Chapter III

THE AGE OF HEROES AND GODS

1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE HEROIC AGE

The expression 'the age of heroes and gods' may meet with objection no less than may 'totemic age.' The latter has an air of strangeness, because the conceptions of totem and totemism, borrowed from modern ethnology, have as yet remained unfamiliar to historians, and especially to the historians of civilization. The former expression may be objected to on the ground that the conceptions 'heroes' and 'gods' are altogether too familiar to be extended beyond their specific meaning and applied to an entire age. The word 'hero' suggests to us perhaps the Homeric Achilles, or Siegfried of the Niebelungen saga—those mighty, victorious warriors of epic song who, as we have already seen, gradually evolved out of the heroes of primitive märchen. It is self-evident, however, that, when applied to a great and important period of culture, the expression 'hero' must not be limited to the narrow meaning which it possesses in hero-lore. True, we must not go so far as does Carlyle when, in his "Heroes and Hero Worship," he begins the race of heroes with Odin of the Northmen and ends it with Shakespeare and Goethe, thus extending the heroic age from prehistoric times down to the present. Nevertheless, if we would do justice to the significance of the conception 'heroic' as applied to an important period of human development, we must be permitted to include under the broader conception 'heroic age,' not merely the heroic hero but also the hero who has factored in the spiritual realm, as the founder of cities or states, or the creator of religions. These latter heroes were gradually evolved, in the course of political and religious development, out of the ancient epic heroes; in them, the heroic age continues its existence after the heroes of the powerful and crafty types have disappeared. In this broader significance of the word, a hero is any powerful individuality whatsoever, and the general characteristic of this new age, therefore, is the predominance of the individual personality. Externally, this expresses itself primarily in the fact that the age regards even all past events as the deeds of individual persons. Bound up with this is a progressive individualization of human personalities, and a constant refinement of the crude distinctions that characterize the tale of adventure and the older hero-lore.

The gods of this age are likewise patterned entirely after powerful human personalities. They are anthropomorphic in every respect—human beings of a higher order, whose qualities, though found only among men, are magnified to infinitude. Just as the hero is a man endowed with more than ordinary human capacities, so the god is a hero exalted above the measure of earthly heroes. This itself implies that the hero necessarily precedes the god, just as man antedates the hero. Any fairly detailed account of this period, therefore, must deal with the hero before considering the god. The god is created after the image of the hero, and not, as traditional mythology still believes, the hero after the image of the god. It would, indeed, be a strange procedure for man first to create the ideal conception of his god and only subsequently to transform this into human outlines, and thus produce the hero. In the advance from man to the anthropomorphic god, the hero would surely already have been encountered. This, of course, does not imply that gods may not occasionally be transformed into heroes; it simply means that in the development as a whole the hero must have preceded the god. The relation here is precisely the same as that found everywhere else in connection with the development and degeneration of mythological conceptions. The fact of sequence, however, must not be interpreted to mean that we can point to a time in which there were heroes but no gods. Hero and god belong together. Both reflect an effort to exalt human personality into the superhuman. In this process, no fixed line may be drawn separating the hero, whose activity still falls within the human sphere, from the god, who is exalted above it. In fact, the differences between hero and god are by no means merely quantitative, measurable in terms of the elevation above the plane of human characteristics; the differentiating marks are essentially qualitative. The hero remains human in all his thought and action. The god, on the other hand, possesses not merely human capacities raised to their highest power, but also characteristics which are lacking in man and therefore also in the hero. Especially noteworthy among the latter is the ability through his own power to perform magical acts, and thus to interfere at will in the course of nature as well as in human life. True, the hero of saga and poetry also employs magical agencies. The means of magic which he controls, however, have been bestowed upon him by some strange demoniacal being, either by one of those demons which, in the form of a man, an animal, or a fantastic monster, are recognized even by the early mythical tales as magical beings, or by a god, who, as such, combines the highest qualities of the hero with those of the demon. The conception of an anthropomorphic god, therefore, results from a fusion of hero with demon. Of these, the hero is a new creation, originating in the mental life of this later age. He was long foreshadowed, however, first by the animal ancestor (especially in so far as the latter brought blessings and good fortune), and then by the subsequent cult of human ancestors. But the figure of the hero is not completely developed until the human personality enters into the very forefront of mythological thought; then, through regular transitions, the value placed on personal characteristics is enhanced until the ideal of the hero is reached. Doubtless the hero may still incidentally be associated with the ancestor, yet personality as such has now come so to dominate the interest of the age that in comparison with it the genealogical feature is but secondary.

Not so with the demon-idea. Though it has come down from very remote times and has assumed many forms as a result of varying cultural conditions, the demon has always remained a magic being, arousing now hope, now fear and terror. This was its nature up to the very time when the ideal of the hero arose. This new idea it then appropriated, just as it did, in earlier times, the ideas of a soul that survives the deceased, of the totem animal, of the ancestor, and of other mythological figures. The very nature of the demon has always been constituted by such incorporated elements. From this point of view, the god also is only a new form of demon. In its earlier forms, however, as spirit-demon, animal-demon, and, finally, even as ancestor-demon, the demon was an impersonal product of the emotions, and possessed characteristics which underwent constant transformations. When it became a hero, it for the first time rose to the level of a personal being. Through the enhancement of the qualities of the hero it was then elevated into the sphere of the superhuman. Thus it came to constitute a human ideal far transcending the hero. This accounts for the uniqueness of the god-conception, and for the fact that, though the god assumes the essential characteristics of the demon, the two are nevertheless more widely distinct than were any of the earlier forms of demon conceptions from those that anteceded them. The rise of the god-idea, therefore, ushers in a new epoch of religious development. Just because of the contrast between personal god and impersonal demon, this epoch may be designated as that of the origin of religion, in the narrower and proper sense of the word. The various forms of pure demon-belief are preparatory to religion; religion itself begins with the belief in gods. The relation which the belief in demons sustains to the belief in gods is another evidence that hero and god must be grouped together, for there can be no clearly marked temporal difference in the origin of these two ideals of personality. Just as soon as the figure of the human hero arises, it assimilates the demon-conception, which was already long in existence and which continually underwent changes as a result of the various ideas with which it came into contact. Alongside of the being that arose from this fusion, however, there continued also the hero in his purity, as well as the demon, whose various forms were at most crowded into the background by the appearance of the gods. To however great an extent, therefore, the age of heroes and gods may introduce a completely new spiritual movement that proves fundamental to all future culture and religion, it nevertheless also includes all the elements of previous development. These elements, moreover, are not merely present in forms that have been altered and in part completely changed by the processes of assimilation; side by side with such forms, there are always also the original elements, which may be traced back to the earliest beginnings of mythological thought. The dominant factor determining the character of this new age, however, is the hero. The ideal of human personality which the hero engenders in the folk consciousness conditions all further development, and especially the origin of the god. For this reason the 'age of heroes and gods' might also, and more briefly, be called the heroic age.

As the direct incarnation of the idea of personality, it is the hero about whom the new development of myth and religion centres. Similarly, the hero also stands in closest relation to the transformations that occur in all other departments of human life. Enormous changes in economic conditions and in the forms of life dependent upon them, new social institutions, with their reactions upon custom and law, transformations and creations in all branches of art—all give expression to the new development upon which this age has entered. Here also, just as at the beginning of the anteceding age, there are numerous reciprocal relations between these various factors. The hero and the god cannot be conceived apart from the State, whose founding marks the beginning of this period. Custom and law are just as much results of the new political society as they are themselves essential factors in its creation. Neither the State nor the worship of gods protected by it could survive apart from the great changes in economic life that took place at the beginning of this period, and that were further established and perfected in the course of time. Thus, here also each element reinforces every other; all the factors of life are in constant interaction. At the beginning of the totemic period, as we have seen, it was the new creations of mythological thought that constituted the centre from which radiated all the other elements of culture. At the beginning of the age of heroes and gods it is the creative power of the religious consciousness whose activities most accurately mirror the various spiritual achievements of the period.

