CHAPTER XXXVI INDIVIDUATION SOMETIMES OMETIMES a people enjoying large individual freedom has been forced into compact groups by the conditions of living. The individual becomes solidary with some group- the family, the kindred, the village community, the guild, the church -- so that in many matters he ceases to be a free moral agent. But if the conditions of life take such a turn that the backing of his group is no longer a vital matter to him the groups presently dissolve and the individual reappears. The processes which pulverize social lumps and release the action of their members may be termed individuation. CHAP. XXXVI THE TEUTONIC KINDRED Kindred When our Teutonic ancestors emerge into history something Ancient more than a millennium and a half ago each man is the center of a Solidarity united group of kindred who act on his behalf partly because they have his welfare at heart, but mainly because public opinion, the law, and their own views of life make them guilty with him if he commits a wrong, and almost equally liable to penalty; or, if he is slain, throw upon the whole group the responsibility for vengeance or satisfaction. Every relative of a slayer up to his second or third cousins contributes according to his degree of kinship to the wergeld, which alone can avert the blood feud. On the same principle the wergeld received is apportioned among the kinsmen of the man slain. In case of pauperism the whole kindred is liable, the degree of relationship determining the contribution of each kinsman. The kindred has the right formally to repudiate an offending member, while in some societies a man can solemnly break the ties of kin by breaking his staff in a ceremonial act. Now in South Germany the last traces of such kindred soli- Vanishing darity disappear in the thirteenth century. Sweden gives evi- Group dence of it as late as the fourteenth century. In Holland and Belgium the kindreds remain active into the sixteenth century. of the Kin СНАР. KVI Reappearance of the Kin Group in the American South In Denmark they give signs of life as late as the seventeenth century, while in Holstein and Schleswig certain of their functions continued to be exercised on into the nineteenth century. On the other hand, in Norway the disintegration of the kindred seems to have taken place between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. Anglo-Saxon England shows little of such solidarity when it first comes in view in the seventh and eighth centuries, while in Iceland and Normandy there are no signs of it. It is believed that armed migration by sea was deadly to kin solidarity because those who wandered from Denmark and Southern Scandinavia to England, Norway, Iceland, Normandy, and Russia were not entire kindreds but the supernumerary heirs of different kindreds, who went on Viking raids to seek their fortune because there was no land for them in the home estate. Land migrations, on the other hand, involved whole kindreds, so that this grouping survived even the vast journeyings which carried the Visigoths into Spain. However, Christianity and Roman law, with their notions of the responsibility of the individual for his crime, worked adversely on the kindreds, while the executive power of the state looked upon them with a jealous eye and sought to break them up. It is curious, however, that in some parts of our South, particularly among the Appalachian mountaineers, the long-forgotten kindred grouping was revived. The lack of law and order in the mountains caused the kindreds to take it upon themselves to avenge the slain man, and burdened them with a heritage of feuds which ended only when the courts proved strong enough to execute justice. In other parts of the South the kindred constituted a mutual-aid association. Blood relatives, whether congenial or not, were cherished in the hope that if the breadwinner met with misfortune perhaps Cousin Jim and Uncle Ben and mother's folks would see that Molly and the babies did not come to want. So it was the custom to make much of the ties of blood, to exchange visits with kinsfolk, and to go out of one's way to favor one's kin in business and politics. It was a way of insuring one's family against the hazards of life. Northerners were astonished to see how, after the Civil War, very distant kinsmen came forward to assume the support of the widows and orphans of the Confederacy. Now this mutual-aid association is being undermined partly by the development of charitable agencies, private and public, but СНАР. XXXVI Kinship Friendship chiefly by the extension of insurance, particularly life insurance. There is now scarcely an economic hazard to which a man or his family is exposed which may not be provided against. For an Versus annual payment a company furnishes the protection for which one used to rely on one's kinsfolk. The result is that the claims of kindred are not so generally acknowledged. Why keep up intimacy with all the relatives when some of them are such dreadful bores? So friendship, or preferential association, gains on kinship, and the sphere of personal choice is enlarged. THE CHINESE CLAN Solidarity of the Rural Clan Among the Chinese the agnatic rural clan has great vitality. Clan ties are so strong that if a poor man cannot feed all his chil- Chinese dren he can get fellow-clansmen to adopt some of them. If times are dull in the city, there is no visible accumulation of unemployed, because the superfluous laborers scatter to their ancestral villages, there to live and work till better times come. The city merchant registers his boys in the ancestral temple of his clan, contributes to its upkeep, attends the yearly clan festival, and lets his children be reared in the ancestral village in order that they may cherish the old tie to the soil. Thus, unless some calamity uproots the stock, the city family, even after the lapse of generations, retains a connection with the rural kindred. Clan ties mean so much that there are few duties more sacred than that of helping your kinsmen, even