Part 4

The sentiment of _modesty_ is developed by man in society, and he alone among animals possesses it. Whatever has been said to the contrary, it is never absent. Frequently, indeed, its manifestation is not according to our usages, and is thus overlooked. Women with us expose their faces, which a Moorish lady would think most indelicate. The Bedawin women consider it immodest to have the back of the head uncovered; the Siamese think nothing of displaying nude limbs, but on no account would show the uncovered sole of the foot. In certain African courts, the men wear long robes while the women appear nude. The necessary functions of the body are everywhere veiled by retirement, and in the most savage tribes, a regard for decency is constantly noted.

The second chief associative principle is

_2. Language._

Unlike the elements of affection which I have been tracing, language is not a legacy from a brute ancestor. It is the peculiar property of the genus Man, and no tribe has ever been known without a developed grammatical articulate speech, with abundance of expressions for all its ideas. The stories of savages so rude that they were forced to eke out their words with gestures, and could not make themselves intelligible in the dark, are fables. The languages of the most barbarous communities are always ample in forms, and often surprisingly flexible, rich and sonorous.

We must indeed suppose a time when the speech of primeval man had a feeble, imperfect beginning. “The origin of language” has been a favorite theme for philologists to speculate about, with sparse fruit for their readers. We can, indeed, picture to ourselves something like what it must have been in its very early stages, by studying a number of very simple languages, and noting what parts of the grammar and dictionary they dispense with. Following this plan, I once undertook to show what might have been the language of man far back in palæolithic times. It probably had no “parts of speech,” such as nouns, pronouns, prepositions or adjectives; it had no gender, number nor case, no numerals and no conjugations. The different sounds, vowels or consonants, conveyed specific significations, and each phrase was summed up in a single word.[30]

In some such way language began. But remember that this is quite another question from the origin of _languages_, or, to use the proper term, of _linguistic stocks_. They are very numerous, and many of comparatively late birth. Those convolutions of the brain which preside over speech once developed, man did not have to repeat his long and toilsome task of acquiring linguistic facility. Children are always originating new words and expressions, and if two or three infants are left much together, they will soon have a tongue of their own, unlike anything they hear around them. Numerous examples of this character have been collected by Horatio Hale, and upon them he has based an entirely satisfactory theory of the source of that multiplicity of languages which we find in various parts of the globe.[31] In the unstable life of barbarous epochs, very young children were often left without parents or protectors, or wandered off and were lost. Most of them doubtless perished, but those who survived developed a tongue of their own, nearly all whose radicals would be totally different from those of the language of their parents. Thus in early times numerous dialects, numerous independent tongues, came to be spoken within limited areas by the same ethnic stock.

It is a common error to suppose that there was once but one or a few languages, from which all others have been derived. The reverse is the case. Within the historic period, the number of languages has been steadily diminishing. We know of scores which have become extinct, as many American tongues; others, like the Celtic, are in plain process of disappearance. We can almost predict the time when the work and the thought of the world will be carried on in less than half a dozen tongues, if indeed that many survive as really active.

If we take a comprehensive survey of the grammatical structure of all known tongues, we are cheered by the discovery that they can be divided into a few great classes or groups. The similarities of each group are not in words or sounds, but in the plan of “expressing the proposition,” or placing words together in a phrase to convey an idea.

This may be accomplished in one of four ways:

1. By _isolation_. The words representing the parts of the phrase may be ranged one after another without any change. This is the case in the Chinese and the languages of Farther India.

2. By _agglutination_. The principal word in the phrase may have added to it or placed before it a number of syllables expressing the relations to it of the other ideas. Most African and North Asian tongues are agglutinative.

3. By _incorporation_. The accessory words are either inserted within the verbal members of the sentence, or attached to it in abbreviated forms, so that the phrase has the appearance of one word. Most American languages belong to this type.

4. By _inflection_. Each word of the sentence indicates by its own form its relation to the main proposition. All Aryan and Semitic idioms are more or less inflected.

These distinctions have great ethnographic interest. They almost deserve to be called racial traits. Thus, the inflected languages belonged originally solely to the European race; the isolating languages are still confined wholly to the Sinitic branch of the Asian race; the incorporative languages are found nowhere of such pure type and so numerous as in the American race; while the agglutinative type is that alone which is found in independent examples in every race.

_Scheme of Languages._

1. Isolating { Chinese, Thibetan, Sifan, Tai. { Siamese, Annamite, Burmese, Assamese.

{ 1. By reduplication and { Polynesian, Papuan, prefixes { Bantu. 2. Agglutinative { Sibiric tongues, (Ural-altaic), { 2. By suffixes { Basque. { Japanese, Korean, Dravidian.

