Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

At the time when I wrote the chapter inserted in the text, a certain accord seemed to have been established amongst anthropologists concerning the relatively late appearance, in the institutions of men, of the patriarchal family, such as we know it among the Hebrews, or in Imperial Rome. However, works have been published since, in which the ideas pro- mulgated by Bachofen and MacLennan, systematized especially by Morgan, and further developed and confirmed by Post, Maxim Kovalevsky, and Lubbock, were contested — the most important of such works being by the Danish Professor, C. N. Starcke {Primitive Family, 1889), and by the Helsingfors Professor, Edward Westermarck [The History of Human Marriage, 1891 ; 2nd ed. 1894). The same has happened with this question of primitive marriage institutions as it happened with the question of the primitive land-ownership institutions. When the ideas of Maurer and Nasse on the village community, de- veloped by quite a school of gifted explorers, and those of all modern anthropologists upon the primi- tively communistic constitution of the clan had nearly won general acceptance — they called forth the appear- ance of such works as those of Fustel de Coulanges in France, the Oxford Professor Seebohm in England, and several others, in which an attempt was made — with more brilliancy than real depth of investiga- tion— to undermine these ideas and to cast a doubt upon the conclusions arrived at by modern research (see Prof Vinogradov's Preface to his remarkable work, Villainage in England). Similarly, when the ideas about the non-existence of the family at the early tribal stage of mankind began to be accepted

by most anthropologists and students of ancient law, they necessarily called forth such works as those of Starcke and Westermarck, in which man was repre- sented, in accordance with the Hebrew tradition, as having started with the family, evidently patriarchal, and never having passed through the stages described by MacLennan, Bachofen, or Morgan. These works, of which the brilliantly-written History of Human Marriage has especially been widely read, have un- doubtedly produced a certain effect : those who have not had the opportunity of reading the bulky volumes related to the controversy became hesitating ; while some anthropologists, well acquainted with the matter, like the French Professor Durkheim, took a con- ciliatory, but somewhat undefined attitude.

For the special purpose of a work on Mutual Aid, this controversy may be irrelevant. The fact that men have lived in tribes from the earliest stages of mankind, is not contested, even by those who feel shocked at the idea that man may have passed through a stage when the family as we understand it did not exist. The subject, however, has its own interest and deserves to be mentioned, although it must be re- marked that a volume would be required to do it full justice.

When we labour to lift the veil that conceals from us ancient institutions, and especially such institutions as have prevailed at the first appearance of beings of the human type, we are bound — in the necessary absence of direct testimony — to accomplish a most painstaking work of tracing backwards every institu- tion, carefully noting even its faintest traces in habits, customs, traditions, songs, folk-lore, and so on ; and then, combining the separate results of each of these separate studies, to mentally reconstitute the society which would answer to the co-existence of all these institutions. One can consequently understand what a formidable array of facts, and what a vast number

of minute studies of particular points is required to come to any safe conclusion. This is exactly what one finds in the monumental work of Bachofen and his followers, but fails to find in the works of the other school. The mass of facts ransacked by Prof. Westermarck is undoubtedly great enough, and his work is certainly very valuable as a criticism ; but it hardly will induce those who know the works of Bachofen, Morgan, MacLennan, Post, Kovalevsky, etc., in the originals, and are acquainted with the village-community school, to change their opinions and accept the patriarchal family theory.

Thus the arguments borrowed by Westermarck from the familiar habits of the primates have not, I dare say, the value which he attributes to them. Our knowledge about the family relations amongst the sociable species of monkeys of our own days is extremely uncertain, while the two unsociable species of orang-outan and gorilla must be ruled out of discussion, both being evidently, as I have indicated in the text, decaying species. Still less do we know about the relations which existed between males and females amongst the primates towards the end of the Tertiary period. The species which lived then are probably all extinct, and we have not the slightest idea as to which of them was the ancestral form which Man sprung from. All we can say with any approach to probability is, that various family and tribe relations must have existed in the different ape species, which were extremely numerous at that time ; and that great changes must have taken place since in the habits of the primates, similarly to the changes that took place, even within the last two centuries, in the habits of many other mammal species.

