] Grabczewski, op. cut, wL n, p. 109.
[275] Lowell, op. dt, pp. 21, 23.
[276] Dębczynski, op. dt.
[277] Rev. Fr. S. Tastevin. "La famille Nyaneka" in "Semaine internationals d'ethnologie religieuse", op. cit., pp. 277-278.
[278] Krzywicki. **Ludy", op. cit, p. 195. "Misje KatoUckie" 1924, p. 68.
[279] N. Schncider. "Ehe und Familie in
der Gesetzgebung der Sumercr, Babylonier, Assyrer und Hethiten" in
"Semaine Internationale d'ethnologie religieuse", op. cit., p. 210.
[280] ibid, p. 204. Father Hoeltker S.V.D., op. cit. 325.
[281] Eduard Westennarck. "Ursprung und Entwicklung -der Moralbegriffe". German translation (from the Swedish) by Leopold Katscher. Vol. I, pp. 516-518.
[282] Westermarck confuses the two.
[283] Fr. Hoeltker, op. dt, p. 319.
[284] "Misje Katolickic" 1924, p. 68; 1926,
p. 92.
[285] Westennarck, op. dt., vol. I, p. 516; Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. dt.,
p. 130.
[286] "Anthropologie",
op. cit, p. 543; Fr. Kosibowicz, S.J., op. cit, p. 113; Fr. Tastevin op. cit,
p. 277; L. Walk. "Die
Famine in Sudafrika" In "Semaine intcrnatibnale d'ethnologie
rcligieuse", op. cit., pp. 258, 262.
[287] "The Koran", op. cit., p. 67.
[288] Ferdynand Goetel. "Egipt". Lwow 1927. P. 120. Rostafinski, op. cit., p. 187.
[289]
Ehriich, op. dt, p. 186.
[290]
Le Bon, "Les civilisations de FInde", op. cit., pp. 318, 322.
[291] Stefan Poraj Suchecki. "Wschodnim
wybrzezem Afryki. Wrazenia z podrdzy". Warsaw 1901. P. 20.
[292] "Misje Katolickie" 1925. P. 478.
[293] Walk, op. dt, p. 267.
[294] Fr. Tastevin, op. cit, p. 278.
[295] "Misje Katolickie" 1925. p. 545.
[296] Sieroszewski. "Dwanasde lat*\ op. cit.P.
298.
[297] This is the theme of Carl GjcUerup's "The Pilgrim Kamanita".
[298] Rev. Fr. L. de.Smedt. "Le manage en Chine'*,, in "Semaine internationalc d'ethnologie religieuse", op. cit, p. 163.
[299] It is certainly not easy for a foreigner to distinguish concubine from "second" wife, hence the error evident in the Smedt, op cit, p. 166, to the effect that for the most part the Chinese have only one concubine (as if more would be unseemly).
[300] Fr. L. de Smcdt, op. cit, p. 164.
[301] ibid, p. 166.
[302] Le Bon, "Les civilisations de 1'Inde", op. cit., pp. 258, 324.
[303] Ku Hung Ming. "The Spirit of the Chinese People", Peking 1922. The author quotes the Polish translation by Jozef Targowski, Cracow 1928. Pp. 65, 68.
[304] "Semaine Internationale d'ethnologie religieuse", op. cit., pp. 145, 146. It may be said in paranthesis that there are many resemblances between the family law of China and of the ancient Aztecs.
[305] de Smedt, op. cit, p. 167.
[306] L. Cadicre. "La famille et la religion en pays annamite" in "Semaine internationalc", op. cit., p. 222.
[307] Lowell, op. cit., pp. 40, 41.
[308] Futabel. "Left Rudder!" Japanese novel. The author quotes the Polish translation by Jerzy Marlicz in "Gazeta Warszawska", Warsaw 1925.. Particularly sketches 3, 33, 42.
[309] "Anthropologie", op. cit., p. 520; F. Gracbner takes refuge here in" matriarchy!
[310] Depping, op. cit., pp. 76, 77. 90. "Misje Katolickie", op. cit., 1925. p. 536. Kenijro Totukomi. "Nemi-Ko". (Japanese Tale). The author quotes Polish translation by Emilia Weslawska, Warsaw 1905. ("Biblioteka dziel wyborowych". No. 375, 378).
[311] Fr. Georg Hoeltker, S.V.D., op. cit, p. 324.
[312] Ku Hung Ming. op. cit, p. 63.
[313] Sieroszewski. "Korea", op. cit., pp.
152, 239. lat", op. cit., p. 341.
[314] Lepecki.
[315] Fr. W. Szczepariski, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 154. Rostafinski, op. cit., p 162. Fr. Kosibowicz, S.J., op. cit., p. 108. Sieroszewski, "Korea", op. cit, p. 277. Fr. de Smedt, op. cit, p. 161. Koran, pp. 66, 69. Sven Hedin, op. cit., pp. 309, 310.
[316] Hedin, op. cit, p. 348.
[317] Wladyriaw Massalski. "Ekspansja Islamu w
swietk nowych pogladow". "Przeglad Powszechny", April 1927, p.
21.
[318] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op.
cit., p. 293.
[319] Blasco-Ibanez: "Mystery of the Lake"; Jerzy Bandrowski: "Zolojka"; Michal Siedlecki :"Skarby wod". Cassubian "maszoperia" from the Dutch "Matschapij".
[320] Sieroszewski. "Wsr6d kosmatych ludzi",
op. cit And "Dwanasdc lat". op. dt
[321] "Misje Katolidde", 1924, p. 76. Another missionary has nevertheless confused the clan community with
communal property. "Misje
Katolickie", 1925. p. 365.
[322] Sieroszewski, "Dwanascie lat", op.
cit., p. 279.
[323] "Anthropologie", op. cit, pp. 542, 543.
[324] Jakubski, op. cit, p: 266.
[325] Krzywicki. "Ludy", op. cit., p. 62.
[326] Julian Talko-Hryncewicz. "Z przezytych dni (1850-1908)". Warsaw 1930. P. 261.
[327] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit,
p. 224.