2. THE EXTERNAL CULTURE OF THE HEROIC AGE.

The heroic era is so comprehensive and comprises so large a part of human history that any attempt to arrive at even the barest outlines of its external culture makes it clear that this culture is even less unitary than is that of the preceding period. The differentiation of phenomena naturally increases with advancing development. Even the various forms of totemic culture manifest wide differences in detail; indeed, when taken as a whole, they represent distinct stages. When we come to the heroic age, however, whose beginning is practically coincident with the beginnings of history in the usual sense of the term, and which includes within itself a large part of the succeeding course of events, the multiplicity and diversity of the forms of culture are incomparably greater. Every nation has its particular heroes, even though there are also certain general hero-types which everywhere recur. Even more does each nation have its gods. Heroes and gods are ideals created in the image of men, and therefore they always reflect—if possible, in a heightened degree—the characteristic differences of peoples. Nevertheless, amid all these differences of times and peoples, there are certain constant features that distinguish the heroic period both from the preceding age and from the era that follows. Most important of all these features is the establishment of the State. It was a long step from totemic tribal organization to political institutions. In the surge and press of the folk migrations which occurred at the beginning of the heroic period, traces of the preceding tribal organization were still everywhere present. Tribes did not change suddenly into States. Nevertheless, along with the emergence of the heroic age and its concomitant phenomena, there was a noticeable tendency towards the formation of a political order. This development pursued different courses, depending on the character of the nations or of their heroes and gods. It is primarily the resultant differences in political organization which, when considered in connection with the parallel changes in mythological and religious development, clearly show that in this period, just as in the totemic age, all other aspects of culture were closely dependent upon mythological and religious ideas. 'Totemism' connotes not merely a complex of mythological beliefs in which a certain stage of culture had its setting, but also a unique form of tribal organization, which, in spite of many differences of detail, remained constant in its general features. Similarly, political society, in the original form in which it long survived, was closely bound up with the heroic age, even though the increasing differences between national cultures led, from the very outset, to a greater diversity of forms than were to be found in the case of totemism. In spite of these differences, however, the factor fundamental to political society remained the same. The formation of States was always conditioned by individual rulership. This itself is indicative of the character of the age as a whole: its typical expression is to be found in the personalities of heroes and of gods. Again it was the migrations and wars of peoples that brought about the dissolution of the old tribal organization and the creation of political society. But these migrations and wars were on an incomparably broader scale and had more intimate interconnections than had previously been the case. This gave them a correspondingly greater significance, both intensively and extensively. As a matter of comparison, we may refer to the migrations of the Malayan race during the totemic age. It would be difficult to conceive of more extensive migrations. But they took place gradually, in separate waves, and left no traces, for the most part, beyond changes in the physical characteristics and in the languages of peoples. These migrations, which frequently involved long voyages across the sea, were carried on by but small numbers of people, who set out from restricted groups. It cannot be doubted that these migrations exercised an influence on the character and the culture of the resulting mixed races. They were never able, however, completely to transform the culture as a whole. Even when these tribal migrations occurred in oft-repeated waves, they never resulted in more than such imperfect beginnings of a political organization as we find among the Polynesians or, in other parts of the earth, among many of the semi-cultural peoples of America and Africa.

Quite different are the folk migrations that occur at the very dawn of the history of the great cultural peoples. The difference between tribal and racial migrations is an important one. When a race migrates, it retains its peculiar characteristics, its traditions, its heroes, and its gods, and transplants these into the new territory. True, these various elements do not remain unchanged. They inevitably become fused with the culture of the original inhabitants, and it is from these fusions, when they are at all deep-going, that new peoples arise. None of the great cultural nations that mark the beginning of this age of heroes and gods, from the Babylonians down to the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans, is homogeneous. Indeed, recent Babylonian investigations have shown that the Semitic immigration into Babylon was preceded by that of other peoples who were probably of different origin—namely, the Sumerians. We know of the latter only through linguistic traces in Babylonian inscriptions, of which, however, the religious parts, especially, show that the Sumerians exercised a great influence upon later civilization. Similarly, the settlement of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans in the territory which they eventually occupied, followed upon great earlier migrations to these regions. The people that finally formed the Greek race left the mountain country of Thrace and Thessaly in prehistoric times; wandering towards the sea, they fused with the original inhabitants of the regions into which they entered. In view of these migrations of early history, the theory of the desirability of racial purity, which has recently been so ardently championed in many quarters, is scarcely tenable. Political organization, on the one hand, and mythology and religion, on the other, represent important creations which for the most part sprang into existence only in the wake of migration and of the resultant fusion of peoples of different races.

Though political organization has been mentioned as the first important feature distinguishing the heroic age from the preceding era, there is a second and not less significant differentia. This relates to the material conditions of life. Two things are of outstanding importance for the new culture. The first of these consists in what we ordinarily call agriculture—that is, the tilling of the soil by the aid of the plough, or, as it is therefore more properly called in contrast to the earlier hoe-culture, plough-culture. In addition, there is the breeding of domestic animals, particularly of food-supplying cattle, and, later, of sheep and goats.

It is even to-day widely believed that, of the various modes of procuring food, hunting came first. The hunter is thought to have been seized, one fine day, with an impulse to domesticate animals instead of hunting them. He tamed the wild creatures, and thus turned from a hunter into a nomad. In the course of time, the nomad is then supposed to have tired of his wandering life and to have settled down in permanent habitations. Instead of obtaining milk by herding his cattle, he hitched the ox to the plough, after having (with that wisdom and foresight which such theories always attribute to primitive man) invented the plough. This theory is an impossible fiction from beginning to end. It is just as intrinsically improbable as is the above-mentioned hypothesis that in prehistoric times the Australians invented totemic tribal organization and exogamy for the purpose of preventing the marriage of relatives. We have seen, on the contrary, that the prohibition of such marriages was a consequence of exogamy, and that the latter, in turn, was not a deliberate invention but the natural result of certain conditions inherent in the culture of the age. All these institutions were originally due to influences whose outcome could not possibly have been foreseen. The same is true of the subject under discussion. In the first place, the assumed order of succession of the three stages of life is contradicted by facts. It is hardly correct to speak of a hunting life which is not supplemented by a certain amount of agriculture in the form of hoe-culture—an industry which, as a rule, is carried on by the woman in the immediate vicinity of the hut. This primitive agriculture existed even at a very early age. We find it widely prevalent among the American aborigines, who possessed no domesticated animal whatever except the dog, and the dog, as was above observed, was never tamed at all, but domesticated itself at the very dawn of prehistoric times. The supposition that the nomadic life followed upon that of the hunter is impossible, in the second place, because the animals that are hunted are not identical with those that form the care of the nomad. Cattle were never objects of the chase; the closely related buffalo, on the other hand, was never domesticated, but has remained exclusively a game animal down to the present day. Game animals have never been domesticated and utilized for the purpose of supplying milk and drawing the plough. No doubt the domestic animals of the nomad at one time existed in a wild state. Wild cattle, of course, preceded tame cattle. But the latter did not develop from the former by the indirect way of the hunted animal. Nor does agriculture at all presuppose a nomadic life. There are vast stretches of the Old World, as, for instance, all of China, Indo-China, and Indonesia, where the production of milk was never engaged in but where agriculture in the form of plough-culture has existed, in part, since early times. Agriculture, however, involves the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen. These male cattle are castrated, usually when very young. They are thus made tractable, so that they may be hitched to the plough and used for agricultural purposes more easily than is possible in the case of bulls, which are never completely manageable. What, then, were the motives which led to the raising of cattle, an occupation which, in many places at least, is carried on solely in the interests of agriculture? What motives led to the castration of male cattle, a practice which everywhere obviously serves agricultural purposes?

The traditional mode of explanation would lead us to suppose that man foresaw the effects of castration, that he knew beforehand that if the bull were subjected to this operation he would become an animal fitted to draw the plough. The impossibility of this supposition is evident. Such an effect could be learned only from experience, prior to which, therefore, it could not have been known. The problem relating to the cultivation of the soil by means of the plough, therefore, divides into two questions: How may we account for the ox? How for the plough? These questions are closely related, and yet they lead us back to divergent explanations. For in all probability the plough was originally drawn by man. Moreover, the plough was not the first implement to be thus drawn; it was anteceded by the wagon. Even on the early Babylonian and Assyrian monuments there were figures of a wagon bearing either an image of a god or else the king or chief priest, both of whom were probably regarded as uniting in one person the function of their offices with that of representative of the deity. Thus, the question as to the origin of the plough carries us back directly to that of the origin of the wagon. Now, the earliest wagon had but two wheels; the four-wheeled wagon came as a later discovery or as an improvement. The two-wheeled wagon, however, presupposes the wheel. But how did the wheel come to be recognized as a useful object of locomotion? The first traces of a wheel or of wheel-like objects are to be found in the latter part of the stone age. A number of such objects have been discovered in Europe; in their centre is a hole, and there are spokes that radiate to the circumference. The fact that these wheels are of small size indicates that they may have been worn about the neck as amulets. But even in early culture the wheel was also put to an entirely different use. Widely prevalent over the earth and probably connected with ancient sun worship, is the custom of kindling a fire to celebrate the festival of the summer solstice. In ancient Mexico, tradition tells us, this fire was started by turning a notched disk of wood about a stake until the heat thus generated gave rise to fire—the same method of producing fire by friction that is still in use among primitive peoples. This fiery wheel was then rolled down a hill as an image of the sun, and later, when the custom had lost its original magical significance, as a symbol of the sun moving in the heavens. According to the report of W. Mannhardt, a remarkably similar custom existed in East Prussia not so very long ago. Perhaps the wheel that was worn about the neck as an amulet or article of adornment likewise had some connection with the idea that the sun was a celestial wheel rolling across the heavens. After the early sun cults had once created the rolling wheel in imitation of the sun and its movements, it was but a short step to the idea of securing regular, continuous movements by means of which some sort of work might be performed. An early application of this idea is to be found in the practice of spinning with distaff and whorl. This invention was credited even by the ancients to prehistoric times. Doubtless its origin belongs to the beginnings of the heroic age. This same early period, however, probably also used the wheel for transporting heavy articles. This was the original purpose of the one-wheeled barrow. It alone enabled the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians to overcome the difficulties of transporting by human agencies the mighty blocks of stone required for their temples and pyramids. From this it was not a far advance to the two-wheeled wagon. The barrow was pulled or pushed by men. The wagon, in contrast to the barrow, was apparently from the beginning an aristocratic mode of transit, never used by the common people. The two-wheeled wagon was in the first instance a vehicle of the gods. Later it served as the vehicle of the ruler, the terrestrial counterpart of the deity. Finally, the nobleman employed it in war, in going forth to battle. A vivid portrayal of battles in which such two-wheeled wagons played a part is presented in the Iliad. True, the wagon is here also, as a rule, only a means for carrying the hero to the scene of combat. The fighting itself is seldom done from it. Upon its arrival at the appointed place, the warrior dismounts, to try his strength, shield against shield, with his opponent. The general populace, however, always goes on foot.