The discussion must consequently be limited en- tirely to human institutions; and in the minute dis- cussion of each separate trace of each early institution, in connection with all that we know about every other institution of the same people or the same tribe, lies the main force of the argument of the school which maintains that the patriarchal family is an institution of a relatively late origin. There is, in fact, quite a cycle of institutions amongst primitive men, which become fully comprehensible if we accept the ideas of Bachofen and Morgan, but are utterly incomprehensible otherwise. Such are : the communistic life of the clan, so long as it was not split up into separate paternal families ; the life in long houses, and in classes occupying separate long houses according to the age and stage of initiation of the youth (M. Maclay, H. Schurz) ; the restrictions to personal accumulation of property of which several illustrations are given above, in the text ; the fact that women taken from another tribe belonged to the whole tribe before becoming private property ; and many similar institutions analyzed by Lubbock, This wide cycle of institutions, which fell into decay and finally disappeared in the village-community phase of human development, stand in perfect accord with the ^'tribal marriage" theory; but they are mostly left unnoticed by the followers of the patriarchal family school. This is certainly not the proper way of discussing the problem. Primitive men have not several superposed or juxtaposed institutions as we have now. They have but one institution, the clan, which embodies all the mutual relations of the members of the clan. Marriage- relations and posses- sion-relations are clan-relations. And the last that we might expect from the defenders of the patriarchal family theory would be to show us how the just mentioned cycle of institutions (which disappear later on) could have existed in an agglomeration of men living under a system contradictory of such institutions — ^the system of separate families governed by the pater familias.

way in which certain serious difficulties are set aside by the promoters of the patriarchal family theory. Thus, Morgan has proved by a considerable amount of evidence that a strictly- kept " classificatory group system " exists with many primitive tribes, and that all the individuals of the same category address each other as if they were brothers and sisters, while the individuals of a younger category will address their mothers' sisters as mothers, and so on. To say that this must be a simple fagon de parler — a way of expressing respect to age — is certainly an easy method of getting rid of the difficulty of explaining, why this special mode of expressing respect, and not some other, has prevailed among so many peoples of different origin, so as to survive with many of them up to the present day ? One may surely admit that ma and pa are the syllables which are easiest to pronounce for a baby, but the question is — Why this part of "baby language " is used by full-grown people, and is applied to a certain strictly-defined category of persons ? Why, with so many tribes in which the mother and her sisters are called ma, the father is designated by tiatia (similar to diadia — uncle), dad, da or pa ? Why the appellation of mother given to maternal aunts is supplanted later on by a separate name ? And so on. But when we learn that with many savages the mother's sister takes as respons- ible a part in bringing up a child as the mother itself, and that, if death takes away a beloved child, the other " mother " (the mother's sister) will sacrifice herself to accompany the child in its journey into the other world — we surely see in these names something much more profound than a mere fagon de parler, or a way of testifying respect.

The more so when we learn of the existence of quite a cycle of survivals (Lubbock, Kovalevsky, Post have fully discussed them), all pointing in the same direction. Of course it may be said that kinship is reckoned on the maternal side "because the child remains more with its mother," or we may explain the fact that a man's children by- several wives of different tribes belong to their mothers' clans in consequence of the savages' "ignorance of physiology ; " but these are not arguments even approximately adequate to the seriousness of the questions involved — especially when it is known that the obligation of bearing the mother's name implies belonging to the mother's clan in all respects : that is, involves a right to all the belongings of the maternal clan, as well as the right of being protected by it, never to be assailed by any one of it, and the duty of revenging offences on its behalf

Even if we were to admit for a moment the satis- factory nature of such explanations, we should soon find out that a separate explanation has to be given for each category of such facts^and they are very numerous. To mention but a few of them, there is : the division of clans into classes, at a time when there is no division as regards property or social condition ; exogamy and all the consequent customs enumerated by Lubbock ; the blood covenant and a series of similar customs intended to testify the unity of descent ; the appearance of family gods subsequent to the existence of clan gods ; the exchange of wives which exists not only with Eskimos in times of calamity, but is also widely spread among many other tribes of a quite different origin ; the looseness of nuptial ties the lower we descend in civilization ; the com- pound marriages — several men marrying one wife who belongs to them in turfis ; the abolition of the nfarriage restrictions during festivals, or on each fifth, sixth, etc., day ; the cohabitation of families in " long houses ; " the obligation of rearing the orphan falling, even at a late period, upon the maternal uncle; the considerable number of transitory forms showing the gradual passage from maternal descent to paternal descent ; the limitation of the number of children by

the clan — not by the family — and the abolition of this harsh clause in times of plenty; family restrictions coming after the clan restrictions ; the sacrifice of the old relatives to the tribe ; the tribal lex talionis and many other habits and customs which become a "family matter" only when we find the family, in the modern sense of the word, finally constituted; the nuptial and pre-nuptial ceremonies of which striking illustrations may be found in the work of Sir John Lubbock, and of several modern Russian explorers ; the absence of marriage solemnities where the line of descent is matriarchal, and the appearance of such solemnities with tribes following the paternal line of descent — all these and many others ^ showing that, as Durckheim remarks, marriage proper "is only tolerated and prevented by antagonist forces ; " the destruction at the death of the individual of what belonged to him personally ; and finally, all the for- midable array of survivals,^ myths (Bachofen and his many followers), folk-lore, etc., all telling in the same direction.