[328] Families — not clans, since there are more than five of them. The Todas are dying out. In 1880 they numbered barely 500; do they still exist'» Marriage within the clan was forbidden. Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 93, 97, 99, with the usual chaos in nomenclature.
[329] Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p. 243.
[330] Sieroszewski. "Korea", op; cit., p.
240.
[331] Rostafiński, op. dt, p. 172.
[332] Sieroszewski, "Korea", op. cit, p. 241.
[333] Rostafirtski, op. cit., pp. 178, 230.
[334] Sieroszewski "Dwanascie lat", op. cit,
p. 280.
[335] ibid, p. 279.
[336] ibid., p. 279.
[337] Rostafinski, op. cit., p. 273.
[338] Adherents of totemism recognise that these signs are property marks: "They also use it as their arms, paint, sculpt and draw it on their houses, on objects of use, and tatoo it on their persons" we read in Malinowski, "Wierzenia pierwotne i formy ustroju spolecznego", op. dt, p. 10. But not content with the factual side of the subject, a large superstructure,crowned by a totemistic religion, has been created by the meditative method.
[339] Here I am attacking matriarchy, and in its main fortress, in that island of Tobrianda, where the uncle is "head of matriarchal grouping", and his heir is not bis own son, but his nephew, his sister's son (Malinowski, "Mutterrechtliche Familie und Oedipus-Komplex", op. cit., pp. 9. 31). Then who inherits from the father? Again children of his sister? Combinations the more singular in that this uncle "head under matriarchy", lives elsewhere, in another settlement (Malinowski, ibid, p. 32) — for in Tobrianda exogamy is the rule, and a wife follows her husband (Malinowski, ibid, p. 10). How are the two ideas to be reconciled?
None of the propounders of avuncular matriarchy has considered that a man with several sisters would be burdened by duties towards twenty or thirty children not his own and living in various parts of the island. All these nephews are his heirs, but if a man were to have no sisters, he would have no heirs. And what happens if a woman has no brother? But if she has several brothers, her matriarchal grouping would have several "heads", and her sons would inherit all over the island.
All this belongs to the realm of fairy-tales. Instead, the question should be asked: whose property are children in Tobrianda? How are fathers there persuaded to accept loss in favour of their wives' brothers? But as decision on a daughter's marriage is nevertheless the father's (Malinowski, ibid, p. 50), patently the father owns his daughter; the less likely is it that he would allow sons to be taken from him.
I mention all this in footnotes only, treating the matter as occasion offers, since the question of matriarchy has no basic importance for this book; I should not have to alter anything of its content were matriarchy to be proved a fact On Freudianism there is nothing to be said. The "Oedipus-complex" and the rot are together worth as much as was once the "plica polonica" in medicine, also with a serious and ample literature of its own.
I draw attention to one further argument. Ethnologists are wont to inquire whether a young wife preserves her former name — i.e. of her clan — or whether she adopts her husband's, and they pronounce accordingly for matriarchy or patriarchy. This is a strange error, for to this day there are no surnames anywhere in the world outside Latin civilisation and its field of influence. There arc only forenames or nicknames. It is the same in Turkey, in Persia, in China and among the Bushmen, where a child is frequently given the name of a grandfather (and in Europe?). (Semaine internationale d'ethnologie, op. at., p. 289.) A wife keeps her forename with us, not only in Korea or New Ireland. (FT. A. Pckhardt, O.S.B., op. cit, t». 172. Semaine internationale, OD. cit. p. 238.) And as for "surnames" at low levels of civilisation, the learned are misled either by the mark ("totem") of a clan or tribe used for indicating boundaries and property, or by the tribal war-cry, unfortunately ignored by ethnology. A wife married into another clan. and the more so if into another tnbc, may be known by her old maiden forename, but the goods which belong to her are henceforth indicated by the mark of her husband's clan, and she regards herself as part and parcel of that clan.
[340] L. Walk, op. cit. p. 260.
[341] ibid.. pp. 258, 267.
[342] Dcnikcr, op. cit., p. 294.
[343] E.g. L. Ehrlich, op. cit., p. 185.
[344] The father's property right to children is strongly indicated in primitive societies organised in seclusions: a child's membership of a seclusion is determined by his father's membership. This is the case even among the Arunta of Central Australia, among the people whose institutions constitute a pillar of the doctrine of matriarchy. Malinowski, "Wierzenia pierwotne", op. cit., p. 7, did not notice the illogicality.
[345] Fr. dc Smedt, op. cit. pp. 162, 166, 167.
[346] Westennarck, op. cit., vol. I, p. 525.
[347] Ehrlich, op. cit, p. 192. Ed. de Jonghe. "La famille chez les Congolais" in "Semaine internationale d'ethnologie religieuae", op. dt, p. 252.
[348] Marco Polo, op. dt, p. 25.
[349] Fr. W. Szczepanski, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 131. N. Schneider, op. cit., p.
210.
[350] Deniker, op. cit, p. 294.
[351] Cadiere. op. cit.. pp. 221, 222.
[352] Schneider, op. cit., p. 210.
[353] de Jonghe, op. cit, p. 244. I do not understand how he could, on the preceding page, mention primogeniture in this connection.
[354] Fr. de Smedt, op. cit. p. 155.
[355] Fr. Andreas Eckardt O.S.B. "Die Familie in Japan und Korea" — in "Semaine internationale d'ethnologie religieuse", op. cit, p. 172; does ^the author not speak too hastily of "surnames" here?
[356] Fr. Hoeltker S.V.D., op. cit, pp. 323, 324.
[357] (117) For example in New Ireland, an island in Oceania ("New Mccklemburg" between 1885-1919), "Semaine internationale", op. cit, p. 231; it was the same with the Mayan Peoples, Fr. Hoeltker, S.V.D., p. 322.
[358] Henry Thomas Buckle. "History of Civilisation in
England", London, Parker, Son and Bourn, 1861. Vol. n, page XII. The
author quotes the Polish translation by Zawadzki, Lw6w 1862, vol. Ill, p. 381.
