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Title: Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Author: kniaz Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

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Language: English

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MUTUAL AID
A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION

BY P. KROPOTKIN

1902

INTRODUCTION

Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I
made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them
was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of
animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous
destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the
consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my
observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal
life teemed in abundance, I failed to find—although I was eagerly looking
for it—that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals
belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists
(though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of
struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution.

The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of
Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often follows
them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in the second
half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and insect life
swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the heavy snowfalls
in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of insects, as well as
the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the torrential rains, due to the
monsoons, which fall in more temperate regions in August and September
—resulting in inundations on a scale which is only known in America and

in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the plateaus, areas as wide as European
States; and finally, the heavy snowfalls, early in October, which eventually
render a territory as large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable
for ruminants, and destroy them by the thousand—these were the conditions
under which I saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me
realize at an early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what
Darwin described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in
comparison to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the
means of subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited
extent, but never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life, under-
population—not over-population—being the distinctive feature of that
immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived since
then serious doubts—which subsequent study has only confirmed—as to
the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each species,
which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and, consequently, as to
the dominant part which this sort of competition was supposed to play in
the evolution of new species.

On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for
instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of individuals
came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of rodents; in the
migrations of birds which took place at that time on a truly American scale
along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of fallow-deer which I
witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of thousands of these
intelligent animals came together from an immense territory, flying before
the coming deep snow, in order to cross the Amur where it is narrowest—in
all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual
Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in
it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the
preservation of each species, and its further evolution.

And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses in
Transbaikalia, among the wild ruminants everywhere, the squirrels, and so
on, that when animals have to struggle against scarcity of food, in
consequence of one of the above-mentioned causes, the whole of that
portion of the species which is affected by the calamity, comes out of the
ordeal so much impoverished in vigour and health, that no progressive
evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen
competition.

Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations
between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works
and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all
endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and
knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between
men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the
means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every
man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I
could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war
for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress,
was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also
lacked confirmation from direct observation.

On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was
delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the
well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St.
Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole
subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is
in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for
life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more
important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion—which was, in
reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin

himself in The Descent of Man—seemed to me so correct and of so great an
importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to
collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only
cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in
1881.

In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler's views. Kessler
alluded to "parental feeling" and care for progeny (see below, Chapter I) as
to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. However, to determine how
far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable
instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same
direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we
hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the
facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for
evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of
sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper—the
latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the
animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed
my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual
Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering
the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature.

The importance of the Mutual Aid factor—"if its generality could only be
demonstrated"—did not escape the naturalist's genius so manifest in
Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe—it was in 1827—that two
little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him
next day in the nest of robin redbreasts (Rothkehlchen), which fed the little
ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about
this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said:—"If
it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as
something having the character of a general law—then many an enigma

would be solved." He returned to this matter on the next day, and most
earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make
a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come "to quite
invaluable treasuries of results" (Gespräche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp.
219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very
possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials
relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe's
remark.

Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886,
dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are
mentioned in a footnote in Chapter I of this book), and three of them dealt
more especially with the subject under consideration; namely, Les Societes
animales, by Espinas (Paris, 1877); La Lutte pour l'existence et l'association
pout la lutte, a lecture by J.L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Buchner's
book, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition
appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But
excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work
in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in
favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature
and a factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal
societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of
labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible
directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies
could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's
lecture has more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a
work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in
the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men.
As to Buchner's work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not
agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and
nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and

sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love
and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as
human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed
to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love
to my neighbour—whom I often do not know at all—which induces me to
seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is
a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity
and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love,
and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a
herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of
wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love
which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds
to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor
personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered
over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all
marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling
infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy—an instinct that has been
slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely
long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they
can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they
can find in social life.