{ 1. With synthetic tendency { Algonkin, Nahuatl. { Quichua, Guarani. 3. Incorporative { 2. With analytic tendency. { Otomi, Maya, Sahaptin.

{ 1. By annexing grammatical elements. Egyptian. 4. Inflectional { 2. By inner changes of stem. Libyan, Semitic. { 3. By addition of suffixes. Aryac tongues.

The principles on which languages should be compared are frequently misunderstood, and this is one of the reasons why the value of linguistics to ethnography has so often been underrated.

The first rule which should be observed is to _rank grammatical structure far above verbal coincidences_. The neglect of this rule will condemn any effort at comparison. For example, there have been writers who have sought to derive the Polynesian, an agglutinative, from the Sanscrit, an inflected tongue; or an American from a Semitic stock. Such attempts reveal an ignorance of the nature of language.

A second rule is that in tracing the etymology of words, the _phonetic laws of the special group to which they belong_ must be followed. This is an even more frequent source of error than the former. Writers of high reputation will trace variations in African or American or Semitic names by the phonetic laws of the Aryac dialects--an absurd error, as the phonetic changes are not at all the same in different linguistic stocks.

Yet a third rule is _to appraise correctly the value of verbal identities_. Generally, it is placed too high. All developed tongues include many “loan words,” borrowed from a variety of sources. They are not _prima facie_ evidence of ethnic relation; they have frequently been transmitted through other nations, as is the case with thousands of English words.

An absolute verbal identity is always suspicious; or rather it is of _no_ ethnic value. There must be a series of words in the languages compared of the same or similar meanings, but whose forms have been altered by the phonetic laws peculiar to the group, for such lists of words to merit the attention of a scientific linguist.

The question how far languages can be accepted as indicating the relationships of peoples has been a bone of contention. One principle we may lay down, with unimportant exceptions--_No nation has ever willingly adopted a foreign tongue._ Whenever such a change has taken place, it has been under stress of sovereignty, _vi coactum_, as the lawyers say. Hence in the savage state, where prolonged domination of one tribe by another rarely occurs, language is an excellent ethnic guide, as in America and ancient Europe.

Another principle is that in a conflict of tongues, as after conquest, _that tongue prevails which belongs to the more cultured people_, whether this be conqueror or conquered. This is well illustrated by the survival of the Romance languages after the inroads of the Teutonic hordes at the Fall of the Western Empire.

A third maxim in linguistic ethnography is that _mixture of languages, especially in grammatical structure, indicates mixture of blood_. When, for instance, we find the Maltese a dialect partly Arabic, partly Romance, we may correctly infer that the people of the island are descended from both these stocks. This holds good even of loan words, when they are numerous; for though such have no influence on the grammatical structure of a tongue, they testify to some relations between nations, which we may be sure corresponded to others of a sexual nature.

The “American citizens of African descent” speak English only; and though they have been in contact with the white race for but three or four generations, the majority of those now living are related to it by blood, that is, are mulattoes.

The _mental aptitude_ of a nation is closely dependent on the type of its idiom. The mind is profoundly influenced by its current modes of vocal expression. When the form of the phrase is such that each idea is kept clear and apart, as it is in nature, and yet its relations to other ideas in the phrase and the sentence are properly indicated by the grammatical construction, the intellect is stimulated by wider variety in images and a nicer precision in their outlines and relations. This is the case in the highest degree with the languages of inflection, and it is no mere coincidence that those peoples who have ever borne the banner in the van of civilization have always spoken inflected tongues. The world will be better off when all others are extinguished, and it is only in deep ignorance of linguistic ethnography that such a language as _Volapük_--agglutinative in type--could have been offered for adoption as a world-language.

I have said that alone of all animals, man has articulate speech; I now add that also alone of all animals, he is capable of

_3. Religion._

Not only is he capable of it; he has never been known to be devoid of it. All statements that tribes have been discovered without any kind of religion are erroneous. Not one of them has borne the test of close investigation.[32] The usual mistake has been to suppose that this or that belief, this or that moral observance, constitutes religion. In fact, there are plenty of immoral religions, and some which are atheistic. The notion of a God or gods is not essential to religion; for that matter, some of the most advanced religious teachers assert that such a notion is incompatible with the highest religion. Religion is simply the recognition of the Unknown as a controlling element in the destiny of man and the world about him. This we shall find in the cult of every nation, and in the heart of every man.