[359] Franciszek Bujak. "Traktat Kopemika o
monecie". Lwów 1924.
[360] Fr. Marcin Czerminski. "Na g6rze Athos,
w&rod mniszej republiki". objasniony 57 rycinami i mapa Athosu".
Cracow 1908.
[361] Sieroszewski. "Korea", op. cit., p.
182.
[362] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit,
p. 251.
[363] Sieroszewski. "Risztau". Cracow 1911. P. 125.
[364] It was found among the "Assanides" by Adam Grabowski. "Wsrod g6r i pustyn Coelesyrii". Bytom 1924. P. 171.
[365] Westermarck, op. cit. vol. I, p. 397.
[366] Sieroszewski. "Dwanascie lat'*, op. cit., p.
250.
[367] Westermarck, op. cut, vol. I, p. 398.
[368] ibid.
[369] Psichari, op. cit, p. 93.
[370] "Misje Katolickie", 1925, p. 445.
[371] "Anthropologie", op. cit., p. 548.
[372] Compare "The dependence of economic life on ethics" by Feliks Koneczny in the collective "^fcycie gospodarcze a ekonomika spoleczna" (vol. II "Biblioteka Polskiego Towarzvstwa Ekonomicznego we Lwowie"). Lw6w 1933.
[373] Bastian, op. dt, mainly pp. XV, XVI, 175-182.
[374] Robert Poelmann. "Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt". Second ed., Munich 1912. Two volumes.
[375] Wundt, op. cit., voL X, p. 21. This does not prevent his stating, in another place in the same volume (p. 163) that "nicht eine einzelne Nation, sondern ein einziger alle Nationen umfassender Staat Trager der Kultur ist". And later, on pp. 171-173, .there appears the "Natipnaler Kulturstaat". Compare also pp. 179 and 217.
[376] Compare Paul Barth. "Die Philosophic der Geschichte als Soziolqgie". Part I; "Grundlcgung und kridsche Uebersicht". Second, enlarged cd., Leipzig 1915. Pp. 546, 571-573.
[377] Ergology, a term invented by the German philosopher Georg Eduard Burckhart (born 1881), meaning the science of labour. (Note of th<T translators).
[378] Barth, op. cit, p. 580.
[379] Majewski, op. cit, vol. II, p. 137.
[380] According to Meyer, op. cit., p. XV.
[381] According to Barth, op. cit., p. 579.
[382] On the other hand the history of civilisation cannot do without ergology. What an enormous mass of material is contained in Moszynski's "Kultury ludowe u SIowian".
[383] Fr. de Smedt, op. cit, p. 169.
[384] Walerian Klecki. "Wyklady o biologicznych
podstawach hodowli. Gatunek i rasa". Warsaw 1924. Pp. 136-141.
[385] Ludwik Krzywicki. "Kurs systematyczny
antropologii". VoL I. "Rasy fizyczne". Warsaw 1897. Pp. 8, 38,
130, 139; Majewski, op. dt, voL IV, p. 155.
[386] Meyer, op. dt, p. 73; Fritz Lenz. "Menaddiclifr Ausle»e und Rassenhygienc" in "Grundriss der menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre u. Rassenhygiene" by Erwin Bauer, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz. Munich 1921. Vol. II, p. 102; TFischer in "Spezielle Anthropologie oder Rassenlehre". op. cit, in "Anthropologie", p. 194-196. As for the Veddahs, the old hypothesis that they are remnants of the original population of India has proved mistaken. Eugene Pittard. "Les races et Fhistoire. Introduction cthnologique ^. Fhistoire". In "I/evolution de 1'humanite". No. 5. Paris 1924. Pp. 479. 485.
[387] Pittard, op. dt, pp. 476, 478.
[388] Krzywicki, ^Kurs systeinatyczny
antropologii", op. dfc, p. 70.
[389] Ibid;; p. 101.
[390] Fischer, "Spezielle Anthropologie", op.
cit., pp. 187, 214, 215; Sieroszewski "Wsrod kosmatych ludzi", op.
cit., p. 11.
[391] Klecki, op. cit., p. 154.
[392] Krzywicki, "Kurs systematyczny
antropologii", op. cit, p. 83; "Anthropologie", op. cit., pp.
174, 606.
[393] Pittard, op, cit., pp. 413-415, 418.
[394] Ignacy Judt. Żydzi jako rasa fizyczna". Warsaw 1902.
[395] Pittard, op. cit, p. 44.
[396] The history of these discoveries is very significant for the history of science in general. Mendel published his discoveries himself in 1864. The fruit of patient experiment on the pea and bean during thirty years, they were utterly ignored. Only when thirty-six years later, in 1900, three scientists at the same time discovered the same thing did the "discovery" of Mendel follow, revealing that the newest discovery was superfluous and that a whole generation of scientists had been wasted.
[397] (Krzywicki, "Kurs systematyczny antropologii-, op. dt, pp. 14, 17, 165. "Ludy", op. dt, p. 302.
[398] G. Schwalbe. "Die Abstammung des
Menschen und die altesten Mcnschen-formen" in "Anthropologie**, op.
dt, p. 250.
[399] Adametz, "Hodowla zwicrzat domowych", op. dt., pp. 209, 210, 212, 229. 230.
[400] Ibid., p. 209.
[401] Edward Welle Strand. "People from under the North Pole. A
novel from the farthest North". Polish translation by Artur Gorski.
Warsaw, without date. P. 278.
[402] Lepecki. "W krainie jaguardw^. P. 113.
[403] Ibid., p. 120.
[404] Talko-Hryncewicz, op. cit, pp. 259, 299.
[405] Jan Czekanowski. "Wstep do bistorii Slowian.
Perspektywy antropologiczne, prehistoryczne i jezykoznawcze". Lw6w 1927.
P. 22.
[406] Czekanowski. "Zarys antropologii
Polski". Lw6w 1930. Pp. 337, 524Czekanowski, **Wstep do historii
-Slowian", op. cit., p. 276.
[407] Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op. cit.,
p. 144.
[408] Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii
Polski", op. cit; p. 90.