The importance of this distinction will be easily appreciated by the
student of animal psychology, and the more so by the student of human
ethics. Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in
the progressive development of our moral feelings. But it is not love and
not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the
conscience—be it only at the stage of an instinct—of human solidarity. It is
the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from
the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one's happiness
upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which

brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as
equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher
moral feelings are developed. But this subject lies outside the scope of the
present work, and I shall only indicate here a lecture, "Justice and Morality"
which I delivered in reply to Huxley's Ethics, and in which the subject has
been treated at some length.

Consequently I thought that a book, written on Mutual Aid as a Law of
Nature and a factor of evolution, might fill an important gap. When Huxley
issued, in 1888, his "Struggle-for-life" manifesto (Struggle for Existence
and its Bearing upon Man), which to my appreciation was a very incorrect
representation of the facts of Nature, as one sees them in the bush and in the
forest, I communicated with the editor of the Nineteenth Century, asking
him whether he would give the hospitality of his review to an elaborate
reply to the views of one of the most prominent Darwinists; and Mr. James
Knowles received the proposal with fullest sympathy. I also spoke of it to
W. Bates. "Yes, certainly; that is true Darwinism," was his reply. "It is
horrible what 'they' have made of Darwin. Write these articles, and when
they are printed, I will write to you a letter which you may publish."
Unfortunately, it took me nearly seven years to write these articles, and
when the last was published, Bates was no longer living.

After having discussed the importance of mutual aid in various classes of
animals, I was evidently bound to discuss the importance of the same factor
in the evolution of Man. This was the more necessary as there are a number
of evolutionists who may not refuse to admit the importance of mutual aid
among animals, but who, like Herbert Spencer, will refuse to admit it for
Man. For primitive Man—they maintain—war of each against all was the
law of life. In how far this assertion, which has been too willingly repeated,
without sufficient criticism, since the times of Hobbes, is supported by what

we know about the early phases of human development, is discussed in the
chapters given to the Savages and the Barbarians.

The number and importance of mutual-aid institutions which were
developed by the creative genius of the savage and half-savage masses,
during the earliest clan-period of mankind and still more during the next
village-community period, and the immense influence which these early
institutions have exercised upon the subsequent development of mankind,
down to the present times, induced me to extend my researches to the later,
historical periods as well; especially, to study that most interesting period—
the free medieval city republics, of which the universality and influence
upon our modern civilization have not yet been duly appreciated. And
finally, I have tried to indicate in brief the immense importance which the
mutual-support instincts, inherited by mankind from its extremely long
evolution, play even now in our modern society, which is supposed to rest
upon the principle: "every one for himself, and the State for all," but which
it never has succeeded, nor will succeed in realizing.

It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented
in it under too favourable an aspect; that their sociable qualities are insisted
upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are hardly touched
upon. This was, however, unavoidable. We have heard so much lately of the
"harsh, pitiless struggle for life," which was said to be carried on by every
animal against all other animals, every "savage" against all other "savages,"
and every civilized man against all his co-citizens—and these assertions
have so much become an article of faith—that it was necessary, first of all,
to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life
under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the
overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the
progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings: to
prove that they secure to animals a better protection from their enemies,

very often facilities for getting food and (winter provisions, migrations,
etc.), longevity, therefore a greater facility for the development of
intellectual faculties; and that they have given to men, in addition to the
same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which
have enabled mankind to survive in its hard struggle against Nature, and to
progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of its history. It is a book on
the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution—
not on all factors of evolution and their respective values; and this first book
had to be written, before the latter could become possible.

I should certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion
of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this
subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has
hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion has
often been, and continually is, something quite different from, and far larger
and deeper than, the petty, unintelligent narrow-mindedness, which, with a
large class of writers, goes for "individualism" and "self-assertion." Nor
have history-making individuals been limited to those whom historians
have represented as heroes. My intention, consequently, is, if circumstances
permit it, to discuss separately the part taken by the self-assertion of the
individual in the progressive evolution of mankind. I can only make in this
place the following general remark:—When the Mutual Aid institutions—
the tribe, the village community, the guilds, the medieval city—began, in
the course of history, to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by
parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to progress, the revolt of
individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part
of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a
higher form of commonwealth, based upon the same Mutual Aid principles;
they tried, for instance, to introduce the principle of "compensation,"
instead of the lex talionis, and later on, the pardon of offences, or a still
higher ideal of equality before the human conscience, in lieu of