This sketch gives us the main outlines of the history of the wagon. But how did the animal, first the ox and later the horse, come to be hitched to the wagon? Originally, the wagon bearing the image of the god was very probably drawn by men, as was likewise, in imitation of this, the chariot of the king. But the breeding of animals soon changed matters. Oxen were used for the purpose of drawing wagons much earlier than were horses. The horse did not appear until late in the history of civilization. There are no Egyptian pictures of horses that date back farther than the fifteenth dynasty, whereas those of cattle occur considerably earlier. In Oriental civilization, furthermore, the ass antedates the horse. In harmony with ancient custom, the ass even to-day continues, in the Orient, to be a favourite beast of burden as well as a riding animal. The horse seems to make its first appearance in history along with the Indo-Germanic tribes, who were probably indebted for it to the Turanian peoples of the Asiatic steppes. As a result of its superior speed, it then superseded its rivals in all the civilized countries of the ancient world. The Assyrian king went forth to the chase and the Homeric hero proceeded to battle in a chariot drawn by steeds. It was only later that the Greeks used the horse for saddle purposes, and not merely to draw the chariot. When this took place, equestrian combat came into favour among the aristocracy.

This development, however, was preceded not only by the taming of cattle but probably also by the use of the ox for drawing the wagon. How the latter came about may, of course, only be conjectured. The bull has remained unmanageable even to the present day; the attempt to hitch him to a wagon, therefore, must always have failed. The cow was not forced into this service—at least, not in those places where milk was valued. On the other hand, the castrated male animal is thoroughly suited to the task of drawing the wagon. It is stronger than the cow, and also more tractable. It is inconceivable, however, that castration was originally performed with the purpose of engendering these characteristics. Before there could be such a purpose, the results must already have been known—that is, the operation must already have been performed for other purposes. Eduard Hahn has offered a suggestion with reference to our problem. He has called attention to the ancient Asiatic cults of the Phrygian Cybele and the Syrio-Phœnician Astarte. These cults are similar to the vegetation festivals which, as was mentioned in the preceding chapter, may be found among the Pueblo peoples of America. Similar orgiastic phenomena recur wherever peoples are primarily concerned with agriculture and are anxious for the welfare of the grain. The beginnings of vegetation cults, found in the earlier period of hoe-culture, were succeeded by more developed deity cults, connected with plough-culture. The ecstatic motives associated with the tilling of the soil then extended their influence beyond the limits of vegetation cults proper and became universal elements of the deity cults. The powers shared by the numerous demoniacal beings of the more primitive cults were now centralized in a single goddess mother. The life-giving activity of the deity in connection with human procreation came to be of focal interest. The exaggerated development of cult ecstasy caused the orgy to become a form of self-mortification. The cult associates, especially the priests, lacerated and emasculated themselves in the fury of religious excitement. By becoming a permanent custom, this gave rise to a group of eunuchs consecrated to the service of the deity. These were doubtless the earliest eunuchs of history. In the guardians of Turkish harems and in the singers of the Sistine Chapel, survivals of these unrestrained cults of the past still exist. Now, when the group of emasculated priests paced beside the chariot of the goddess, they might easily have hit upon the idea of hitching a castrated animal to the wagon. But, however plausible this hypothesis may appear, in that it avoids the impossible assumption of an invention, it nevertheless leaves one question unanswered. Even though the castration of the priest may be understood as the result of the well-known effects of extreme religious excitement, the castration of the bull is not yet accounted for. Are we to suppose that the priest merely aimed to render the animal similar to himself? Neither ecstasy nor reflection could account for such a purpose. But there is another factor which has always been significant for cult, and which attained to increased importance precisely in the worship of the deity. I refer to sacrifice. In its highest stages, sacrifice assumes new forms, in that man offers either himself or parts of his own body, his blood, his hair, or a finger. A late survival of such sacrifices is to be found in a custom that is still prevalent in Catholic countries. Here it frequently occurs that a sick man lays a wax replica of the diseased part of his body upon the altar of the saint. This idea of sacrificing parts of one's own body is also exemplified in the self-emasculation practised by the Russian sect of Skopzi even in our own Christian age. Such sacrifice, moreover, may receive a wider application, so as to include, among the sacrificial objects, parts of the animal. Now at one time the kidneys with their connected organs were regarded as vehicles of the soul, and, as such, were sacrificed to the gods. The castration of the bull, therefore, may originally well have been regarded as the sacrifice of the most readily accessible of the favourite vehicles of the soul. Thus, it may have been in the case of the animal whose generative organs had been sacrificed to the deity that man first observed the change of characteristics which fitted the animal to be hitched to the chariot of the deity, and finally, through an extension of its sphere of usefulness, to draw the plough across the fields. This hypothesis, which presupposes the joint influence of orgiastic vegetation cults and ancient sacrificial usages, is, of course, not susceptible of positive demonstration. Nevertheless, to one concerned with the transition from ancient field cults to the agriculture of later times, the combination of conditions just indicated may reasonably be regarded as affording the basis of an hypothesis that is psychologically not improbable.

Whether the raising of the milch cow was coincident with the taming of the ox for the purposes of agriculture, and whether it came about as the result of a similar transformation of motives, it is hardly possible to determine. Though such changes are of more importance for the development of culture than are many of the campaigns and ancient folk wars of which history has preserved a record, no positive clue as to their origin has anywhere survived. All that we know with certainty is that the taming of the ox to draw the plough and the raising of the milch cow are not necessarily bound up with one another. For plough-culture and the milk industry are by no means always to be found together. In spite of his highly developed agriculture, the Chinaman loathes milk, whereas the Hindoo regards it as a valuable gift of civilization, prizing it not only because of the butter which he secures from it but especially as a food and as a sacrifice to the gods. The Israelites received the promise that Canaan was to be a land "that floweth with milk and honey." The latter expression suggests the cultural conditions of two widely different periods. Milk represents the most valuable product of later culture, while even primitive man regarded the honey which he gathered from the hives of wild bees as his most precious article of food.

Whatever may be the relation of the two factors in the domestication of cattle, whether the taming of the ox preceded the raising of cows or vice versa, the production of milk, at any rate, represents the more difficult and slower task. The taming of the ox is essentially an act that affects only the particular animal in question; even to-day it must be repeated in the case of every male calf; the inheritance of acquired characteristics is here not operative. The cow, just as all female mammals in their natural condition, produces very little milk except during the period of suckling, and then only so much as is necessary for the support of her young. Only through efforts continued throughout generations and as a result of the inheritance of acquired characteristics could she be brought to that tremendous over-production of her secretion of which she has become capable. In this case, therefore, there must from the very outset have been a systematic striving toward the desired goal. It is not absolutely essential to assume a change of motives such as occurred in the taming of the ox; from the very beginning there may have been an attempt to make personal use of the milk which Nature intended for the calf. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that religious motives here also played a part. This is made all the more probable by the fact that the cow, no less than the bull and the ox, was worshipped by many peoples even in the earliest period of deity cults. Such worship is particularly noteworthy, inasmuch as cattle were never favourite totem animals as was, for instance, the buffalo among the hunting peoples of the American prairies. Even though the general idea of animal cult was carried over from the totemic period to the beginnings of the agrarian deity cults, this animal cult was essentially changed, and it became associated with different objects. The latter are now no longer connected with the old totem beliefs that sprang, in part, from primitive animism; they are determined entirely by the conditions of a later culture, one of whose essential elements is the domestication of cattle. The two fundamental constituents of this later culture, agriculture and the milk industry, are not everywhere equally prized. Hence there is a difference as regards the relative importance of the male and the female member of the species in the cult worship that is accorded to the most valued domestic animal of the new economic era. In the Opis-worship of the Egyptians, as well as in the Persian cult of Mithra, the bull was regarded as an incarnation of the supreme deity. In many sections of Northern Europe it is even to-day customary, at harvest-time, to bedeck an ox with ribbons and wreaths of flowers and to lead him in a festal procession. On the other hand, we find that the Vedas and the Avesta, in harmony with the high value which the ancient Indian and Iranian peoples place on milk, extol the cow as the most sacred of animals. In the first stages of the domestication of cattle, it was possible to gain only a small supply of milk, since its over-production could be developed but slowly; just for this reason, however, milk was all the more valuable. This may probably also throw light on the high value which was long placed on butter as a sacrificial gift. The attempt to secure this valuable product for sacrificial purposes may then itself in turn have reacted upon the milk industry. Thus, the two great advances in material culture that attend the heroic age—the tilling of the soil with the plough and the systematic endeavour to secure milk and its products—seem to be, in part, directly due to, and, in part, closely bound up with, motives of cult. External culture and inner religious impulses have always attested themselves to be elements of a totality all of whose parts are interrelated.