Some nations identified this unknown controlling power with one real or supposed existence, some with another. Those in whom the family sentiment was well developed believed themselves still under the control of their deceased parents, giving rise to “ancestral worship;” more frequently the change from light to darkness, day to night, impressed the children of nature, and led to light and sun worship; in some localities the terrific force displayed in the cyclone or the thunder-storm seemed the mightiest revelation of the Unknown, and we have the Lightning and Storm Myths; elsewhere, any odd or strange object, any unexplained motion, was attributed to the divine, the _super_-natural. The last mentioned mental state gave rise to those low cults called “fetichism” and “animism,” while the former are supposed to be somewhat higher and are distinguished as “polytheisms.” In all of them, the prevailing sentiment is fear of the Unknown; the spirit of worship is propitiatory, the gods being regarded as jealous and inclined to malevolence; the cult is of the nature of sorcery, certain formulas, rites and sacrifices being held to placate or neutralize the ill-will or bad temper of the divinities. In its lowest forms this is called “shamanism;” in its highest, it is seen in all dogmatic religions.

In early conditions, each tribe has its own gods, which are not supposed to be superior, except in force, to the gods of neighboring tribes. No attempt is made to extend their worship beyond the tribe, and in their images they are liable to be captured, as are their votaries. Special prisons for such captive gods were constructed in ancient Rome and Cuzco.

These “tribal religions” prevailed everywhere in early historic times. The religion of the ancient Israelites, such as we find it portrayed in the Pentateuch, was of this character. In later days, profoundly religious minds of philosophic cast perceived that tribal cults do not satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the religious sentiment. The conceptions of the highest truths must be universal conceptions, and in obedience to this the Universal or World-religions were formed.

The earliest of these was preached by Sakya Muni, Prince of Kapilavastu, in India, about 500 B. C. It is known as Buddhism, and has now the largest number of believers of any one faith. The second was that taught by Christ, and the third is Islam, introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century. It is noteworthy that all these world-religions were framed by members of the white race. None has been devised by members of the other races, for the doctrines advanced by Confutse and Laotse in China are philosophic systems rather than religions.

The three World-religions named have rapidly extinguished the various tribal religions, and it is easy to foresee that in a few generations they will virtually embrace the religious sentiments of all mankind. They are all three on the increase, Christianity the most rapidly by the extension of the nations adhering to it, but Mohammedanism can claim in the present century the greater number of proselytes, its fields being in Central Asia, India, and Central Africa.

In the ethnographic study of religions for the purpose of estimating their influence on the life and character of nations, we must take notice especially of three points: 1. The ethical contents of a faith; 2. The philosophic “theory of things” on which it is based (cosmogony, theosophy, etc.), and 3. Its power over the emotions, as upon this rests its practical potency.

As currently taught, no one of the three world-religions named is fully adequate on all these points. The cosmogony of Christianity is a series of Assyrian and Hebrew myths contradicted by modern science, and its ethical purity has been often sullied by efforts to place faith in dogmas above the law of conscience. Mohammedanism, a more genuine monotheism than Christianity, in some respects higher in practical morality (temperance, charity, equality), and certainly superior in power over the emotions, is weak in its doctrine of fatalism and in its degradation of woman. Buddhism is tainted by a profound distrust of the value of the individual life, by a false theory of the universe, and by its borrowed doctrine of metempsychosis; but rises high in its appeals to the sense of justice and right within the mind.

A religion tends to elevate its votaries in the proportion that it withdraws their minds from merely material aims, and sets before them stimulating ideals. This is the distinction between “material” and “ideal” cults. Where the rites are directed mainly to conjuration, where the prayers are for good luck in life, where the myths are mere stories of exaggerated human shapes, there the faith is material. Such were all the religions of the African blacks and of the Eastern and Northern Asiatic tribes. They have never developed any thing higher. Among the whites, however, and in a less degree among the American Indians, there were mythical ideal figures, ranked among the gods, who embodied grand ideal conceptions of the possible perfectibility of man, and served as examples and models for the religious sentiment.[33]

The associative influence of a religion, whether tribal or universal in theory, is singularly powerful. The Mohammedan who looks toward Mecca, the Christian who turns toward Rome, feels a like bond of sympathy with his fellow worshippers of every race and color, as did the Israelite who wended his way to Jerusalem, or the Nahuatl who travelled to the sacred city of Cholula. The pilgrimages, the Crusades, the ecclesiastical Councils of past ages, have collected nations together under the control of ideas stronger than any which practical life can offer.