Of course, all this does not prove that there was a period when woman was regarded as superior to man, or was the "head" of the clan ; this is a quite distinct matter, and my personal opinion is that no such period has ever existed ; nor does it prove that there was a time when no tribal restrictions to the union of sexes existed — this would have been absolutely contrary to all known evidence. But when all the facts lately brought to light are considered in their mutual dependency, it is impossible not to recognize that if isolated couples, with their children, have possibly, existed even in the primitive clan, these incipient

1 See Marriage Customs in many Lands, by H. N. Hutchinson, London, 1897. * Many new and interesting forms of these have been collected by Wilhelm Rudeck, Geschichte der offentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, analyzed by Durckheim in Annuaire Sodologique, ii. 312. families were tolerated exceptions only, not the institu- tion of the time. In a remarkable work, The Religious Systems of China, published in 1892-97 by J. M. de Groot at Leyden, we find the confirmation of this idea. There was in China (as elsewhere) a time when all personal belongings of a dead person were destroyed on his tomb — his mobiliary goods, his chattels, his slaves, and even friends and vassals, and of course his widow. It required a strong reaction against this custom on behalf of the moralists to put an end to it. With the gipsies in England the custom of destroying all chattels on the grave has survived up to the present day. All the personal property of the gipsy queen who died a few years ago was destroyed on her grave. Several newspapers mentioned it at that time.

A number of valuable wdrks on the South Slavonian Zadruga, or "compound family," compared to other forms of family organization, have been published since the above was written ; namely, by Ernest Miler {Jahrbuch der Internationaler Vereinung fur verglei- chende Rechtswissenschaft und Volkswirthschaftslehre, 1897), and I. E. Geszow's Zadruga in Bulgaria, and Zadruga-Ownership and Work in Bulgaria (both in Bulgarian). I must also mention the well-known study of Bogisic (De la forme dite ' inokosna ' de la famille rurale chez les Serbes et les Croates, Paris, 1884), which has been omitted in the text.

The origin of the guilds has been the subject 01 many controversies. There is not the slightest doubt that craft-guilds, or "colleges" of artisans, existed in ancient Rome. It appears, indeed, from a passage in Plutarch that Numa legislated about them. " He divided the people," we are told, " into trades . . . ordering them to have brotherhoods, festivals, and meetings, and indicating the worship they had to accomplish before the gods, according to the dignity of each trade." It is almost certain, however, that it was not the Roman king who invented, or instituted, the trade-colleges — they had already existed in ancient Greece ; in all probability, he simply submitted them to royal legislation, just as Philippe le Bel, fifteen centuries later, submitted the trades of France, much to their detriment, to royal supervision and legislation. One of the successors of Numa, Servius Tullius, also is said to have issued some legislation concerning the colleges.^

Consequently, it was quite natural that historians should ask themselves whether the guilds which took ^ A Servio Tullio populus romanus relatus in censum, digestus in classes, curiis atque coUegiis distributus (E. Martin-Saint-Ldon, Histoire des corporations de metiers depuis leurs origines Jusqu'a leur suppression en 1791, etc., Paris, 1897. such a development in the twelfth, and even the tenth and the eleventh centuries, were not reviva^ls of the old Roman "colleges" — the more so as the latter, as seen from the above quotation, quite corresponded to the mediaeval guild.^ It is known, indeed, that cor- porations of the Roman type existed in Southern Gaul down to the fifth century. Besides, an inscription found during some excavations in Paris shows that a cor- poration of Lutetia nautce existed under Tiberius ; and in the chart given to the Paris "water-merchants" in 1 1 70, their rights are spoken of as existing ab antiquo (same author, p. 51). There would have been, there- fore, nothing extraordinary, had corporations been maintained in early mediaeval France after the barbarian invasions.