[409] Deniker, op. cut, pp. 63, 64, 356-359; Pittard, op. dt, pp. 39-42, 46, 56.
[410] Deniker. op. dt, pp. 359, 360; one and a half pages of large octavo
[411] Ibid., p. 408 and text 409-414.
[412] Czekanowski. "Zarys antropologii
Polski", op. cit, pp. 377, 361, 308, 62. 319, 320. 522, 524.
[413] Czekanowski, "Wstep do historii
Slowian", op. dt, pp. 251. 273, 276.
[414] Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op. cit, p;
139.
[415] Ibid., p. 142.
[416] Pittard, op. cit., pp. 232, 242.
[417] Fischer, "Spezielle
Anthropologie", op. cti., pp. 142, 143, 182.
[418] "Grundriss", op. cit., vol. II,
p. 183.
[419] Fischer, op. cit., p. 168.
[420] Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op.
cit, p. 143.
[421] ibid., pp. 67, 68, 149. Association of the Basque and Caucasian tongues has proved mistaken, since the latter have the plural form. And the ancient Iberians are now considered to have been an Hamitic people related to the Berbers.
[422] Pittard. op. cit., pp. 538, 540.
[423] Ibid., pp. 177, 322, 323, 359.
[424] Czekanowski, "Wstep do historii
Slowian", op. cit, p. 251.
[425] Fischer, bp. dt., pp. 164, 165.
[426] Pitard, p. 60.
[427] Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op. c»t, p.
123.
[428] Ibid., p. 100.
[429] Ibid., pp. 99. 100, 118.
[430] Ibid.. p. 122.
[431] Ibid., p. 78.
[432] Ibid., p. 82.
[433] Ibid., pp. 122, 142.
[434] Ibid.. p. 81.
[435] Klecki, op. cit, p. 166. 13
[436] Ibid., pp. 166, 178, 183-185. As for the Ruthenians. .they absorbed during the Middle Ages no small quantities of Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Bercndey and later, Tartar blood.
[437] Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii
Polski", op. cit., p. 432.
[438] Ibid., pp. 422-427.
[439] Czekanowski, "Wstep do h'storii
Slowian", op. cit., p. 22.
[440] Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii Polski**,
op. cit., p. 431.
[441] Czekanowski, "Wstep do history SBowian**,
op. cit., p. 17.
[442] Michal Sobeski. "Kwiat zioty. Gobineau
redivivus". Poznan 1925. P. 64.
[443] Rorian Znaniecki. "Wstep do socjologii". Poznan 1922. Pp. 92, 93.
[444] Gustave Le Bon. "Lois psychologiques de 1'evolution des peuples". Second edition, Paris 1895. Pp. 16, 48. In other words, not all peoples have succeeded in reaching the level of the historic nations.
[445] Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii
Polski", op. cit., p. 419.
[446] Czekanowski, "Wstep do historii
Slowian", op. cit., p. 32; Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii
Polski", op. cit., pp. 442, 444, 445.
[447] "Nauka Polska", V.
[448] Czekanowski, "Zarys antropologii
Polski", p. 441.
[449] Czekanowski, "Wstcp dp historii Stqwian", p. 446. No account has been taken of the social group of those investigated!
[450] Pittard mistakenly advances as a sign of militarism the fact that during the World War thousands of Swiss served voluntarily in the French amy; which was a result of their French national feeling.
[451] Le Bon, "Lois psychologiques de revolution des peuples", op. dt., p. 5.
[452] Ibid., p. 99;
[453] Ibid., p. 117.
[454] Ibid., p. 159.
[455] Pittard, op. cit., pp. 577, 579.
[456] Ibid., p. 505).
[457] ny <MU jamais laissc de traces de leur sang". Le Bon,, "Lois psychologiqucs", op. dt, p. 48.
[458] Pittard. op. cit., p. 433.
[459] Ossendowski, "Przez kraj ludzi, zwicrzat i bog6w", op. cit, pp. 70, 86. It is necessary to exercise great caution in speaking of "Arabs". In many countries of Asia and Africa, m Barbary for example, invading populations, ethnically non-Arab, are called "Arabs". Pp. 433, 438.
[460] TaIko-Hrynccwicz, op. cit., p. 296.
[461] Spengler in "Untergang des Abcndlandes" says that civilisation is "pflanzenhaft gebunden" to a certain territory. This is contrary to elementary . historical knowledge and incidentally to phytogeography which describes the wanderings of plants
[462] Michclct, op. dt., Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., pp. 420,
418; Lcnz, op. cit., in "Grundriss", op. cit., vol. II, p. 122; Mcyer, op. c:t, pp. 76, 79.
[463] M. A. Gobineau. "Essai sur Finegalite des races humaines". Paris 1853, second edition 1884. In the second edition vol. I, pp. 401, 501; vol. II, p. 426.
[464] Le Bon, "Lois psychologiques de 1'evolution des peuples", op. cit, pp 12, 117. 114 footnote, 124, 125. 118, 119, 120, 121-. 141, 160, 44. 45. On the question of the relation of Roman civilisation to the Barbarians he rightly appeals to Fustel de Coulanges. In paranthesis it may be said that Le Bon was not only the first to consider the ideology of equality nonsense, but he was also the first to proclaim that socialism will be the end of civilisation in the West, with communism as the most perfect form of socialism. Le Bon, op. cit, pp. 170, 172.
[465] Pittard, op. cit., p. 589.
[466] Lenz, op. cit., in "Grundriss", op. cit, vol. I, p. 297. (85) Pittard, op, cit, pp. 586, 588.
[467] Wundt, op. cit.. voL VIII. pp. 27, 171.
[468] Pittard, op. Cit., pp. 27, 171.
[469] Carl Ludwig Michelet "Die Geschichtc der Menschheit in ihrem Entwicklungsgange seit dcm Jahre 1775 bis auf die neuesten Zeiten. Der Entwicklungsgang der Wcltgeschichte in beiden Halbkugein". VoL I. Berlin, 1859. VoL II. 1860.