Other bonds of union are those derived from the practice of

_4. The Arts of Life._

Unquestionably the earliest of these to exert such an influence was the construction of a shelter, in other words _architecture_. We know that even glacial man had learned enough to make himself a house, though it was probably inferior to that of the muskrat. In early conditions one structure sheltered several families. Such are called “communal houses,” and some ethnologists have argued that they are well nigh universal down to a very late day in the evolution of domestic architecture. The temple, the fortified refuge, the city with its grouped homes shut in by a common wall of defence--all these illustrate how architecture has ever tended to bring men together, and strengthen their instincts of association.

Later in time but wider in its influence in the same direction was the growth of _agriculture_. This art completely revolutionized the habits of life, and rendered possible the advent of civilization. The tribe, dependent on hunting and fishing or on natural products for a livelihood, is necessarily migratory and separative in its habits. The tillage of the ground with equal necessity demands a stable residence and a centralization of individuals. The areas of primitive culture, the sites of the earliest cities, were always in situations favorable to agricultural pursuits.

Along with the cultivation of food-plants went hand-in-hand the domestication of animals. The horse was trained independently in both Europe and Asia, some species of the dog in all continents, the ox for draft and the cow for milk principally in Asia, and the camel for the deserts of Arabia and Africa. These humble aids brought together distant tribes, and assimilated their characters.

The prosecution of the various special arts, as pottery, metal work, textile-fabrics, etc., led to the formation of guilds and the association of workers in particular localities favorable to obtaining and utilizing the raw products. Each such conquest of the inventive faculties drew men into closer bonds of harmonious labor, and opened for them new avenues of joint industry. The pre-historic past of the race is measured by archæologists by the rise and extension of new arts, not because of themselves, but because they are indicative of improved social conditions, greater aggregations of men, more potent actions in history. The fine arts, in crowning the useful arts with the iridescent glory of the ideal, impart to the handiwork of men that universality of motive which unites all into one brotherhood.

The second class of psychic traits are:

II. THE DISPERSIVE ELEMENTS.

These have been of the utmost moment in the history of the species, and a controlling factor in the records of every people. They are derived from two quite different impulses in human nature; the one, a natural propensity to roam, the other, a predisposition to contest.

Both have been favored by the ability of the species to adapt itself to its surroundings, far surpassing that of any other animal. There is no zone and no altitude offering the necessary food supplies that man does not inhabit. The cat, with its traditional “nine lives,” perishes in the upper Andes, where men live in populous cities. No one breed of dogs can follow man to all latitudes. His powers of locomotion are equally surprising. He can walk the swift horse to death, and his steady and tireless gait will in the long-run leave every competitor behind. An Indian will track a deer for days and capture it through its utter fatigue. A Tebu thinks little of passing three days under the sun of the Sahara without drinking. Such powers as these endow man with the highest migratory faculties of any animal, and give rise to or have been developed from

_1. The Migratory Instincts._

Many species of animals, especially birds, change their habitat with the seasons, the object usually being to obtain a better food supply. So do most hunting and fishing tribes, and for the same reason. Often these periodical journeys extend hundred of miles and embrace the whole tribe.

This must also have been the case with primeval man when he occupied the world in “palæolithic” time. His home was along the shores of seas and the banks of streams. Up and down these natural highways he pursued his wanderings, until he had extended his roamings over most of the habitable land.

What prompted him and all savage tribes is not always the search for food. The desire for a more genial climate, the pressure of foes, and often mere causeless restlessness, act as motive forces in the movements of an unstable population. Certain peoples, as the Gypsies, seem endowed with an hereditary instinct for vagabondage. The nomadic hordes of the Asiatic steppes and the wastes of the Sahara transmit a restlessness to their descendants which in itself is an obstacle to a sedentary life.

Such vagrant tribes became the colporteurs and commercial travellers of early society. They invented means or transportation, and conveyed the products of one region to another. Only of late have we learned to appreciate the wide extent of pre-historic commerce. Long before Abraham settled in Ur of the Chaldees (say 2000 B. C.), a well-travelled commercial road stretched from the cities of Mesopotamia, through Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules, and thence into Europe.[34] When Hendrick Hudson sailed into the bay of New York, the commercial relations of the tribes who lived on its shores had already extended to the coast of the Pacific.[35]

These lines of early traffic were also the lines of the migrations of nations. They were fixed by the physical geography of regions, and have rightly attracted the careful attention of ethnographers. Along them, nation has blended into nation, race fused with race. The conviction that early man was not sedentary, but mobile, by nature a migratory species, wandering widely over the face of the earth, is one which has been brought home to the ethnologist by the science of prehistoric archæology, and it is full of significance.

_2. The Combative Instinct._