Of the new forms of industry which thus arose, the cultivation of the soil by means of the plough led to a further important change. This change was just as much an effect of the new conditions of life as it was an expression of the altered spirit of the times. The guidance of the plough is a task which prevents the field work from being any longer done in common, as it was at the height of hoe-culture and during the time of the origin of the great vegetation festivals of totemism. The individual must guide his own plough. The appearance of plough-culture individualizes labour. Just as the individual comes to the fore in political development and is extolled in legend as the founder of cities and States, so also is it the individual who cultivates the land. This individualistic tendency also gradually makes itself felt in the raising of domestic animals. Plough-culture gives rise to private property as regards both the soil and its products.

Here again, however, the new social order influences economic life, and both together produce further changes in external culture. Individual activity receives emphasis not alone in the cultivation of the soil but also in warfare. Primitive man was not at all familiar with war. He slew his enemy from an ambush, attacking him but seldom in open combat. In the totemic age, when actual weapons of war first made their appearance, tribal war was a strife of many against many. As yet the individual combatants were not sharply differentiated from one another. The masses clashed with each other in unregulated strife, without definite leadership or fixed system. Only with the dawn of the political era do we find regulated single combat. Such combat then becomes the decisive factor in warfare. Consider the Homeric description of the battles before the walls of Troy. The battle is decided by champions (promachoi). These alight from their chariots of war and fight, man against man. The masses stand in the background, hurling lances or stones. Their actions, however, have little importance. They flee as soon as their champion falls. The result of the battle thus depends upon individuals and not upon the masses. The weapons also conform to these altered conditions. In earlier times, practically none but long-distance weapons were used—the sling, the hurled spear, or the bow and arrow, weapons similar to those employed in the chase. Single combat necessitated weapons of close range—the axe, held fast in the hand, the lance, used as a thrusting weapon, and the sword. Instead of the long shield, covering almost the entire body—shields such as even the Australians and also the earliest Greeks carried—a small round shield was demanded by reason of the use of swords in fighting. Of the various weapons found at the zenith of the heroic age, therefore, the sword is the most characteristic. It is also the most typical creation of this period. It obviously originated through a gradual shortening of the lance, thus becoming a weapon specifically adapted for individual combat at close range. Thus, the tendency toward the assertion of individual personality made itself felt in warfare and in weapons, just as it did in the State, in agriculture, and in the cult of personal gods.

Similar fundamental factors underlie the last great cultural change. This we have already touched upon in our discussion of agriculture, namely, the rise of private property. Following inevitably upon the appearance of private property are distinctions in wealth; these lead to differences in social position. In the totemic age, the contrasting conditions of rich and poor are, on the whole, not in particular evidence; even towards the decline of the period, indeed, they are only beginning to arise. Every man is the equal of the other. Only the chiefs and a small number of the older men have a superior rank. This rank, moreover, is not due to property but to the services which ability and experience enable them to render, or to the reverence which custom metes out to them. It is not until the heroic age that a propertied class becomes differentiated from a class owning little or nothing. This change is due in an important measure to the folk migrations that inaugurate the beginning of the new age. The propertied class derives from the victorious conquerors; the original inhabitants are without property. In the warfare connected with these migrations, slaves are captured; these are employed particularly in the cultivation of the soil. Thus, the more aristocratic are exalted by their greater possessions above those who have less property. As free individuals, however, both of these classes are superior to the slaves, who, similarly to the animals used in agriculture, are themselves regarded as the possession of the free and the rich.

Bound up with these social distinctions is the division of labour which now arises. The landowner no longer himself manufactures the tools which he needs or the weapons with which he goes to war. A class of artisans is formed, consisting partly of those who have little property, and partly of slaves. This differentiation of labour leads to two phenomena which long continue to influence the development of culture. I refer to trade and colonization. The former consists in the transmission of the products of labour; the latter, in the migration of a part of the people itself into distant places, where the same conditions that led to the founding of the mother State result in daughter States. In the totemic age, there were no colonies. Extensive as were the wanderings of the Papuans, the Malays, the Polynesians, and of some of the American and African tribes, these peoples never established colonies; moreover, the group which settled in distant places always lost its connection with the mother group. True, new living conditions were sought and found, and, through mixture with the native populations, new races were produced. Nevertheless, it was not until the political age that those parts of a particular people which settled down in foreign lands continued to retain a consciousness of connection with the mother race.

Of the two above-mentioned elements of the newer culture, commerce naturally preceded colonization. Of all civilized peoples, the Semitic race was the first to open up great channels of trade. Phœnician commerce dates back to the earliest records of history. Even the Mycenian graves of Greece contain gold jewelry of Phœnician workmanship. Spacially, the trade relations of the ancient Phœnicians extended over the whole of the known Occident. It is characteristic of the Semitic race, however, that they rarely undertook actual colonization. Trade and all that is connected with it, the industrial ardour necessary to supply the objects of trade and to exchange them for grain and other natural products, has always been their chosen sphere. The Indo-Germanic races, on the other hand, have naturally inclined to colonization from early times on. In the foremost rank were the Greeks, with their colonies in Thrace, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, and Sicily. These colonial groups, moreover, always retained their connection with the mother people. Thus, the earliest culture of the Greeks was that of the colonies in Asia Minor. Later, the colonies of southern Italy exercised a strong reaction on the mother country in science and art. It was not until relatively late that the highest cultural development of the mother country followed upon that of these outposts of Greek culture.

3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL SOCIETY.

The fundamental characteristics of totemic society appear to be purely a product of nature. This is especially true of totemic tribal organization. Its simple regularity and the constant recurrence of essentially the same characteristics are the natural result of original conditions of life that were universally prevalent. A horde split up into two halves. In the simplest cases, such as we have noticed in our account of the Australians, tribal organization remained limited to this dual division. The condition that brought about this organization arose as soon as a horde that spoke the same language spread out over a fairly broad territory. The same process of division might then repeat itself in the case of each of the two halves. This gave rise to a clan organization of four or eight divisions, as found among most of the Australian tribes, and frequently also in Melanesia. Such an organization was developed also by the original inhabitants of North America, although the totemic basis here degenerated and became essentially an external form. Totemic tribal organization is unquestionably a phenomenon that arises with immanent necessity; indeed, one might almost say that its appearance involves no co-operation on the part of man himself. The division takes place of itself; it is a result of the natural conditions underlying the propagation and growth of society.