[470] The biography of this highly sympathetic man is absorbing. We have a first-rate study of his life and work by Michal Sobeski: "Kwiat zioty, Gobineau redivivus". (Poznan 1925). His chief literary work is "La Renaissance, Scenes historiques", one of the finest books of the nineteenth century, published in 1877, but w.lhout scientific commentaries. A complete edition came out as late as 1923 under the title "La fleur d'or". A Polish translation by Adolf Strzelecki was published (Warsaw 19081911) in "Ksiazki dia wszystkich". A number of his short stories with exotic backrounds have also been translated into Polish.
[471] He imagined that he was descended from Scandinavians (whom he regarded as the "purest Aryans"), and wrote the alleged history of his kin (as he supposed, scientifically): "Histoire d'Ottar-Jarl, pirate norvegien, conquerant du pays de Bray en Normandie et dc sa descendance" (1878). He believed himself to be the last descendant of th;s Ottar. The matter has been investigated recently and it has been discovered that his most remote ancestor, historically verifiable, was a stocking-maker in Bordeaux in the sixteenth century. It is curious that Montesquieu also regarded himself as a descendant of the Germanic conquerors — see'Sorel, "Montesquieu", Paris 1887, pages 48, 103.
[472] All in Chapter V, vol. I in Gobineau, "Essai sur 1'inegalite des races humaines". Two volumes, Paris 1853, second edition 1884.
[473] On this there are three characteristic passages in Gobineau,
"La Renaissance". Polish
translation by Adolf Strzelecki, Ksiazki dia wszystkicfa, Warsaw 1908-1911, pp.
52, 131, 195.
[474] "Origines ariaceac", 1883.
[475] Gustave Lc Bon. "Lois psychologiques", op. cit., livre III, chapitre I. Pp. 99. 117.
[476] Ibid.. pp. 27, 32, 33, 122.
[477] Chief works: "Les selections sodales". 1896; "Race et milieu social", 1909; "L'Aryen et son r61e social", 1889.
[478] E. J. Dillon. "The Peace Conference". London, Hutchinson
& Co., no date. The author quotes the Polish translation by M. L., second
edition, Warsaw 1921. P. 61.
[479] In "Archiv fur Anthropologie". Band 27.
[480] Pittard, op. cit., p. 29.
[481] Ibid., p. 16.
[482] The attractivncss of the theory of a racial hierarchy still assures it adherents: as may be seen from material in Professor Jan Czekanowski's "Zarys antropologii Polski" (1930), there are quite a number in Poland. They have discovered that Lapponoids are inferior in understanding (barely suited to the arts, but not to the natural sciences!); that Poles of Nordic type lead the way in ability (it is foreseen [fortunately] that this type will prevail among the intelligentsia of the future); and now they have advanced as far as "psychopathological and criminological differentiation" according to anthropological factors. "Zarys antropoloii Polski", pp. 441, 445, 446, 449, 464. 525, 526. The hierarchy of races is contained within this "in nuce"; but is it no premature generalisation based on material still of the slightest?
Professor Czekanowski himself writes for example: "We know that social strata differ in their racial composition" (ibid., 471), and that "in France the Revolution was an anthropological change of the ruling class" (ibid., 527). This thes^ derives from Vacher de Lapouge, who very. logically also considered desirable the introduction of castes. The theory of the racial character of social groups had been developed by Ludwig Gumplowicz.
[483] In "Avant-propos" to Pittard, op. cit., p. XVII.
[484] I should not like this chapter to be regarded as a claim on my part to skill in anthropology. I have studied it incompletely, to the .extent required by the problem of the relation of civilisation to race; 'I am an historian.
The same reservation applies to the next chapter.
[485] (1) Eugen Fischer in
"Antbropologie", op. dt., p. 180.
[486] (2) J. Vendryes. "Le langage. Introduction linguistique e 1'historire". Paris 1921. ('I/evolution de ITiumanite. Synthese collective, dir'gee par Henri Berr". vol. 3). Pp. 356, 366.
[487] (3) Obviously this is not binding on any one, and I shall adapt myself to the philologists' pronouncements as soon as they deal with the matter.
[488] (4) This also "salvis iuribus" of the philologists!
[489] (5) "Misje Katolickie", op. cit., 1926,
p. 16.
[490] (6) Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit, p. 161.
[491] (7) Ibid., p. 242.
[492] (8) Father Stephen Mazurek, S.J., in "Misje
Katolickie", 1924, pp. 77, 78.
[493] (9) Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op.
cit., p. 72.
[494] (10) Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., pp.
187, 188.
[495] (11) Graebner in "Anthropologie", op.
cit., p. 476.
[496] (12) Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit, p. 70.
[497] (13) Ibid., p. 72.
[498] ^14) Majewski, op. cit, vol. I,'p. 49.
[499] (15) Ibid.
[500] (16) Rostafinski. op. cit, pp. 139, 1SI.
[501] (17) Bystron, op. cit, pp. 132-134, 232.
[502] (18) Szysrio, op. cit, p. 223 and in many other places.
[503] (19) Lepccki. *'W krainic jaguar6w", op.
cit, p. 121.
[504] (20) Vendryes, op. dt, p. 334.
[505] (21) Le Bon, "Lois psycholog;ques", op.
cit., p. 73.
[506] 22) Marcinowska, op. cit., pp. 182, 183.
[507] (23) "Misje Katolickie", 1924, pp. 77,
78.
[508] (24) Ibid., 1926, p. 26. (A Polish Jesuit Mission works in Rbodesia. — The Editors.)
[509] (25) Ibid., 1926, pp. X, 476.
[510] (26) Ibid., 1925. pp. X, 479.
[511] (27) Ibid., 1925, pp. V, 239.
[512] (28) Ibid., 1926, pp. VII, VIII, 378.
[513] (29) Ibid.. 1927, pp. III. 142.
[514] (30) Ibid., 1926, pp. XI, 510.
[515] (31) Ibid., p. 187.
[516] (32) Ibid., 1926, pp. VII-VIII, 381-382.
[517] (33) Ibid., p. 382.
[518] (34) Ibid., 1926. p. 249 and 251.
[519] <35) Ibid., 1925, pp. V, 240.
