the time of Charles the Fifth." The independent tribes of the Sahara are knit together by the religious confraternities which count their fanatical adherents in all the tribes from one end of the desert to the other. Such a confraternity is known as zaouaia. Its members are khouan or brothers. Its chief is khalif or mahdi. Since the sole bond among the tribes has been community of religious sentiment, which is especially developed among pastoralists, it is religious sentiment which has become protector of the commercial caravans traversing the desert in the face of hostile tribes. Seeing the profits of trade have assured ample resources, the religious confraternities patronizing commerce have developed rapidly and have accumulated great riches.

Similarly in the Middle Ages commerce for awhile found safety under the wing of the religious orders. The little local seignorial powers provided trade no adequate and general protection. But an order with members everywhere-like the Knights Templar - could and did protect commerce, engaged in trading on its own account and presently amassed enormous wealth.

The warrant for regarding the Homeric poems as "the Bible of the Greeks," as has so often been said, is that in these poems utterance was given to ideas about the gods which broke through the limitations of local and tribal worship and held forth to all Greeks a certain common stock of religious ideas and motives.

CHAP.

VIII

tion of

Greeks by

In Homeric Greece along with survivals of the old narrow Assimila tribal sentiment showing itself in inter-tribal booty raids, in Homeric piracy and in the desire to compete with strangers and beat them, Guestappears a broadening factor. Green receptivity of mind and Friendship eagerness for advance undermined kin-group feelings and worked toward mingling and nationalization. "Toward this end," says Keller, "one of the chief contributors is a body of traditions connected with strangers, suppliants, guests and guest-friends. Since the stranger became at once a guest and since the guest was forever afterward a guest-friend, this body of ideas and practices is appropriately called guest-friendship."

Its

set

Gaul before the Roman conquest was not a national body. inhabitants were not all of the same origin nor had they all tled in the country at the same time. They did not speak the same language nor were they under the same laws. One could Bryce, "Studies in History and Jurisprudence," Vol. I, p. 266. 8" Homeric Society," p. 299.

CHAP.
VIII

The Unity of Orient,

as of

Occident, a Matter

of Community of Culture

count eighty states in what is now France. Yet, altho without unity, they had a certain fitness for union in consequence of the diffusion among them of Druidism.

Driven out by the Roman conquerors, the Druid priests fled in great numbers over the Rhine and took asylum with the independent Germans. Here, spreading their superstitious ideas, they developed a priest caste which wrested control of the Unseen from the old women and made itself a secular power. They gained the upper hand in the popular assemblies which had always been associated with religious festivals. They established a truce of God, developed spiritual penalties for crime and secular penalties for disobedience to the priests. They wrested from the chiefs the death penalty and even ventured to set aside kings who appeared to have incurred the displeasure of the gods. Perhaps the Germans would have been united under a theocracy if Christianity had not come in at the critical moment."

Vast importance attaches to the labors of the Christian missionaries who, between the fourth century and the tenth, Christianized the peoples of Central and Northern Europe and thereby paved the way for that unity known as "Christendom." At the other extremity of the world the elements of the Chinese culture were soaking thru populations in no sense incorporated into Chinese society. This culture, worked out first in the valley of the Wei and then in Shantung, has mastered not only the Far East and India, but has profoundly influenced all the races inhabiting Asia. The unity of the Orient is, in fact, not a matter of organization but a matter of culture, as is also the unity of the Occident.

We see, then, that again and again culture spreads among tribes and peoples which are in no relation whatever to one another and makes them willing to enter into relations, or work together, when the need comes. Thanks to the unprecedented facilities of intercourse and communication we are in the midst of an epoch of immense diffusion which cannot but smooth the way toward some kind of social synthesis of humanity.

The goal of this development—a goal which we approach but never quite attain is the suppression of distance. As we approach it, human groupings are transformed in type. They are

• See Seeck, "Geschichte des Untergangs der Antiken Welt," Vol. I,

pp. 223-4.

