Part 13

That evolution decreases the sacrifice of individual life to the life of the species, we may see on glancing upwards from the microscopic protozoa, where the brief parental life disappears absolutely in the lives of the progeny, to the mammalia, where the greatest conciliation of the interests of the species, the parents and the young, is displayed. The highest constitution of the family is reached where there is such conciliation between the needs of the society and those of its members, old and young, that the mortality between birth and the reproductive age falls to a minimum, while the lives of adults have their subordination to the rearing of children reduced to the smallest possible. The diminution of this subordination takes place in three ways: First, by elongation of that period which precedes reproduction; second, by fewer offspring born, as well as by increase of the pleasure taken in the care of them; and third, by lengthening of the life which follows cessation of reproduction. Let us bear in mind that the domestic relations which are ethically the highest, are also biologically and sociologically the highest.

MARRIAGE

The propriety of setting out with the foregoing purely natural-history view will be evident upon learning that among low savages the relations of the sexes are substantially like those common among inferior creatures. The effect of promiscuity, however, being to hinder social evolution, wherever it was accompanied by unions having some duration, the product of such unions were likely to be superior to others, and from this primitive stage domestic evolution takes place in several directions by increase of coherence and definiteness.

From promiscuity we pass to that form of polyandry in which the unrelated husbands have but one wife; thence to the form in which the husbands are related; and finally to the form in which they are brothers only, as in the fraternal polyandry of the ancient Britons. It is almost needless to point out that, as in passing from promiscuity to polyandry the domestic relations become more coherent and definite, so do they in passing from the lower forms of polyandry to the higher. That polygyny is better than polyandry may be concluded from its effects. It conduces in a higher degree to social self-preservation than the inferioi types of marital relations by making possible more rapid replacement of men lost in war, and so increases the chance of social survival. By establishment of descent in the male line it conduces to political stability; and, by making possible a developed form of ancestor-worship, it consolidates society.

MONOGAMY

Societies which from generation to generation produce in due abundance individuals who relatively to the requirements are the best physically, morally, and intellectually, must become the predominant societies, and must tend through the quiet process of industrial competition to replace other societies. Consequently, marital relations which favour this result in the highest degree must spread; while the prevailing sentiments and ideas must become so moulded into harmony with them that other relations will be condemned as immoral. The monogamic form of the sexual relations is manifestly the ultimate form; and any changes to be anticipated must be in the direction of completion and extension of it.

_II.--Political Organisation_

A society is formed only when, besides juxtaposition there is co-operation. Co-operation is made possible by society and makes society possible. It pre-supposes associative men; and men remain associated only because of the benefits co-operation yields them. But there cannot be concerted actions without agencies by which actions are adjusted in their times, amounts, and kinds; and the actions cannot be of different kinds without the co-operators undertaking different duties. That is to say, the co-operators must become organised, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

AGGREGATION

The political evolution manifested by increase of mass is political aggregation. One of the laws of evolution at large is that integration results when like units are subject to the same force or the like forces; and from the first stages of political integration to the last this law is illustrated. Likeness in the units forming a social group being one conditioned to their integration, a further condition is their joint reaction against external action: co-operation in war is the chief cause of social integration. The temporary unions of savages for offence and defence show the initiatory steps. When many tribes unite against a common enemy, long continuance of their combined action makes them coherent under some common control. And so it is subsequently with still larger aggregates.

DIFFERENTIATION

The state of homogeneity in the social aggregate is an unstable one. The primary political differentiation originates from the primary family differentiation. Men and women very early respectively form the two political classes of rulers and ruled. The slave class acquires separateness only as fast as there arrives some restrictions on the powers of the owners; slaves begin to form a division of the body politic when their personal claims begin to be distinguished as limiting the claims of their masters. Where men have passed into the agricultural or settled state it becomes possible for one community to take possession bodily of another community, along with the territory it occupies. When this happens, there arise additional class divisions. The class differentiation of which militancy is the actual cause is furthered by the establishment of definite descent, especially male descent, and by the transmission of position and property to the eldest son of the eldest continually. Inequalities of position and wealth once initiated tend to increase and to establish physical differences; and beyond these there are produced by the respective habits of life mental differences, emotional and intellectual, strengthening the general contrast of nature. When there come conquests which produce compound societies and doubly compound ones there result superpositions of ranks: while the ranks of the conquering society become respectively higher than those which have existed before, the ranks of the conquered society become respectively lower. The political differentiations which militancy originates and which for a long time increase in definiteness, are at later stages and under other conditions interfered with, traversed, and partially or wholly destroyed. While the higher political evolution of large social aggregates tends to break down the divisions of rank which grew up in the small component social aggregates, by substituting other divisions, these original divisions are still more broken down by growing industrialism. Generating a wealth that is not connected with rank, this initiates a compelling power; and at the same time, by establishing the equal positions of citizens before the law in respect of trading transactions, it weakens those divisions which at the outset expressed inequality of position before the law.

POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES

In its primitive form political power is the feeling of the community

## acting through an agency which it has either informally or formally

established; and this public feeling, while it is to some extent the feeling spontaneously formed by those concerned, it is to a much larger extent the accumulated and organised sentiment of the past. Everywhere we are shown that the ruler's function as regulator is mainly that of enforcing the inherited rules of conduct which embody ancestral sentiments and ideas.

CHIEFS AND KINGS

At the outset the principle of efficiency was the sole principle of organisation, but evidently supremacy which depends exclusively on personal attributes is but transitory. Only when the chief's place is forthwith filled by one whose claim is admitted does there begin a differentiation which survives through successive generations. The custom of reckoning descent through females, it may be noted, is less favourable to the establishment of permanent political headship than is the system of kinship through males, which conduces to a more coherent family, to a greater culture of subordination and to a more probable union of inherited position and inherited capacity. In sundry semi-civilised societies distinguished by permanent political headships, inheritance through males has been established in the ruling house while inheritance through females survives in the society at large. Descent through males also fosters ancestor-worship, and the consequent reinforcing of natural authority by supernatural authority--a very powerful factor. Development of the ghost theory, leading as it does to special fear of the ghosts of powerful men, until, where many tribes have been welded together by a conqueror, his ghost acquires in tradition the pre-eminence of a god, produces two effects. In the first place his descendant is supposed to partake of his divine nature; and in the second place, by propitiatory sacrifices to him is supposed to obtain his aid.

From the evolution-standpoint we are enabled to discern the relative beneficence of institutions which, considered absolutely, are not beneficent; and we are taught to approve as temporary that which as permanent we abhor. The evidence shows that subjection to despots has been largely instrumental in advancing civilised life.

COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS

An examination of fact shows that where groups of the patriarchal type fall into regions permitting considerable growths of population, but having physical structures which impede the centralisation of power, compound political heads will arise and for a time sustain themselves through co-operation of the two factors, independence of local groups, and need for union in war. Thus, as Mommsen says, primitive Rome was rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. Not only do conditions determine the various forms which compound heads assume, but conditions determine the various changes they undergo. They may be narrowed by militancy, or they may be widened by industrialism.

CONSULTATIVE BODIES

The council of war is the germ out of which the consultative body arises. Within the warrior class, which was of necessity the land-owning class, war produces increasing differences of wealth, as well as increasing differences of status; so that military leaders come to be distinguished as large landowners and local rulers. Hence members of a consultative body become contrasted with the freemen at large--not only as leading warriors are contrasted with their followers, but still more as men of wealth and authority. If the king attains or acquires the reputation of supernatural descent or authority, and the law of hereditary succession is so settled as to exclude election, those who might otherwise have formed a consultative body having co-ordinate power become simply appointed advisers. But if the king has not the prestige of supposed sacred origin or commission the consultative body retains power; and if the king continues to be elected it is liable to become an oligarchy.

REPRESENTATIVE BODIES

How is the governmental influence of the people acquired? The primary purpose for which chief men and representatives are assembled is that of voting money. The revenues of rulers are derived at first wholly and afterwards partly from presents. This primary obligation to render money and service to the head of the State, often reluctantly complied with, is resisted when the exactions are great, and resistance causes conciliatory measures. From ability to prescribe conditions under which money will be voted grows the ability, and finally the right, to join in legislation.

LAWS

Law is mainly an embodiment of ancestral injunctions. The living ruler able to legislate only in respect of matters unprovided for, is bound by the transmitted command of the unknown and the known who have passed away. Hence the trait common to societies in early stages that the prescribed rules of conduct, of whatever kind, have a religious sanction.

