CHAP. XX which covets a social mind, a color line is a source of weakness. Such a society should guard its future by barring out any immigrating race with which its members are loath to mate. XXII THE ORGANIZATION OF EFFORT XXIII THE ORGANIZATION OF WILL XXIV THE ORGANIZATION OF THOUGHT XXV THE DETERIORATION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES CHAP. XXI All Large Free Groups Are Formed for Cooperation Coopera- Builder of CHAPTER XXI COOPERATION ALTHO petty groupings may be prompted by craving for fel lowship, all large permanent groupings - when they are not the product of conquest-exist for some purpose, which without them could be attained not at all or else not so well. In a word they are cooperations. This is why In union there is strength. If there be no call to cooperate, In union there is weakness; for no degree of likemindeness reconciles people to being held together in an organization which is not doing anything for them. On the open frontier the love of absolute freedom always leads to the complete independence of each family, unless there is need of cooperation. In South Africa, among the wandering or "trek " Boers, strife with the Bushmen was the one thing which made for organization. The most ancient and frequent motive to union has been cooperation in fighting. The migrations of nomads into settled. areas and their predatory invasions of strong peoples draw them into large, loose unions, such as that of the Israelites making their way into the land of Canaan, of the Vedic people descending into India, of the Cimbri, Teutones and Gauls clutching at Italy. But such unions are temporary, because attack is optional, whereas defense is imperative. For not being ready to attack there is no such penalty as for not being ready to defend. Hence fear of being attacked is the master builder of big permanent unions. The antagonism between tribes and nations has forged men into solid masses. It was not breaking into the land of Canaan which welded the twelve tribes of Israel under Saul and David, but their wars with the neighboring peoples. The Iroquois confederacy of six Indian tribes resulted from the encroachments of the English. Says Barton: Says Barton: "The economic purpose for which the clan organization was formed by the primitive Semitic folk was the defence of their date-growing oases and the domestic animals in their pasture lands, or for attack upon similar possessions of their neighbors." Fearful of robber bands armed for plunder, clans "would settle on an oasis, and their older and weaker men would aid the women in cultivating the date palm, while the more hardy of the men led the small flocks and herds out into the neighboring pasture lands." 1 The mercantile city-states of the Middle Ages-Genoa, Venice, Leghorn came into being chiefly to protect their trade from piracy and to maintain consuls in the Levant who should look after their commercial interests. So long as there were Indians to be fought and so long as the Dutch were in New York and the French in Canada, the American colonists had a lively stateBut when they no longer had cause to fear, internal liberty expanded and jealousy of the state and of the colonial governor grew. sense. A race too independent in spirit may be ruined from failure to cooperate when common action is imperative. Fustel de Coulanges shows that the Germans of the fifth century were the mere débris of a weakened race which had been whipped for three centuries by the Romans, vanquished by Slavs and Huns, above all torn by long internecine wars. Gone were nearly all the peoples Tacitus describes and praises. They had torn one another to pieces through inability to cooperate politically, to form a strong and stable state. We find only Franks, Alamans, Saxons; not tribes but mere bands or fighting hordes; for Franks =warriors, Alamans = all sorts of men, Saxons axe men. These wandering bands accompanied by their women, children, lites and serfs were without attachment to the soil, settled life, and the idea of fatherland. They no longer had stable traditions, customs, laws, elders and assemblies. The old legal and peaceful régime Tacitus beheld had gone under in the centuries of confusion. They still chose their duke or king, but he was endowed with unlimited power on the sole condition of dividing the booty fairly.2 He insists that "Gaul was conquered by Cæsar not because the Gauls were timid but because they would not unite and fight together. In great wars and in the face of invasions personal courage is worth little. It is the strength of public institutions 1 "A Sketch of Semitic Origins,” p. 38. 2" Histoire des Institutions Politiques de l'Ancienne France," Vol. I, pp. 353-9. СНАР. Cooperation to put an End to Internal Strife by Creating Organs of Justice Public The Control of Water Combined and racial discipline which defends nations. Where the political bond is weak, the invasion at once disorganizes the state, upsets minds, shatters characters and in this growing disorder the invasion succeeds.3 The next weightiest motive for political cooperation is the establishment of tribunals for the settlement of disputes. The creation of the Icelandic Republic in the tenth century is an instance. Iceland, remote and poor, was not in need of foreign policy, army, fleet or exchequer. The settlements organized the Republic in order to provide machinery which should put an end to the destructive feuds which raged among them. It was a government without an executive side, developed only upon its judicial, and, to a much smaller extent, upon its legislative side. The League of Nations was born of the same motives which drew together the Icelandic communities. Another common enterprise is the construction of public works. The early city builders in Babylonia, for example, or in Russia were tillers of the soil who were providing themselves with a stronghold, rather than a market-place. The essential thing was the walls rather than the houses, for in case of foray the peasants fleeing from the open country simply camped in the enclosure until the enemy retired. The residence and trading features of the city developed after it was a stronghold. The control of water calls for combined labor. It is likely that the early appearance of the despotic state in the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Ganges sprang from the necessity of maintaining irrigation ditches and reservoirs. Stable organization was probably forced upon the Chinese by their need of huge embankments to protect them from the flood waters of the Hoang Ho. In northern Ceylon, concord and union were so indispensable in the community upkeep of the ditches and tanks that injunctions for their maintenance were sometimes graven on the rocks. A few years ago the most ancient and efficient governmental service to be met with in China was the control of the Min River for the watering of the Chêngtu plain. For two thousand years the officials have followed religiously the directions of the engineer Li Ping, who caught and tamed the Min. The upkeep of levees has magnified the Federal Government in 3 Op. cit., p. 50. |