From the very beginning of the heroic age on, the development of political society gave rise to phenomena that were fundamentally different from those of earlier times. The irreconcilability of this fact with the view, still held by historians and philosophers, that the State represents the earliest form of an ordered community life, is evident. Such theories were possible only when the whole of totemic culture was as yet a terra incognita. Totemic tribal organization cannot possibly be interpreted as an incomplete and undeveloped form of the State. Rather is it true that totemic and political societies are completely different in kind. Essentially different characteristics and conditions of origin demarcate them from one another, even though there are certain hybrid forms, representing primarily a partial survival of older tribal customs within the newly established political society. Now, in so far as mental history always involves a regular order of development, one would, of course, be justified in maintaining that human society also necessarily eventuates in the State—that is, in a political society. Indeed, this may perhaps be the meaning of Aristotle's statement that man is a "political animal." This statement may be interpreted to refer to a predisposition rather than to an inherited characteristic. Nevertheless, Aristotle's view that the State gradually developed out of the family and the village community is in contradiction with the actual facts. To read back a tendency toward political development into the very beginnings of human society, moreover, results in a failure to give proper emphasis to those essential differences which distinguish the great periods of this development—differences which at the crucial points assume the form of antitheses. Furthermore, we must not overlook the fact that there are peoples who have even as yet not progressed beyond totemic tribal organization and who will very possibly never advance to the formation of a State, particularly in case this depends upon their own initiative. On the other hand, it is doubtless to be assumed that those peoples who later acquired a political organization at one time possessed a totemic tribal structure. The higher stage of political organization, however, obviously differs fundamentally from that which preceded it. The older motives have been superseded by such as are connected with the great folk migrations and tribal fusions, and with the changes consequent upon them. True, when the time was ripe, these migrations and fusions of peoples came to pass with the same necessity as did the original division of the primitive horde into two halves. Nevertheless, a new set of conditions became operative. These, of course, arose in a regular course of development out of the most primitive modes of life, and yet they were not directly derived from them. The creative power characteristic of all mental activity here manifested itself, not in the performance of miracles, but in a constant engenderment of new motives out of the interaction of existing motives with changing external conditions of life. In consequence of this constant change of motives and of existing conditions, even totemic culture made numerous attempts in the direction of political organization. Such steps were taken particularly by the semi-cultural peoples of America, who possess a relatively high civilization. It is precisely in the case of these peoples that it is instructive to notice the contrast between this political tendency and the original tribal organization.

The difference between the two fundamental forms of society, the totemic and the political, is most strikingly evident in the case of their most external characteristic—namely, in the numbers according to which society as a whole, as well as in its parts, is organized and divided. These numbers are the expression of inner motives; hence they form a basis from which we may draw conclusions concerning the latter. In the case of totemic tribal organization, these motives are apparently very simple; natural expansion over a broader territory leads to separation into groups, and this of itself gives rise to the customary division into two, four, and eight parts. How different and more complicated from its very beginnings is the organization of political society! Here also the development proceeds according to law, and yet there is not a constant recurrence of the same motive as is in the case of totemic tribal organization. On the contrary, we find a continuous fluctation between contradictory phenomena, and the frequent appearance of new motives. Early, and still partly legendary, tradition tells us of an organization of society on the basis of the number twelve. This mode of organization seems to have emanated from the Babylonians. They were the people who first attempted to govern human affairs in accordance with celestial phenomena. These they observed, not in the unsystematic, imaginative, mythological manner of the natural peoples of Polynesia and America, but with the aid of astronomical instruments. True, the science of the Babylonians was also still based on mythological foundations. These mythological features, however, were combined with the idea of an all-embracing, divine rule of law. The endeavour to find this law and order in the starry sky, the greatest and most sublime sight that the human eye may behold, resulted in observations that were scientific and exact. Thus, the union of the two ideas led with a sort of inner necessity to the acceptance of the number twelve as a norm. The application of this norm to human relations was a direct result of the belief that it was of divine origin. The Babylonian calendar, whose fundamental principles, in spite of numerous reforms, have retained their authority even down to the present, was the first to emphasize the principle of bringing the courses of the sun and moon into an ordered numerical relation for the purpose of reckoning time. Taking as their point of departure the position of the sun at the vernal equinox, and following the movements of the moon until the sun returned to the same position, the Babylonians found that twelve revolutions of the moon were equivalent to one of the sun. While this observation is in reality, of course, only approximately true, to the first astronomers it might have appeared sufficiently exact to be regarded as the law of a divine world order. Thus, the year came to be divided into twelve months; and, since the moon presents four phases in each month, first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and new moon—an observation which long antedates astronomical calculation—the month was at once divided into four parts. Since the month has approximately twenty-eight days, the result was a week, comprising seven days. This number, therefore, was not, as has sometimes been erroneously assumed, derived from the seven planets. Rather is it true, conversely, that the number of the planets was, with a certain arbitrariness, first fixed at seven after this number, as well as twelve, had come to be regarded as sacred, because of its relation to the movements of the sun and moon. These numbers were believed to be written by the gods themselves in flaming letters on the sky. To the Babylonian, the sky furnished a revelation of the laws that should govern terrestrial life. The number twelve, especially, was adopted as the basis of the organization of human society. Of this oldest form of division, however, only meagre and occasional survivals have remained. We may refer to the legendary twelve tribes of pre-exilic Israel—later a source of much difficulty to Talmudic scholars, inasmuch as these tribes are not to be found in history—and also to the twelve gods of Greece, the twelve Apostles, etc. But the number twelve has not merely left its traces in legend; it has also inscribed itself in the records of history. Thus, the Athenian population originally comprised twelve divisions, there being four clans (phyles), each of which was composed of three phratries. Similarly, the colonial territory of the Greeks in Asia Minor is said to have included twelve Ionic cities. Moreover, even in later times, the Amphictyonic League, which undertook the protection of the Delphic oracle, consisted of twelve amphictyons, though this, it is true, was also connected with the division of time, each of the twelve tribal groups being entrusted with the guardianship of the shrine for one month in the year. With few unimportant exceptions, however, the number twelve, which was at one time probably very widely regnant, has lost its influence. Its place in the organization of society as well as in the regulation of other aspects of human life has been taken by a numerical system that still dominates our entire culture—the decimal system. Even prior to the age of Columbus, the decimal system made its appearance in certain more civilized parts of the Western world where the duodecimal system was never known. That the former originated independently in different places, is rendered all the more likely by the fact that even primitive man used his ten fingers as an aid in counting, in spite of the fact that he had not as yet formed words for numbers greater than three or four. But, however natural this method of counting may be, its application to the organization of the group and the division of peoples nevertheless represents a deliberately adopted plan. If possible, this is even more true here than in the case of the duodecimal system. We are now face to face with the wide difference that separates political society from totemic tribal organization. In developing on the principle of dual division, the latter resembles a natural process which runs its own course apart from any operation of conscious intention, even though directly influenced, of course, by the general conditions of human life. The organization of society according to the number ten, on the other hand, can be interpreted only as an intentional act. Hence history not infrequently brings this form of organization into direct association with the names of individual lawgivers, with Clisthenes of Athens or Servius Tullius of Rome. No doubt, a basis for this new order had been prepared by the general conditions of a society which had progressed beyond the totemic stage. Its systematic introduction, however, and the series of decimal subdivisions that ensued, are only conceivable as a legislative act emanating from a personal will. In the formation of social groups, no less than in the classification and enumeration of external objects of nature, there may at times have been some vacillation of choice between the duodecimal and the decimal systems. In its application to human society, however, the decimal system finally prevailed. Indeed, the simple means of counting afforded by our ten fingers supplanted the system suggested by the firmament in every field of use, except in connection with celestial phenomena themselves and with the reckoning of time, which was directly based on the observation of these phenomena. That the victory of the decimal principle was due merely to the practical necessity of choosing the principle that was simplest and most convenient, is shown by the fact that ten was never a sacred number, as was twelve. It has a purely terrestrial and human origin. In the field of the practical necessities of life, man was victorious over the gods. Perhaps, therefore, the organization of society on the decimal principle reflects also the triumph of the secular State over theocracy. The decimal principle likewise exercised a certain influence upon the division of time, and it is surely not accidental that such influence coincides with epochs that are strongly characterized by a secularization of human interests. As early as the sixth century B.C., the great political organizer of Athens, Clisthenes, made an attempt to divide the year into ten months instead of twelve. The attempt miscarried, just as did the analogous one on the part of the first French Republic to introduce a week of ten days. As a matter of fact, objective measurements of time are derived from the heavens and not from man. On the other hand, our measurement of terrestrial spaces and our grouping of populations depend entirely upon ourselves, and therefore naturally conform to human characteristics. In these cases, it is the decimal system that is used. In view of the fact that the number ten was deliberately adopted, this number has been thought to represent an idea that emanated from a single source. Since the organization effected by Clisthenes and that of Servius Tullius in Rome fall approximately within the same century, it has been believed that in these cases, especially, we may assume this fundamental idea of division to have been borrowed. The very extensive distribution of the decimal system, however, militates against the probability of this supposition. Thus, the Book of Exodus no longer speaks of the legendary twelve tribes of Israel but tells of only ten tribes. We likewise hear of groups of one hundred, and of more extensive groups consisting of one thousand. These divisions also recur among the Germanic peoples, and in the far-distant realm of the Peruvian Incas. Among the latter, however, there are also distinct traces of a totemic tribal organization that antedated the invasion of the Incas. This was the foundation upon which the Inca kings and their officials finally reared an organization consisting of groups of ten, one hundred, and one thousand—indeed, the latter were even brought together to form groups of ten thousand. In certain cases, such systems may perhaps have been introduced from without or may, in part, have been acquired through imitation. Nevertheless, the supposition that they all emanated from a single region is doubtless just as improbable as is the view that the decimal system in general had but a single origin. This new grouping of the population is closely bound up with the conditions of political society. It is dependent upon two motives, which, though not universally operative at first, became so the very moment that political society took its rise. The first motive is of a subjective nature. It consists in an increased facility in the use of the decimal mode of counting, as a result of which larger groups, consisting of multiples of ten, are formed: besides the single group of ten, it must have become possible to conceive of groups of one hundred, one thousand, and, in rare cases, even of one hundred thousand. The other motive is objective in character. There are changes in the external conditions of life such as to demand more comprehensive and at the same time more highly organized divisions than prevailed in the natural tribal organization of the preceding age. In two distinct directions does the decimal system prove readily applicable. One is in the distribution of landed property. With the appearance of plough-culture, land gradually came to be largely converted into personal property. It was all the more necessary, therefore, for the individual to unite with others for the sake of protection and aid. Thus arose the mark-community. This naturally centred about that part of the territory which, because it was not put under the plough but was reserved for common use as well as common care, temporarily remained common property—namely, the pasture and woodland. Thus, the mark-community was inevitable: it resulted from the new method of cultivating the soil, which brought with it a combination of personal property with common ownership. The size of the community was, of course, determined by the relation which these two forms of ownership sustained to each other, being dependent upon the fact that the amount of common property had to correspond with the number of individual owners who shared its use. The right proportion of these two sorts of property could be determined only by experience and reflection. Once ascertained, it was but natural to adopt this proportion more generally, in connection with more extensive groups of people. Here the decimal organization into groups of tens and hundreds, to which subjective influences naturally tended, promised to be convenient also from the standpoint of objective conditions.