[520] (36) Ibid., 1927, pp. IV, 187, 188.
[521] (37) The author has forgotten Polabian. (The editors.)
[522] (38) "Misje Katolickie", 1927, p. IV,
p. 151.
[523] (39) Ibid., 1925, p. 504.
[524] (40) "Ksiega o Slasku, wydana z okazji jubileuszu 35-letniego istnienia «Znicza»", pod redakcja Alojzego Targa. Cieszyn 1929. P. 61. Jcrzy BandrowskL "Zolojka, powiesc z polskicgo morza". Poznari, 1929. P. 320. Wanda Milaszewska. "Zatrzymany zegar". Poznad 1926. P 24. Compare what was said on the origins of language in Chapter Two, IV.
[525] (41) Pittard, op. cit., p. 399.
[526] (42) Czekanowski. "Rasy i ludy", op.
cit., p. 106.
[527] (43) Le Bon, "Lois psychologiques", op. cit, p. 72.
[528] (44) Vendryes, op. cit, pp. 279, 280.
[529] <45) Examples of sound "transcription" from Polish and
French into Japanese: Paul Claudel is written in Japanese: Po-ru Ku-ro-de-ru;. Stanislaw Wyspianski Su-ta-ni-su-ra-u-su
U-i-su-pi-^n'-su-kir-Poland in. Japanese is Porando. Stefan Lubienski. "Miedzy ^Wschodem a
Zachodem. Japonia na straty Azji. Dusza mistyczna Nipponu". Cracow 1927. Pp.
139, 140.
[530] (46) "Misje katolick:e", 1924, p. 99
Lubienski, op. cit. p. 137. Sierbszewski,. "Dwanascie lat", op. cit,
p. 361.
[531] (47) Krzywicki, "Ludy". op. cit., p.
109.
[532] (48) Vendryes, op. cit., p. 91.
[533] (49) Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p
153.
[534] (50) Ibid., p. 153.
[535] (51) Ibid.
[536] (52) Misjc Katolickie, 1924, p. 67.
[537] (53) Szelągowski, op. cit., p. 55.
[538] (54) Majewski, op. cit, vol. IV, pp 201, 202. Majewski still counted the Eskimo language among
those employing the incorporativc (America) system. Now it is put to the stock
of Asiatic languages. See
Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op. cit., p. 102.
[539] 55) And surely it was the height of learned error to consider this an expression of matriarchy! Sec Father Tonelli, op. cit., p. 200.
[540] (56) Vendryes, op. cit, p. 302.
[541] (57) Talko-Hrynccwicz, op. cit, p. 120.
[542] (58) "Misje Katolickie", 1926, p. 68.
[543] (59) Lowell, op. cit., pp. 47, 56, 59.
[544] (60) Ibid, p. 57.
[545] (61) Ibid., p. 58.
[546] (62) Vendryes, op. cit., pp. 108, 112. 113.
[547] (63) Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op.
cit, p. 102.
[548] (64) Now this language is found to be related to the Sudanese
group. Iberian belonged to the Hamitic languages. Czekanowski, "Wstep do historii
Slowian". op. cit., p. 64.
[549] (65) Vendryes, op. cit., pp. 205, 60, 333.
[550] (66) Ibid., p. 205. Vendryes does not notice the contradiction with what he had said on page 60 — that we thus have to do with rule and exception.
[551] (67) Ibid., p. 334.
[552] (68) Ibid., p. 342.
[553] (69) "Misjc Katolickie", 1924, p. 282;
1925, p. 393; Szyszlo, op. cit., II, p. 221.
[554] (70) 'The Caingangs of Eastern Paraguay have their own language,
resembling the speech of the Guaranis, with whom they can, however, only talk
with difficulty because of the different accent". Fularski, op. cit, p. 111.
[555] (71) Majewski, op. cit, vol. IV, p. 202.
[556] (72) Graebner, op. cit., p. 452: Fischer, op. cit, p. 186.
[557] (73) Pischer, op. cit, says that they have lost the'r language.
[558] (74) Father Kosibowicz SJ., op. cit, p. 76;
Czekanowski, "Rasy i ludy", op. cit, p. 80.
[559] (75) Lowell, op. cit, pp. 58, 59.
[560] (76) Melcer-Rutkowska, op. cit., p. 19.
[561] <77) Sieroszewski, "Korea", op. cit., pp. 142, 275. 320, note.
[562] (78) Ku-Hung-Ming, op. cit., p. 125.
[563] (79) Krzywicki, "Ludy", op. cit., p.
162.
[564] (80) Lubieriski, op. cit., pp. 131, 137, and interesting writing tables. The author, without linguistic knowledge, often expresses himself inaccurately, and provides more than one false, explanation — nevertheless much may be learned from it.
[565] (81) "Misje Katolickie", 1926. p. 68.
[566] (82) Lc Bon, "Lois psychologiques", op. cit., p. 139.
[567] (83) Ibid., p. 138.
[568] (84) "Is our language philosophical?" in "Haliczanin", 1830.
[569] (85) Karol Prycz. "W srodku swiata". (In "Rzeczpospolita", Warsaw, first week of July 1921).
[570] (86) Jon Svenson. "Z dalekiej potnocnej wyspy". Cracow 1924. P. 138.
[571] (87) E. Chalupny. "Narodni povaha ceska". Prague 1907.
[572] (88) Barth, op. cit., p. 567.
[573] (89) Ibid, pp. 567, 568.
[574] (90) Graebner, op. cit, p. 462.
[575] (91) Moszynski, op. cit, vol. I, in Preface IV.
[576] (92) Lowell, op. cit., pp. 56-62, a number of attractive observations.
[577] (93) "Misje Katolickie" 1925. p. 538.
[578] (94) In Vendryes, op. cit., in Preface XV.
[579] (95) T. W. Rhys-Davids. "Buddhism". The author quotes the Polish translation by St. F. Michalski. Warsaw 1912, p. 89.
[580] (96) By Le Bon, "Lois psychologiques", op. cit., p. 74.
[581] (97) Krzywicki, "Ludy", qp. cit, p.