However, even if as much must be granted, there is no reason to maintain that the Dutch corporations, the Norman guilds, the Russian artdls, the Georgian amkari, and so on, necessarily have had also a Roman, or even a Byzantine origin. Of course, the intercourse between the Normans and the capital of the East- Roman Empire was very active, and the Slavonians (as has been proved by Russian historians, and especi- ally by Rambaud) took a lively part in that intercourse. So, the Normans and the Russians may have imported the Roman organization of trade-corporations into their respective lands. But when we see that the artil was the very essence of the every-day life of all the Russians, as early as the tenth century, and that this artdl, although no sort of legislation has ever regulated its life till modern times, has the very same features as the Roman college and the Western guild, we are still more inclined to consider the eastern guild as having an even more ancient origin than the Roman college. Romans knew well, indeed, that

1 The Roman sodalitia, so far as we may judge (same author, p. 9), corresponded to the Kabyle (ofs. their sodalitia and collegia were " what the Greeks called hetairiai" (Martin-Saint- L6on, p. 2), and from what we know of the history of the East, we may conclude, with little probability of being mistaken, that the great nations of the East, as well as Egypt, also have had the same guild organization. The essential features of this organization remain the same wherever we may find them. It is a union of men carrying on the same profession or trade. This union, like the primi- tive clan, has its own gods and its own worship, always containing some mysteries, specific to each separate union ; it considers all its members as brothers and sisters — possibly (at its beginnings) with all the consequences which such a relationship implied in the gens, or, at least, with ceremonies that indicated or symbolized the clan relations between brother and sister ; and finally, all the obligations of mutual sup- port which existed in the clan, exist in this union ; namely, the exclusion of the very possibility of a murder within the brotherhood, the clan responsi- bility before justice, and the obligation, in case of a minor dispute, of bringing the matter before the judges, or rather the arbiters, of the guild brother- hood. The guild — one may say — is thus modelled upon the clan.

Consequently, the same remarks which are made in the text concerning the origin of the village community, apply, I am inclined to think, equally to the guild, the art/l, and the craft- or neighbour-brotherhood. When the bonds which formerly connected men in their clans were loosened in consequence of migrations, the appearance of the paternal family, and a growing diversity of occupations — a new territorial bond was worked out by mankind in the shape of the village community ; and another bond — an occupation bond — was worked out in an imaginary brotherhood — the imaginary clan, which was represented : between two men, or a few men, by the " mixture-of-blood brother-

hood " (the Slavonian pobratimstvo), and between a greater number of men of different origin, i. e. origin- ated from different clans, inhabiting the same village or town (or even different villages or towns) — the phratry, the ketairiai, the amkari, the arUl, the guild. ^ As to the idea and the form of such an organization, its elements were already indicated from the savage period downwards. We know indeed that in the clans of all savages there are separate secret organizations of warriors, of witches, of young men, etc. — craft mysteries, in which knowledge concerning hunting or warfare is transmitted ; in a word, " clubs," as Miklukho-Maclay described them. These " mys- teries " were, in all probability, the prototypes of the future guilds.^

1 It is striking to see how distinctly this very idea is expressed in the well-known passage of Plutarch concerning Numa's legislation of the trade-colleges: — "And through this," Plutarch wrote, "he was the first to banish from the city this spirit which led people to say : ' I am a Sabine,' or ' I am a Roman,' or ' I am a subject of Tatius,' and another : ' I am a subject of Romulus ' "—to exclude, in other words, the idea of different descent.

2 The work of H. Schurtz, devoted to the " age-classes " and the secret men's unions during the barbarian stages of civilization (Altersklassen und Mdnnerverbdnde : eine Darstellung der Grund- hrmen der Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1902), which reaches me while I am reading the proofs of these pages, contains numbers of facts in support of the above hypothesis concerning the origin of guilds. The art of building a large communal house, so as not to offend the spirits of the fallen trees ; the art of forging metals, so as to conciliate the hostile spirits j the secrets of hunting and of the ceremonies and mask-dances which render it successful ; the art of teaching savage arts to boys ; the secret ways of warding off the witchcraft of enemies and, consequently, the art of warfare ; the making of boats, of nets for fishing, of traps for animals, and of snares for birds, and finally the women's arts of weaving and dyeing — all these were in olden times as many " artifices " and "crafts," which required secrecy for being effective. Consequently, they wefe transmitted from the earliest times, in secret societies, or " mysteries," to those only who had undergone a painful initiation. H. Schurtz shows now that savage life is honeycombed with secret societies and " clubs " (of warriors, of hunters), which have as ancient an origin as the marriage " classes " in the clans, and contain already all the elements of the