at other people's expense. The official feels that it is right for him to provide berths for his relatives, whether or not they are competent. Hence a pestilent nepotism not only clogs the government departments with useless place-holders, but fills the offices of colleges, railways, and industrial plants with sinecurists. Chinese students are formidable in mass action, such as strikes and walkouts, because their protest, however perverse, is always unanimous. The sensible lad may perceive how silly it is, but he never dreams of standing out against it because all his life he has been trained to get in line. And he has been trained to get in line by contact with a struggle for existence so severe that he realizes that his group family, clan, or guild is indispensable to him. It alone will throw him a life line if his foot slips and he falls into the whirlpool. The Chinese would enjoy individual freedom and independ Nepotism in China Mass Action CHAP. XXXVI No Scien tific Basis for Patriarchal ence as keenly as we do, but it is a luxury which they cannot yet afford. When in a century or so they have gained a much better economic position and are served by an honest and efficient government, the Chinese clan will disintegrate of itself because no longer needed as a mutual-defense or mutual-aid association. THE FAMILY The process which has dissolved the Teutonic kindred into families has gone on to dissolve the family into individuals. The Authority early Roman father exercised over his children the patria potestas. He could work them as he chose and neglect their education as he would. He had the power of life and death over them, and they had no property rights he was bound to respect. This patriarchal authority was based, not only on the religion of ancestor worship, but as well on a fanciful idea of physiological inheri Unique ness of the It was long supposed that children inherited their qualities only from their father, the mother's body being but a seed plot which nourished the paternal germ. We now know that the mother's contribution is not less than the father's, and that the proverb "Like father, like son" errs in ignoring inheritance from the mother. Furthermore, the meeting in the child of two distinct lines of heredity makes it certain that he cannot be a replica of either parent. He has, indeed, much closer kinship with his full brother or sister than with his parent. Science thus vindicates the uniqueness of the child and shows Individual it to be absurd and unjust that the son should inherit the father's honor or infamy. Why should this being, so distinct, starve because his parents neglect him, slave because a drunken father would exploit him, famish for knowledge because his parents care nothing for it, be punished for his father's misdeeds or lie under a stigma because his father did not marry his mother? Wherefore should his father's calling, religion, allegiance, or citizenship descend automatically to him? This conception that children do not "belong to" their parents underlies the laws passed by most American states which make it a crime for the parent to desert, wilfully neglect, or contribute to the delinquency of, the child. Parental Child In many societies mating has been taken out of the hands of the young people and arranged entirely by the parents. The Chinese, for example, have eliminated wooing, love-making, and romance from life. Not until the wedding does either of the young people know the other's name or look upon the other's face. While those who have never dreamed of the sweet intoxication of romantic love will without protest let themselves be thus paired off, it is certain that under these circumstances conjugal adjustment entails a greater strain than with us. In China the selfsacrifice which preserves the harmony of the home is borne chiefly by the wife. And while suicides are three or four times as frequent among our men as among our women, in the only Chinese population for which we have statistics (Wei-hai-wei) the suicides are from five to ten times as numerous among females as among males. Mismating is not responsible for all this excess, but certainly for some of it. The arranged marriage seems never to have gained a footing among the Celts and the Teutons, but under the name of mariàge de convenance it played a great rôle in Latin Europe. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, it has nearly disappeared in favor of the marriage of inclination. The individualistic movement of thought in the eighteenth century not only inspired ideas as to the rights of children and caused family discipline to be more gentle, but it also called in question the testamentary power of the head of the family. It prompted the state to limit a man's right to will his property away from his children or to leave it all to one child. The growing freedom in the use of the inheritance tax betrays a new attitude toward the family. The state deems it not good for young people to be endowed for life by way of inheritance and resorts to a progressive taxation which will end by obliging the children of the wealthy to take life standing up instead of lying down. Industrialism is another force hostile to the unity of the family. On the farm the members of the family are busy with the same task, so that in some degree they are knit together by their work. The members of the typical city family, on the other hand, scatter after breakfast to their diverse "jobs." Father is an ironmolder, Jim drives a dray, Sarah teaches school, Jessie is cash girl in a department store, while Harry is office boy to a doctor. They are borne asunder by different tasks, interests, contacts, and circles of friends. So far as this family holds the loyalty of its members, it does so in spite of their diversity of work. Just as the breakdown of the false theory of heredity sets the child free, so the discrediting of the false theory of male superi CHAP. XXXVI The State of the Endowed Family Industrialism Unfa vorable to Family Solidarity |