CHAP.
VIII

Forced or

cal'' Asso

less dominated by geography and more by affinity and preference. They are less a product of circumstances and more a product of choice. Social bonds become less and less territorial, more and Politimore intrinsic and purely human. "Neighbor" means less; "comrade" and "friend" more. Eventually, it would seem, will make human society will be made up of numerous free-forming, closely Free Asinterlacing social organisms extending all over the civilized world.

ciation

way for

sociation

CHAP. IX

What
Society Is

Modes of
Origin of
Society

CHAPTER IX

THE GENESIS OF SOCIETY

WHAT makes us a society? Is it that we have certain things

in common-language, religion, art, science, industrial technique? Or is it that we do something together? The fact is both likemindedness and cooperation enter into our idea of society. Therefore, we cannot do better than adopt the definition framed by Giddings: "Any group or number of human individuals who cultivate acquaintance and mental agreement, and who, knowing and enjoying their own likemindedness, are able to work together for common ends, is a Human Society." 1

It is helpful to distinguish between primary association, i.e., the union of individuals or families into a social group and secondary association, i.e., the union of existing groups into a larger group. Primary association occurs either by growth, multiplication, or by coming together, congregation. The union of groups, conjugation, is either free or forced, i.e., by alliance or by conquest.

Multiplication. No doubt there have been groups which grew out of the family. In the words of the Americanist Payne,2 Evidently the tribe may come into existence as a simple development of the family." The family like the tribe is fundamentally a food-seeking organization. It might terminate as soon as the youngest offspring are able to provide for themselves; but it would tend in the absence of disturbing causes to become permanent especially with man on account of the broad overlap of Expansion successive generations. Prolonged infancy attaches the children more to their parents and to one another. Parents likewise become attached to their children and to each other. "The attachments thus deepened survive the temporary relations in which they originated, subsisting when the children have grown up and have formed for themselves new associations of the same kind.” The family thus tends to generate a larger consanguineous group

of a Family

into a Tribe

1" Inductive Sociology," p. 6.

2"History of the New World called America," II, p. 43.

consisting of members belonging to three or even more genera- CHAP. IX tions, who pursue food-getting in common. "Such an enlarged

group would constitute the tribe in its purest and simplest form." Formerly the natural expansion of the family was supposed to be the characteristic mode of genesis of a society. Now we look upon it as a rare occurrence because we are better able to recognize how considerations of food and safety have broken in upon the quiet growth of a family into a tribe.

From time to time local insufficiency of food will compel the kin group to break up. Thus Spencer remarks, "The primitive social group . . . never attains any considerable size by simple increase. Where, as among Fuegians, the supplies of wild food yielded by an inclement habitat will not enable more than a score or so to live in the same place — where, as among the Andamanese, limited to a strip of shore backed by impenetrable bush, forty is about the number of individuals who can find prey without going too far from their temporary abode - where, as among Bushmen, wandering over barren tracts, small hordes are alone possible, and even families are sometimes obliged to separate, since the same spot will not afford sustenance for all, we have extreme instances of the limitation of simple groups, and the formation of migrating groups when the limit is passed. Even in tolerably productive habitats, fission of the groups is eventually necessitated in a kindred manner. Spreading as its number increases, a primitive tribe presently reaches a diffusion at which its parts become incoherent, and it then gradually separates into tribes that become distinct as fast as their continually-diverging dialects pass into different languages." "

On the other hand, an unusually bountiful source of foodrich fisheries, game trails, and haunts of wild animals will be exploited not by a single family but by various persons, and a congregate society will result.

There is safety in numbers and hence, for the sake of mutual protection, people who derive no economic advantage from their association may come together and stay together. An isolated family dares not wait till it has expanded into a tribe able to take care of its own. Fear has been a great group builder. Aggregation, by increasing the power and the temptation to aggress, has been a cause of aggregation in neighbors or rivals. Hence, the 3" Principles of Sociology," Vol. I, 454-55.