153.
[582] (98) Vendryes, op. ct., pp. 277-289.
[583] (99) See "Roznolitość cywilizacyjna
SIowianszczyzny" (by Koneczny) ' in "Przeglad Powszechny", 1926.
[584] (100) In Poland Jews always give two native languages: Hebrew (modern '•',' Hebrew) and Yiddish, and the authorities also regard both as Jewish native languages. Hence the quotation'marks; accordine to-Latin ideas a man can only have one native language.
[585] (101) Majewski, vol. IV, pp. 201, 203.
[586] The original sketch of this chapter appeared in "Ateneum Kaplanskie" (The Clergy Athenaeum) in 1926.
[587] So for example Meyer, op. cit., pp. 105, 112.
[588] Melcer-Rutkowska, op. cit., p. 28 (in 1924),
-Misje Katolickie" 1925, pp. 469, 470.
[589] Father Jozef Kruszynski. "Studia nad porownawcza historia relig;]". Poznan, 1926, pp. 194, 195. Recent information points to strong influence of the religion of F.rc on other contemporary religions, including Judaism, a point on which there is much learned literature. These views are opposed by Eduard Meyer. At the beginning of our era, when Buddhism was the ruling religion in North-West India, the local Kings Huwishka and Kan'shka nevertheless remained fire-worshippers. Recent research has shown that Gotama also had among his pupils worshippers of the holy fire Agna. See Rhys-Davids, pp. 55, 234. There are references here and there to the Parsecs in the works of travellers, but of such a kind (quantitatively and qualitatively) that the sole result is curiosity. In Polish valuable information about the Parsecs of Bombay is provided from personal observation in Marcinkowska, op. cit., pp. 40-58.
[590] Buckle, op. cit., vol. I, p. 215.
[591] Fustel de Coulanges. "La dte antique. Etude sur le culte, le droit, les institutions de la Grecc et de Rome". 13th edition, 1890, p. 148.
[592] Andre, op. dt, Vol. I, p. 1.
[593] Le Bon, "Lois psychologiques", op. dt., p. 144.
[594] Amos, 80, v. 14. (Another quotation, MiA, pp. 31, 43, 44, 59, 73, 75, 82, which the translators cannot trace.)
[595] Jewish philosophy of the divine attributes served as a bridge between India and Orthodoxy. It would be to depart too far from our theme to discuss this here. On Jewish influences on Orthodoxy, see "Dzieje Rosji" (History of Russia, by Koneczny), vol. I and II.
[596] I have not in general provided references in this section, because I expect to publish shortly a full-scale work on Jewish civilisation.
[597] Le Bon, "Les civilisations de 1'Inde", op. cit., p. 274.
[598] Ibid, p. 605.
[599] Ibid, pp. 68, 69.
[600] Ibid., p. 606.
[601] Marcinkowska, op. cit, p. 159.
[602] Le Bon, "Les civilisations de I'lnde", op. cit, p. 622.
[603] Ibid., p. 638.
[604] Ibid., p. 638.
[605] Ibid., p. 640.
[606] Ibid., p. 642.
[607] Ibid., p. 248.
[608] Ibid., p. 608; Marcinkowska, op. cit, p. 229.
[609] Marcinkowska, "Wartotei tw6rczc myili religijnej polskiej". Warsaw 1919. Pp. 65, 66.
[610] The teaching of Buddha according to Rhys-Davids, op. dL
[611] Le Bon, "Les civilisation de 1'Inde", op. cit.
[612] Rhys-Davids, op. cit, Le Bon, "Les civilisations de FInde", op. cit., Lubicrisk.;, op. cit., Marcinkowska, "W upalnym scrcu Wschodu", op. cit., C. Gjellerup, "The Pilgrim Kamanita", Indian novel, Polish translation by F. Mirandola, Poznan 1923, Lafcadio Hearn, "The Red Wedding and Other Stories", Polish transl. from the English by. J. Bandrowski, Warsaw 1925; Lafcadio Hearn, "Le Japon inconnu" ("Esquisses psychologiques") traduit de 1'anglais par Mme Leon Raynal, Paris 1901; Sieroszewski, "Korea^bp. cit.; Sieroszewski, "Dalaj Lama", op. cit.
[613] Andre, op. cit., pp. 73-75, 96; Melcer Rutkowska,
op. cit., p. 17:"Misje Katolickie", 1925, p. 320.
[614] Andre, op. cit, voL I, pp. 47-55.
[615] Ibid., vol. I, pp. 57-65; Mieczyslaw Schmidt. "On His Majesty's Service. Naokolo Afganistanu". Warsaw 1925. P. 181.
[616] Rev. Fr. J6zef Krzyszkowski, S.J., 'Tercjarstwo muzuhnanskie". "Misje Katolickie", March 1927; Andre, op. cit, vol. II, p. 31.
[617] Andre, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 83-86 and 90-92.
[618] Jan Rostafinski. "Autem i arba przez
Anatolie". Warsaw 1927. P. 63.
[619] Bystron, op. dt., p. 122.
[620] Zygmunt Stcfaoski. "Stosunki agrame w BoSni i Hercegowinie". In "Swiat SIowianski". April 1905.
[621] Andre, op. c;t., vol. I, p. 80.
[622] Ibid., vol. I, p. 120.
[623] Ibid.. vol. I, p. 32, vol. II, pp. 229-235.
[624] For example the incursion of the Arab ethnic element into North Africa occured only in the eleventh century.
[625] Psichiari, op. cit. pp. 44, 47.
[626] Bystron, op. cit, pp. 22. 134, 213, 236, 239.
[627] Andre. op. dt.. vol. II,
pp. 173-175; "Misje Katolickie" 1926, p. 510.
[628] In Poland in 1241. (Translator).
[629] Leon Cahun. "Introduction a 1'histoirc de 1'Asie. Turcs ct Mongols des engines a 1405". Paris 1896. Andre, op. dt., voL I, p. 169; my "Dzieje Rosji" ("History of Russia"), vol. I.