In societies that become large and complex, there arise forms of

## activity and intercourse not provided for in the sacred code; and in

respect of these the ruler is free to make regulations. Thus there comes into existence a body of laws of known human origin, which has not the sacredness of the god-descended body of laws: human law differentiates from divine law. And in proportion as the principle of voluntary co-operation more and more characterises the social type, fulfilment of contracts and implied assertion of equality in men's rights become the fundamental requirements, and the consensus of individual interests the chief source of law; such authority as law otherwise derived continues to have being recognised as secondary, and insisted upon only because maintenance of law for its own sake indirectly furthers the general welfare.

The theories at present current adapted to the existing compromise between militancy and industrialism are steps towards the ultimate theory in conformity with which law will have no other justification than that gained by it as maintainer of the conditions to complete life in the associated state.

PROPERTY

The desire to appropriate lies deep in animal nature, being, indeed, a condition to survival. The consciousness that conflict and consequent injury may probably result from the endeavour to take that which is held by another tends to establish the custom of leaving each in possession of whatever he has obtained by labour. With the passage from a nomadic to a settled state, ownership of land by the community becomes qualified by individual ownership; but only to the extent that those who clear and cultivate portions of the surface have undisturbed enjoyment of its produce. Habitually the public claim survives, qualified by various forms of private ownership mostly temporary; but war undermines communal proprietorship of land, and partly or wholly substitutes for it either the unqualified proprietorship of an absolute conqueror, or proprietorship by a conqueror, qualified by the claims of vassals holding it under certain conditions, while their claims are in turn qualified by those of dependents attached to the soil. The individualisation of ownership extended and made more definite by trading transactions under contract, eventually affects the ownership of land. Bought and sold by measure and for money, land is assimilated in this respect to the personal property produced by labour, but there is reason to suspect that while possession of such things will grow more sacred, the inhabited area which cannot be produced by labour will eventually be distinguished as something which may not be privately possessed.

THE INDUSTRIAL TYPE OF SOCIETY

The traits of the industrial type of society are so hidden by those of the still dominant militant type that its nature is nowhere more than very partially exemplified. The industrial type is distinguished from the militant type as being not both positively regulated and negatively regulated, but as being negatively regulated only. To the member of the industrial community authority says "Thou shalt not," and not "Thou shalt." On turning to the civilised to observe the form of individual character which accompanies the industrial form of society, we encounter the difficulty that the personal traits proper to industrialism are, like the social traits, mingled with those proper to militancy. Nevertheless, on contrasting the characters of our ancestors during more warlike periods with our own characters, we see that, with an increasing ratio of industrialism to militancy, have come a growing independence, a less marked loyalty, a smaller faith in governments, and a more qualified patriotism; and while there has been shown a strengthening assertion of individuality there has accompanied it a growing respect for the individualities of others, as is implied by the diminution of aggressions upon them, and the multiplication of efforts for their welfare. It seems needful to explain that it is not so much that a social life passed in peaceful occupations is positively moralising, as that a social life passed in war is positively demoralising. The sacrifice of others to self is in the one incidental only; while in the other it is necessary.

POLITICAL PROSPECT

It appears to be an unavoidable inference that the ultimate executive agency must become in some way or other elective. From such evidence as existing society will afford us, it is to be inferred that the highest State-office in whatever way filled will continue to decline in importance. No speculations concerning ultimate political forms can, however, be regarded as anything but tentative. There will probably be considerable variety in the special forms of the political institutions of industrial society; all of them bearing traces of past institutions which have been brought into congruity with the representative principle.

To turn to political functions, when corporate action is no longer needed for preserving a society as a whole from destruction or injury by other societies, the end which remains for it is that of preserving the component members of society from injury by one another. With this limitation of the state function it is probable that there will be simultaneously carried further that trait which already characterises the most industrially-organised society--the performance of increasingly-numerous and increasingly-important functions by other organisations than those which form departments of the government. Already private enterprise, working through incorporated bodies of citizens, achieves ends undreamed of as so achievable in primitive societies; and in the future other ends undreamed of now as so achievable will be achieved.

The conclusion of profoundest moment to which lines of argument converge is that the possibility of a high social state political as well as general, fundamentally depends on the cessation of war. Persistent militancy, maintaining adapted institutions, must inevitably prevent, or else neutralise, changes in the direction of more equitable institutions and laws; while permanent peace will of necessity be followed by social ameliorations of every kind.