Independently of other factors the mark-community might have permitted certain diversities in size. The groups were rendered uniform, however, through the influence of another organization, whose divisions, on the one hand, were necessarily identical with the mark-communities but, on the other hand, possessed by their very nature a strong inherent tendency toward regularity of size. I refer to the military organization, which was created by the political society in the interest of self-protection. In the early part of the heroic period, the individual champion was doubtless of such pre-eminent importance that the masses formed but a somewhat unorganized background. Homer presents such a picture, though his account is perhaps not so much a faithful representation of actual conditions as the result of the individualizing tendency of poetic narrative. But just as the masses very soon gain greater prominence in political life, so also do they in warfare. This encourages tactical organization. At this stage of political and military development, therefore, companies of one hundred, and soon afterwards groups of one thousand, are formed, and are organized as the chief divisions of the army. That these groups be always of approximately equal size is required by military tactics; that the group of one hundred is the tactical unit of which the other divisions are composed, is due to the circumstance that such a group is not too large to permit of being directed by a single leader; that the number is an even one hundred results solely from the tendency toward decimal enumeration. Since the political society is composed of individuals who are, as a rule, both mark-associates and companions in war, the two groups coalesce. The distribution of property and territorial and military organization are the determining factors in political society.

Political society thus acquires a new basis. The conditions determining its character are very different from those that underlie totemic tribal organization. Quite naturally, therefore, the tribal system disappears with the rise of the State; it is at best but fragments of it that survive in names, cult-alliances, or in bits of custom. On the other hand, the new organization exercises an influence upon all the relations of life. In part, it effects changes in existing institutions; in part, it creates new institutions, which unite to give the political age its characteristic stamp. We have spoken of the peaceful arts of agriculture, which provide for the maintenance of society, and of the military organization, reared upon agriculture to assure safety and protection from without. There are primarily three additional features that characterize political society, especially at its inception. The first of these is a reorganization of the family. The other two are genuinely new creations, if we except certain sporadic beginnings that occur in the transitional culture. They consist, on the one hand, in the differentiation of classes and of occupations—both of which arise in one and the same course of development—and, on the other, in the foundation of cities. Doubtless this order of sequence also approximately indicates the successive steps in the establishment of the new political organization. The reorganization of the family inaugurates this development; it is terminated by the founding of cities, for cities are the centres from which the management of the State is conducted and which mediate intercourse between the separate regions; following upon the former and preceding the latter, is the differentiation of classes and of occupations—a result of property conditions and of military organization.

4. FAMILY ORGANIZATION WITHIN POLITICAL SOCIETY.

Wherever primitive man has been protected against foreign influences, as we have seen, he apparently always lives in monogamy. This mode of marriage is continued in the totemic age, and is the fundamental mode from which all others are deviations. These deviations we found to be the two forms of polygamy—polyandry and polygyny. In the presence of these various marriage practices, firmly established family bonds are impossible. Striking evidence of the recedence of the family as compared with the social bond, is offered by the men's club, that widely prevalent institution of the totemic age. True, the individual member of the men's club may have his own wife who lives in her particular hut, but there is no common life of husband and wife such as is essential for a true family. In certain cases, of course, marriage conditions approximate somewhat more closely to a true family life, yet the development is hindered by the overshadowing polygyny. But the beginning of the political age marks the rise of a new form of monogamy. The enlarged monogamous family, the so-called ancient or joint family, makes its appearance. The joint family, which is characteristic of the heroic era, takes the place of the clan. Though the latter also survives for a time, it more and more loses its importance and finally disappears altogether. Now the clan, as well as the joint family, is composed of individuals of the same ancestry—that is, of blood relations, in the wider sense—even though, in exceptional cases, it also includes members of other clans or even tribal strangers. The recedence of the clan in favour of the joint family must therefore be regarded as a process in which a limited number of closer blood relatives separate from the clan and gradually attain the dominant influence within society. Such a development presupposes first of all a sharper demarcation of the individual family. Hence the joint family directly impresses one as being an extension of the individual family. As a rule, for example, a joint family includes three generations: father, son, and grandchild. This series of generations terminates with the third, because the oldest male member retains the authority over the joint family only so long as there is no generation younger than grandchildren. Though a great-grandfather is honoured as the oldest member of the family, the authority over the joint family passes down to the son who has become a grandfather. Moreover, nature allows such cases as this but rarely. The life-span of three generations is approximately a century; and the average life of man is such that it happens but seldom that those who are living at any one time will outspan a century. Thus, the fact that the ancient family comprised three generations may be due to the natural limit of life, which does not seem to have changed essentially since the beginnings of civilization. The family organization under discussion, therefore, is characterized, in the first place, by monogamy; secondly, by the dominance of the man within the single family; and thirdly, by the inclusion of three generations under the authority of the oldest member of the family. This third characteristic has frequently caused the typical joint family to be called the 'patriarchal family.' Since it was true even of the clan that the older men exercised the decisive influence, the clan may be regarded as preparing the way for a patriarchal order. Such clan alliances, for example, as the Germanic kinship groups, in which the fact of the blood relationship of the members receives particularly strong emphasis, form a sort of transition between the clan and the joint family. In the joint family, it is no longer the older generation as such that is dominant, but the oldest individual. This change, as a result of which authority becomes vested in an individual, is paralleled by that which leads to individual rulership within the State. Thus, totemic tribal organization is doubly exposed to disintegration, from below and from above. On the one hand, the patriarchal joint family undermines the leadership of the clan-elders. On the other hand, the clans, together with the tribes whose divisions they form, are shorn of their power; they become fused into one group which, with the rise of political society, passes under the rulership of a single chieftain. It is particularly important to notice that, when the joint family emerges and clan organization is consequently dissolved, one of the most important functions of the more restricted clan alliances, so far as concerns the inner life of society, passes from the clan to the joint family. I refer to blood-revenge. Not until it underwent many changes did retribution come to be an affair of the State. Thus, the patriarchal family brings to completion a twofold series of changes, whose gradual beginnings may be discerned as early as the previous age. These are, in the first place, the displacement of maternal descent by paternal descent, and, secondly, the development of chieftainship. The latter at once concludes and annuls totemic tribal organization. The motives to the former show how untrue to the real nature of the difference between the two social institutions it is to speak of the contrast between mother-right and father-right, or even between maternal rule and paternal rule, instead of referring to the transition as one from maternal descent to paternal descent. Mother-right is to be found at most in a limited sense, as applying to certain rights of the kinship community and, connected with these, at a later time, to the inheritance of property; mother-rule never occurs, or at most is an abnormal and exceptional phenomenon having scarcely any connection with maternal descent as such. The motives to maternal descent, as we have seen, are totally unrelated to the question of dominance within the family; they are the direct result of a separation of the sexes, which manifests itself likewise in the men's clubs. Paternal descent, on the other hand, is from the very outset based on paternal rule. In the form of father-right, paternal rule prevails even in the case of the primitive monogamous family. Its original source is the natural physical superiority of man; later, it derives its main strength from the fact—reflected also in the origin of chieftainship—that the general affairs of peace, as well as of war with hostile tribes, become subject to the authority of leaders. This latter factor comes to reinforce the former at that stage of development, particularly, which is characterized by the dissolution of totemic institutions and the re-emergence of the monogamous family. It is this change, together with the growing influence of chieftainship, that marks the beginning of the political age. Thus, the restoration of the monogamous family came as a result of political organization. The general course of development was the same everywhere, though the particular steps varied greatly. It was especially in connection with the rise of the patriarchal joint family, which is intermediate between the kinship group and the individual family, that obstructing influences sometimes manifested themselves. In such cases, the course of development was at once deflected directly towards the individual family. A patriarchal family organization of a sharply defined character appeared very early among many of the Semitic tribes, particularly among the Israelites. Of the Indo-Germanic peoples, it was especially the Romans who long preserved the patriarchal system; among the Greeks and the Germanic peoples, it had already disappeared in early times in favour of the single family. That which preserved the joint family was probably the force of tradition, coupled with reverence of age; the single family reflects a sense of freedom on the part of individuals. This brings out clearly the essential difference between the original monogamy, which was due to natural instinct and the simple conditions of primitive life, and the monogamy that was reinstituted as a result of the new tendencies of political society. In the former case, no progress was made beyond the natural starting-point, namely, the single family; in the latter case, the joint family mediated the transition between the dissolution of clans and the establishment of political society. Inasmuch as the acts of primitive man were largely determined by instincts, the original monogamy is not to be interpreted as conformity to a norm. The reason for the almost universal occurrence of monogamous marriage is to be found in the uniformity of the conditions of life and of the social impulses. The monogamy of the political age, on the other hand, is confronted by all those conflicting tendencies which had previously given rise to the various polygamous marriage-unions of totemic society. One of these modes of marriage especially, namely, polygyny, finds favourable conditions of development in the new political order. It receives fresh impetus as a result of that very dominance of man which brought about the transition from the maternal descent of earlier times to paternal descent. Polyandry and group-marriage, on the other hand, have by this time disappeared, either entirely or, at least, with rare exceptions. Moreover, the character of polygyny has changed. This is apparent from the distinction between chief wife and secondary wife—a distinction which has, indeed, an analogy in certain phenomena of the totemic period, but which, as a result of the conditions of public life, now rests upon an entirely different basis. The chief wife is taken from one's own tribe; the secondary wife belongs to a strange tribe, being, in many cases, a slave captured in war. Thus, these changes in polygyny reflect the warlike character of the age, as well as a growing tendency toward a return to monogamy. On the other hand, however, we also discern certain tendencies of a retrogressive nature. These occur particularly within Islamitic culture, whenever the difference between chief and secondary wives is either annulled or is subordinated to the will of the husband. Such deviations from the general trend of development are usually attributed to the influence of personalities. It is not impossible, however, that they are due in this case to the fact that Islamism spread to peoples of totemic culture. But in other departments of life also, remnants and traces of totemic culture have passed down to the heroic era. A striking example appears in the case of the Spartan State. The fact that the men lived in the city, engaged in military drill and political affairs, while the women, together with the slaves, cultivated the fields outside of the city, clearly betrays the influence of the ancient institution of the men's club.

5. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF CLASSES.

We have seen that the family assumes a new status within political society. It comes to be a compact unit, contrasting markedly with the groups composed of the same sex—in particular, the men's clubs—that dominated the preceding period. The differentiation of classes was a no less potent factor in the development of political society. Its beginnings, no doubt, go back to the declining period of totemic tribal institutions, but only in the political age does it become an important influence in social organization. This is due to two conditions, which are themselves the direct result of the folk migrations that mark the beginning of the political age. The first of these conditions consists in changes affecting property rights; the other, in the subjection of the native populations by the more energetic immigrants. The origin of property, as is well known, is even to-day generally traced, from an abstract juristic point of view, to the occupancy of an ownerless piece of land. This theory, however, is too abstract to be generally true. Above all, it presupposes the existence of ownerless land. But this is seldom to be found. Even when a migrating people occupies new lands, it, as a rule, conquers a territory that was previously in the possession of other tribes. If, therefore, we have in mind the sort of property that was most significant for the development of political culture, we should trace its origin to an expropriation of earlier owners rather than to an occupation of ownerless land. Contradicting the abstract theory, moreover, is the fact that it is not the individual who becomes the owner of property through such occupation, but the entire tribe, the people that has immigrated and has dispossessed the original inhabitants. Property, therefore, was originally common property. True, even in early times, it was no longer all of the land that was held in common ownership. Nevertheless, the conditions of ownership that have emerged in the course of the development of political society give unmistakable evidence of having originated in common ownership. Even up to fairly recent times, woodland and meadow have remained, either entirely or in part, common property; usually there is also a special temple-property set apart for purposes of cult. Everything goes to show that these cases are to be regarded as remnants of a common property that was at one time more comprehensive, and not as the result of joining pieces of property that were at one time owned by individuals. The latter hypothesis is contradicted by the whole direction of development of private property. Interacting with changes in property rights are racial differences. The conquering immigrant peoples subjugate the native races or crowd them back. All the cultural peoples that possess a political organization are the product of folk mixtures. The subjugation of an original population may lead to varying results, depending on the racial difference between the peoples involved. If this difference is very great and the numerical relation makes the absorption of the one by the other impossible, there develops a distinction of castes, as in India, where the lower castes are clearly distinguishable from the higher, even as to physical characteristics. The situation is radically different where there is less divergence between the two populations. In such cases, racial distinctions do not occur, or at least only to a small extent; in their stead, we find differences with respect to property and power. The conquering race becomes a privileged class; those who are subjugated form a class of dependents who possess fewer rights. There is no impassable barrier between the two classes, however, as there is in the caste system. The more a fairly unitary folk-type emerges from the racial fusions, and the more other factors than descent come into prominence—such as common interest in internal order and external defence, or a remarkable personal ability on the part of individual leaders of the lower classes—the greater the tendency, on the one hand, towards the abolition of traditional differences, and, on the other, towards an increased recognition of personal achievement as the basis of social standing. Such social struggles as occurred in the history of Greece and Rome from their early days on, are particularly illuminating as regards this point, for they exhibit clearly the motives that were originally involved—motives that later everywhere become more complicated.

From the very outset these motives exert a potent influence on property relations. The occupied territory first becomes the common property of the separate divisions of the immigrant tribe. The individual, however, vies with his tribal associates for the possession of the territory, and the new agricultural conditions connected with the introduction of cattle and of the plough favour division of the land. In addition to the superior ability of an immigrant race, it is its superior civilization that assures to it the supremacy over the native races. This superior civilization, however, involves a strong tendency toward individual industry, and thus toward the differentiation of personal property from common property. The success which the individual owner enjoys in his labour develops in him a consciousness of freedom, and this leads him to compete with his tribal associates both in the acquisition of property and in the attainment of power over the native population. Thus, the division of common property is succeeded by an inequality of personal property—an inequality which, from the very beginning, shows an unconquerable tendency to increase. This tendency is fostered by the fact that political organization makes it possible for individuals to exercise a certain control over common affairs. Property considerations become more and more decisive as regards class distinctions. In addition to descent from privileged ancestors, it is property that gives the individual his social position. An individual belonging to a people that at one time formed a class without rights, may rise to the ranks of the privileged classes, or, if the significance attached to birth continues to be maintained, he, together with those like him, may at any rate attain to an independent influence in public life. Property, however, not only affords increased rights; it also entails greater obligations. The wealthy possess a better military equipment, and are therefore enlisted in the more efficient, but also the more dangerous, divisions of the army. They are entrusted with leadership in war as well as with authority in times of peace. Individual initiative makes itself felt, and this, coupled with the opportunity for the exercise of such initiative, causes political development to appear, from an external point of view, as a series of separate voluntary acts on the part of individual personal leaders. This, however, is not the real truth of the situation so far as its inner motives are concerned. The heroic age is the epoch in which the action of the masses, impulsive and under the sway of environmental conditions, is more and more subjected to the direction of individual leaders who have become clearly conscious of the tendencies inherent in the social body. For this reason the heroic age is pre-eminently the era of personalities. Just as the personal god is dominant in mythology and religious cult, so the human personality plays the leading rôle in the State, and particular, outstanding individuals determine the conditions that regulate external life.

As personality comes into prominence, however, conflicts inevitably arise between individuals who feel themselves called to be the vehicles of this personal power. Political society was not only created by war, but it also continues to remain a theatre where conflicts are fought with changing fortunes. Together with the effort to abolish class distinctions, moreover, there gradually comes a demand for equality of rights. As a result, the influence of dominating personalities, even though never eliminated, is more and more subject to changing conditions. Thus regarded, the general course of events is indicated by reference to two phenomena: firstly, by the development of the State and of the judicial system, and, secondly, by the transformations which the character of the hero undergoes in the course of history. The first of these phenomena will presently be discussed in some detail; the second, which puts its stamp upon the particular periods of history in question, consists in the gradual displacement of the warrior-hero by the hero of peace. Even legend indicates that this is the sequence of the qualities that are supremely prized in personality. Thus, in the legend of the kings of Rome, the warlike Romulus, founder of the city, is followed by Numa Pompilius, the organizer of religious cult, who is succeeded in due time by the secular lawgiver, Servius Tullius. The warrior-hero appears first; he suggests the origin of political society in warfare. The founder of deity cults is his immediate successor. The lawgiver, or the political hero in the true sense of the word, stands at the zenith of the age. The warrior initiates, whereas the legislator completes the organization of society. Then commences the age of citizenship, which no longer entertains a hero-ideal as such but, instead, prizes civic virtues. On this plane of culture, the general demands of political life and of cult are augmented by the particular duties which grow out of the position which the individual occupies within society. The position itself is conditioned primarily by the rise of differences of vocation.

6. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF VOCATIONS.

The above discussion will already have indicated the general significance of the differentiation of vocations in the development of political society. While the origin of classes is coincident with the rise of the State, separate vocations appear only at its zenith. At first there were no distinctions of vocation. The pursuits of war and politics were common to all free men; and, while admitting of class distinctions, they allowed no vocational differences. The priesthood alone represented a class which followed a specific vocation, while also engaging in other occupations, particularly in politics. The earliest forms of specialized vocations were foreshadowed even in the totemic age. In the heroic period, they merely adapt themselves to the new social order resulting from the rise of a ruling class and the consequent class distinctions. Under the influence of deity cults, moreover, the social position of the priesthood changes, as do also its vocational practices. The transformations in cult are an important factor in elevating the class and the profession concerned in its administration, securing for them a more or less important, and in some cases a dominant, influence upon political life. In contrast with this, all forms of human labour not connected with politics and warfare are degraded. This results in occupational differences, which are henceforth closely bound up with class distinctions. The depreciation of which we speak, however, is not of sudden occurrence, nor does it appear everywhere to the same extent. The conditions that give rise to political society also involve a participation in the pursuits of politics and warfare on the part of the freeman, who, as an agriculturist, breeds his own domestic animals and guides his plough over the fields. Due to these same conditions, moreover, agriculture maintains a respected position even in later times, partly, no doubt, as a result of the fact that the free farmer continues to enjoy the privilege of participating in political and military affairs. Various accessory vocations come to be sundered out from the tasks of the early agriculturist, who, originally, himself manufactured the implements required for his work and was thus the primitive artisan. Political activity and the equally esteemed military vocation come more and more to be given the place of highest honour. The occupation of the farmer and that of the wealth-accumulating merchant, however, are also held in high regard, doubtless because of the growing desire for property. The independent task of the artisan, as well as art—the latter at first scarcely distinguishable from artisanship—are either left to the dependent population and slaves or, after class distinctions are well developed, are given over to the lower class of citizens as occupations of less esteem.

But in the case of vocational distinctions, just as in that of class differentiation, the process of depreciation is succeeded by a tendency toward equalization. This is due to a general shift in values. The rhapsodist of Homeric times, though welcomed as a guest by the superior classes, was not himself regarded by them as a companion of equal rank. It is only gradually that the value placed on an art becomes transferred to the artist himself. That this occurs is due in an important measure to the fact that the arts of outstanding significance—gymnastics, poetry, and music—are not practised merely by a specific profession, but are also favourite occupations of the warrior or the statesman in his hours of leisure. The respect accorded the artist is gradually extended to such other arts as already constitute vocational labour; as external culture becomes more refined, even the artisan wins a growing esteem, through his decoration of weapons, implements, and clothing. In the case of the arts that require a particularly high degree of vocational training, it is significant to note that, in spite of the high estimate placed on his product, the artist himself is able to rise but slowly above the plane of the mere artisan. Thus, the measure of esteem accorded to the arts gradually diminishes, according as we pass from those that spring up spontaneously, solely from inner impulse, to those that minister to the satisfaction of needs. The immediate cause for this gradation of values probably lies in the fact that political activity, which here forms the mediating link, is itself of the nature of a free vocation, requiring the exercise particularly of mental capacities. For this reason, however, the regard in which the various occupations are held tends to be equalized according as class distinctions disappear. The latter, however, occurs in proportion as all citizens come to acquire equal privileges in the exercise of political rights. To the majority, indeed, political activity remains but a secondary vocation, being overshadowed by the main occupation, which requires the greater amount of attention. Because of its political character, however, it is the secondary vocation that primarily determines the social position of the individual. The fact that all citizens come to participate in political activity, therefore, even though failing to equalize the esteem in which the various occupations were held, nevertheless caused the disappearance of the distinctions in personal status which occupational differences originally involved.

7. THE ORIGIN OF CITIES.

The differentiation of classes and vocations is conditioned, in a large measure, by a change in the spacial distribution of the population. This change is a result of the rise of political society, and comes to be the outstanding external characteristic of the State as soon as the latter begins to assume definite form. I have in mind the foundation of cities. In the totemic age, there were no cities, but at most fair-sized groups of huts or houses, forming villages. These village settlements were all equally independent; they differed at most as regards spacial extent. But the city, in its original form, always exercised control over a smaller or larger stretch of territory, consisting either of separate farms or of villages with the territory belonging to them. As the seat of political power, the city was an infallible indication of the existence of the State. Hence it is that those who discuss the original forms of political society are not infrequently led to regard State and city as identical. Such an identification, however, is not at all justifiable. Even in their beginnings the Greek States and the Roman State were not mere city States; all that may be said is that the political power was centred in the city. This is true, also, of the original city as it existed in the Orient and in the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru. The same characteristic distinguishes the early city from the many later sorts of cities that arose in response to the needs of intercourse and trade. The original city was the abode of the political and military leaders of the people who occupied the new territory and thus formed a State. This appears most strikingly in the case of Sparta—the State which preserved most fully the features of an earlier form of social organization. One might almost be inclined to say that the men's club developed by totemic tribal organization was here present in the form of a city of men established within a political order. But even in Athens and in the other Greek States the city was only the seat of the political power, whereas the State embraced the adjacent territory as well. The centre of the city, therefore, was the castle. This constituted the military defence of the State, and was the dwelling of the king or, in republican forms of government, of the highest officials. Connected with the castle was the temple of the guardian deity of the city. The immediate environment of the temple was the meeting-place of those who inhabited the territory protected by the castle and its temple. Here they assembled, partly for trade and partly for deliberative or popular gatherings. The economic and political intercourse which centred about the castle fostered the growth of a larger city, inasmuch as numbers of the rural inhabitants gradually settled down under the close protection of the castle. Directly connected with this development was the separation from agriculture of the occupations of art, handicraft, trade, and eventually of political office. Because of their enormous extent, the great Oriental realms included a number of city centres. Yet even here the original conditions maintained themselves, inasmuch as one of these cities continued to be not only the political seat of the State but also the chief centre of cult. The guardian deity of the leading city was likewise the guardian deity of the State, and, as such, was supreme among the gods. Cult was thus patterned after the political order. This influence of the city upon cult was reflected in temple construction. The totemic age possessed no cities, and it likewise lacked temples. Temples, therefore, are not only indicative of deity cult, whose development is bound up with political society, but they also signalize the existence of cities. The temple itself was characterized by a very rich architecture. In Babylonia it was the mighty tower, in Egypt the pair of obelisks at the entrance, which proclaimed to the surrounding neighbourhood the dwelling-place of the deity and the seat of political power. The two were identical, for it was in the name of the guardian deity of the city that the State was originally governed and that justice was meted out. In Oriental realms, the ruler was the representative of the deity, and the priests were the State officials, as well as the devotees of science and art. Tradition, together with numerous usages preserved in custom and laws, testify to the same original unification of religious and political authority in Greece and Rome. Although the State here became secularized at a comparatively early time, and art and science likewise freed themselves from theocratic dominance, the idea of a guardian deity of the city and State was long maintained. It was this that invested the secularized legal system with a halo of sanctity. If the course of development in Greece and Rome differed from that of the Oriental realms, this may be due, in an important measure, to the fact that they very early broke up into a considerable number of independent city States. Herein, of course, is expressed the character of Indo-Germanic peoples. Even in very ancient times they manifested a disposition to allow free play to the assertion of the individual personality; this differentiates them from the Semitic race, with its strong inclination to hold fast to traditional norms. Hence it is that, while the cult of the various Greek cities remained practically the same, the cities themselves became distinct political communities. The status of the Delphic priesthood, in whom this unity of cult very early found its expression, was therefore naturally reduced to that of an advisory council. In the individual States, the dominance of political interests and the struggle for power, which was heightened by the personal inter-relationships within the narrow circle of the city, deprived the priesthood of all authority except over cult. True, in the case of Rome, the original union of political order and religious cult was firmer and more permanent, due to the fact that one city early gained the supremacy over the other Italian cities and States. And yet, hand in hand with the extension of political dominance, went the adoption of cults that were previously strange. This led to a number of competing priest-associations, none of which could gain the leadership, since all alike were but servants of the political power.