[630] Associations going back to Gnosticism and Manichacism, see Bogumil
Jasinowski. "Wschodnic
chrzcscijanstwo a Rosja na tie rozbioru pierwiastkdw cywilizacyjnych Wschodu a
Zachodu". Wilno 1933.
[631] "Dzieje Rosji" ("History of
Russia" by Koneczny), vol. I, and Rev. Fr. Marcin Czerminski, "Na
g6rze Athos, wsrod mniszej republiki. Tekst objasniony 57 rycinami i mapa
Athosu". Cracow 1908.
[632] "Bizantynizm niemiecki" ("German
Byzantinism" by Koneczny) in "Przeglad Powszedmy", 1927.
[633] A schysm in the Russian Church in the 17th century which created a
group of sects called Raskolniki, or Old-Believers. (Translators).
[634] "Dzieje Rosji od najdawniejszych do
najnowszych czasow". (Shortened edition of a
History of Russia, by Koneczny). Warsaw
1921.
[635] "Rzekome syntezy religijnc"
("So-called religious syntheses", by Koneczny) in "Przegląd
Powszechny", 1930.
[636] "Misjc Katolickie". 1925, p. 504.
[637] "Misje Katolickie", 1927, p. 187.
[638] "Misje Katolickie”, 1927, pp. 52, 54, 55.
[639] „Misje Katolickie", 1927, pp. 6-8.
[640] C. Edward Huron. "Zasady filozofii. 24 Tezy tomistyczne. TransL-by— the Rev. Dr. Alexander Żychlinski. Poznan 1925. In the translator's preface.
[641] "Dzieje Rosji" ("History of Russia" by Koncczny), vol. I, pp. 109, 110.
[642] The continuity of certain abstractions from Gnosticism and Manichacism to Dostoyevsky is affirmed by Jasinowski, op. dt
[643] Tadeusz Zielinski. "La Sybille. Trois essais sur la religion antique et Ie christianismc". Paris 1924.
[644] "Dziejc Rosji" ("History of
Russia" by Koneczny), voL L Cf. "Rzekome syntezy religijne" (by
Koneczny, op. dt).
[645] Wladyslaw Kotwicz. "0 chronologii mongolskicj". "Rocznik OrlentaUstyczny", vol. IV. Separate issue Lwdw 1928, pp. 26, 44.
[646] Father Beyzym, "Letters", op. cit, p. 94
[647] Father Beyzym, "Letters", op. cit., p. 59.
[648] T. E. Lawrence. "Revolt in the Desert". London, Jonathan Cape, 1927, p. 71. The author quotes the Polish translation by Janina Sujkowska, Warsaw 1929, p. 80.
[649] Le Bon. "Les civilisations de 1'Inde", op. dt., pp. 188, 189.
[650] Sten Bergman. "Na nartach i sankach przez Kamczatke". Transl. by Mirandola, Poznan 1929. P. 16.
[651] Ku-Hung-Ming, op. cit, p. 149.
[652] Zdzislaw Debicki. "Z p61nocy i poludnia:
Finlandia, Wlochy, Szwecja, Rumunia, Turcja". Warsaw 1926. P. 204.
[653] M. B. Lcpecki. "Oceanem, rzeka, l^dem. Przygody z podroiy po Argentynie". Warsaw 1929. P. 183.
[654] Berr in Vendryes, op. cit. Preface XXVI.
[655] Poehlmann, op. cit.
[656] Rev. Fr. Marian MorawskL SJ. "Podstawy etyki
i prawa". Third edition, Cracow 1908. P. 186.
[657] Compare "Bizantynizm niemiecki"
("German Byzantinism" by Koneczny) in "Przeglad
Powszechny", October 1927.
[658] More fully in "Etyka i cywilizacja" ("Ethics and civilisation" by Koncczny) in "Przeglad Powszechny". February-March 1931.
[659] More fully in "Bizaritynizm nienuecki** ("German Byzantinian" by Koneczny) in "Przeglad Powszechny". October 1927.
[660] Obviously it is only in such a "description" that it will
appear whether my method is the right one. Aware of this, I did not prepare the
present work for printing until I had myself checked, its content in a detailed
investigation: I have now almost completed descriptions of the Jewish and
Byzantine civilizations. Having convinced myself that the method works, this
treatise appears in print first, as a
foundation. (Koncczny's "Byzantine Civilisation" and "Jewish
Civilization", works larger than the present volume, have in fact been
finally completed only after the 1939/45 war. They have not been printed yet
and are known to a limited circle of friends only in typcscriptcd copies. Transl).
[661] Blazej Pawlowicz. "Kilka rys6w z zycia ludu w Zaiasowcj". ("Materialy antropologiczno-archeologiczne i etnograficzne, wydawane staraniem Komisji antropologicznej Akadem i Umiejetno^ci". Vol. I, Cracow 1916. ^ Part II, "Dzial etnograficzny", pp. 229-265). On survivals of the lunar t year among Yugrians, Esthonians and Slavs, on intercalation and extracaladon, "marczyk", "podmarczyk" and "hruden", see Moszynski, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 136-169.
[662] Goetel, op. cit., p. 251.
[663] Graebner in his "Ethnologic"
came near this law when he wrote: "Aber der weitaus stfirkere
Kulturausgleich liegt bei den cinander naher stehenden hoheren Kulturen". "Anthropologie", op. cit. p. 578.
[664] See Chapter I
[665] "Polskie Logos i Ethos" ("The Polish Logos and Ethos** by Koneczny), Poznad 1921, vol. I, p. 28. (Inaugural lecture in, the University of Wilno.)
[666] "Polska w kulturze powszcchnej. Dado zbiorowc pod redakcja Feliksa Konecznego". ("Poland in Universal Culture". Symposium under the editorship of Feliks Koneczny). Two vols., Cracow 1917. (With Preface by Frandszek Stcfczyk, through whose efforts the work appeared).
[667] Pastel de Couhnges. "Histoirc des institutions politiques de 1'ancicnne France", fifth edition. See vol. I, Preface pp. XII and XIII.
[668] Buckle, op. dt, vol. I, p. 381.