_III.--Ecclesiastical Institutions_

Rightly to trace the evolution of ecclesiastical institutions, we must know whence came the ideas and sentiments implied by them. Are these innate or are they derived? They are derived. And here it may be remarked that where among African savages there existed no belief in a double which goes away during sleep, there was found to exist no belief in a double which survived after death.

From the ordinary absence of the other self in sleep, and its extraordinary absences in swoons, apoplexy, and so forth, the transition is to its unlimited absence at death; when after an interval of waiting the expectation of immediate return is given up. Commonly the spirit is supposed to linger near the body or to revisit it. Hence the universality of ministrations to the double of the deceased habitually made at funerals. The habitat of the other self is variously conceived; though everywhere there is an approach to parallelism between the life here and the imagined life hereafter. Along with the development of grave-heaps into altars, grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise and prayer. Turning to certain more indirect results of the ghost theory, we find that, distinguishing but confusedly between semblance and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing partakes of the properties of a thing. Hence the effigy of a dead man becomes a habitation for his ghost; and idols, because of the indwelling doubles of the dead, are propitiated. Identification of the doubles of the dead with animals--now with those which frequent houses or places which the doubles are supposed to haunt and now with those which are like certain of the dead in their malicious or benevolent natures--is in other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names; this latter leading to the identification of stars with persons and hence to star and sun worship. In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods arise by apotheosis. Originally the god is the superior living man whose power is conceived as superhuman. As in primitive thought divinity is synonymous with superiority, and as at first a god may be either a powerful living person or a dead person who has acquired supernatural power as a ghost, there come two origins for semi-divine beings--the one by unions between a conquering god race and the conquered race distinguished as men, and the other by supposed intercourse between living persons and spirits. Where the evidence is examined comparative sociology discloses a common origin for each leading element of religious belief.

MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS

In the primitive belief that the doubles of the dead may be induced to yield benefits or desist from inflicting evil by bribing or cajoling or else by threatening or coercing, we see that the modes of dealing with ghosts broadly contrasted as antagonistic and sympathetic, initiate the distinction between medicine man and priest.

Prompted as offerings on graves originally are by affection for the deceased, it naturally happens that such propitiations are made more by relatives than others. The family cult next acquires a more definite form by the devolution of its functions on one member of the family. Hence in ancient Egypt "it was most important that a man should have a son established in his seat after him who should perform the due rites" of sacrifice to his _ka_ or double. Facts also show that the devolution of the sacrificial office accompanies devolution of property, for this has to bear the costs of the sacrifices; and by a natural corollary the head of the village-community combines the characters of priest and ruler. With the increase of a chief's territory there comes an accumulation of business which necessitates the employment of assistants, and among the functions deputed is that of priest, at first perhaps temporarily assumed by a brother. Such is the usual origin of priesthood.

Many facts make it clear that, not only the genesis of polytheism but the long survival of it are sequences of primitive ancestor-worship. Eventually there result under favouring conditions a gravitation towards monotheism; and with this an advance towards unification of priesthood. The official proprietors of the deity who has come to be regarded as the most powerful or as the possessor of all power becomes established everywhere.

Likeness between ecclesiastical and political organisations when they have diverged is largely due to their community of origin. There results a hierarchy of sacerdotal functionaries analogous to the graduated system of political functionaries; then the agencies for carrying on celestial rule and terrestrial rule eventually begin to compete for supremacy; and there are reasons for thinking that the change from an original predominance of a spiritual power over the temporal power to ultimate subjugation of it is mainly due to the development of industrialism with the moral and intellectual changes involved.

PROSPECT

What may we infer will be the evolution of religious ideas and sentiments throughout the future? The development of those higher sentiments which no longer tolerate the ascription of inferior sentiments to a divinity, and the intellectual development which causes dissatisfaction with the crude interpretations previously accepted, must force men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First Cause as they have long since dropped the lower.

Those, however, who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs and sentiments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken from the old interpretation is added to the new. Or rather we may say that transference from one to the other is accompanied by increase; since for an explanation which has a seeming feasibility, science substitutes an explanation which, carrying us back only a certain distance, then leaves us in the presence of the avowedly inexplicable. The truth must grow ever clearer--the truth that there is an inscrutable existence everywhere manifested to which the man of science can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of _AN INFINITE AND ETERNAL ENERGY_, from which all things proceed.

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA

Ethics