With regard to the above-mentioned work by E. Martin-Saint-Leon, let me add that it contains very- valuable information concerning the organization of the trades in Paris — as it appears from the Livre des mitiers of Boileau — and a good summary of informa- tion relative to the Communes of different parts of France, with all bibliographical indications. It must, however, be remembered that Paris was a " Royal city " (like Moscow, or Westminster), and that conse- quently the free mediaeval-city institutions have never attained there the development which they have attained in free cities. Far from representing " the picture of a typical corporation," the corporations of Paris, " born and developed under the direct tutorship of royalty," for this very same cause (which the author considers a cause of superiority, while it was a cause of inferiority — he himself fully shows in different parts of his work how the interference of the imperial power in Rome, and of the royal power in France, destroyed and paralyzed the life of the craft-guilds) could never attain the wonderful growth and influence upon all the life of the city which they did attain in North-Eastern France, at Lyons, Montpellier, Nimes, etc., or in the free cities of Italy, Flanders, Germany, and so on.

In a work on the mediaeval city {Markt und Stadt in ihrem rechtlichen Verkaltnis, Leipzig, 1896), future guild : secrecy, independence from the family and sometirnes the clan, common worship of special gods, common meals, jurisdiction within the society and brotherhood. The forge and the boat-house are, in fact, usual dependencies of the men's clubs ; and the " long houses" or "palavers " are built by special craftsmen who know how to conjure the spirits of the fallen trees.

Rietschel has developed the idea that the origin ot the German mediaeval communes must be sought in the market. The local market, placed under the protection of a bishop, a monastery or a prince, gathered round it a population of tradesmen and artisans, but no agricultural population. The sections into which the towns were usually divided, radiating from the market-place and peopled each with artisans of special trades, are a proof of that : they formed usually the Old Town, while the New Town used to be a rural village belonging to the prince or the king. The two were governed by different laws.

It is certainly true that the market has played an important part in the early development of all medi- aeval cities, contributing to increase the wealth of the citizens, and giving them ideas of independence ; but, as has been remarked by Carl Hegel — the well- known author of a very good general work on German mediaeval cities [Die Entstehung des deutschen St'ddtewesens, Leipzig, 1898), the town-law is not a market-law, and Hegel's conclusion is (in further support to the views taken in this book) that the mediaeval city has had a double origin. There were in it " two populations placed by the side of each other : one rural, and the other purely urban ; " the rural population, which formerly lived under the organization of the Almende, or village community, was incorporated in the city.

With regard to the Merchant Guilds, the work of Herman van den Linden [Les Glides marchandes dans les Pays-Bas au Moyen Age, Gand, 1896, in Recueil de travaux publids par la Facultd de Philosophie et Lettres) deserves a special mention. The author follows the gradual development of their political force and the authority which they gradually ac- quired upon the industrial population, especially on the drapers, and describes the league concluded by the artisans to oppose their growing power. The

idea, which is developed in this book, concerning the appearance of the merchant guild at a later period which mostly corresponded to a period of decline of the city liberties, seems thus to find confirmation in H. van den Linden's researches. The Report ot the Agricultural Commission of Netherlands contains many illustrations relative to this subject, and my friend, M. Cornelissen, was kind enough to pick out for me the corresponding pass- ages from these bulky volumes {Uitkomsten van het Onderzoek naar den Toestand van den Landbouw in Nederland, 2 vols. 1890).

The habit of having one thrashing-machine, which makes the round of many farms, hiring it in turn, is very widely spread, as it is by this time in nearly every other country. But one finds here and there a commune which keeps one thrashing-machine for the community (vol. I. xviii. p. 31). The farmers who have not the necessary numbers of horses for the plough borrow the horses from their neighbours. The habit of keeping one communal ox, or one communal stallion, is very common.

When the village has to raise the ground (in the low districts) in order to build a communal school, or for one of the peasants in order to build a new house, a bede is usually convoked. The same is done for those farmers who have to move. The bede ^ is altogether a widely-spread custom, and no one, rich or poor, will fail to come with his horse and cart. The renting in common, by several agricultural labourers, of a meadow, for keeping their cows, is found in several parts of the land ; it is also frequent that the farmer, who has plough and horses, ploughs the land for his hired labourers (vol. I. xxii. p. i8, etc.).