"compensation," according to class-value. But at the very same time,
another portion of the same individual rebels endeavoured to break down
the protective institutions of mutual support, with no other intention but to
increase their own wealth and their own powers. In this three-cornered
contest, between the two classes of revolted individuals and the supporters
of what existed, lies the real tragedy of history. But to delineate that contest,
and honestly to study the part played in the evolution of mankind by each
one of these three forces, would require at least as many years as it took me
to write this book.

Of works dealing with nearly the same subject, which have been
published since the publication of my articles on Mutual Aid among
Animals, I must mention The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, by
Henry Drummond (London, 1894), and The Origin and Growth of the
Moral Instinct, by A. Sutherland (London, 1898). Both are constructed
chiefly on the lines taken in Buchner's Love, and in the second work the
parental and familial feeling as the sole influence at work in the
development of the moral feelings has been dealt with at some length. A
third work dealing with man and written on similar lines is The Principles
of Sociology, by Prof. F.A. Giddings, the first edition of which was
published in 1896 at New York and London, and the leading ideas of which
were sketched by the author in a pamphlet in 1894. I must leave, however,
to literary critics the task of discussing the points of contact, resemblance,
or divergence between these works and mine.

The different chapters of this book were published first in the Nineteenth
Century ("Mutual Aid among Animals," in September and November 1890;
"Mutual Aid among Savages," in April 1891; "Mutual Aid among the
Barbarians," in January 1892; "Mutual Aid in the Medieval City," in August
and September 1894; and "Mutual Aid amongst Modern Men," in January
and June 1896). In bringing them out in a book form my first intention was

to embody in an Appendix the mass of materials, as well as the discussion
of several secondary points, which had to be omitted in the review articles.
It appeared, however, that the Appendix would double the size of the book,
and I was compelled to abandon, or, at least, to postpone its publication.
The present Appendix includes the discussion of only a few points which
have been the matter of scientific controversy during the last few years; and
into the text I have introduced only such matter as could be introduced
without altering the structure of the work.

I am glad of this opportunity for expressing to the editor of the
Nineteenth Century, Mr. James Knowles, my very best thanks, both for the
kind hospitality which he offered to these papers in his review, as soon as
he knew their general idea, and the permission he kindly gave me to reprint
them.

Bromley, Kent, 1902.

CHAPTER I

MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS

Struggle for existence. Mutual Aid a law of Nature and chief factor of
progressive evolution. Invertebrates. Ants and Bees. Birds, hunting and
fishing associations. Sociability. Mutual protection among small birds.
Cranes, parrots.

The conception of struggle for existence as a factor of evolution,
introduced into science by Darwin and Wallace, has permitted us to
embrace an immensely wide range of phenomena in one single
generalization, which soon became the very basis of our philosophical,
biological, and sociological speculations. An immense variety of facts:—
adaptations of function and structure of organic beings to their
surroundings; physiological and anatomical evolution; intellectual progress,
and moral development itself, which we formerly used to explain by so
many different causes, were embodied by Darwin in one general
conception. We understood them as continued endeavours—as a struggle
against adverse circumstances—for such a development of individuals,
races, species and societies, as would result in the greatest possible fulness,
variety, and intensity of life. It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was
not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for
explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual

variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term which he was
introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true
meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle
between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the
very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being
taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one
being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life
of the individual, but success in leaving progeny."(1)

While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his
own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error
(which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow
meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate
its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies,
the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence
disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that
substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties
which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated
that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the
cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each
other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those
communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most
sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of
offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow
Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its
narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature.

Unhappily, these remarks, which might have become the basis of most
fruitful researches, were overshadowed by the masses of facts gathered for
the purpose of illustrating the consequences of a real competition for life.
Besides, Darwin never attempted to submit to a closer investigation the

relative importance of the two aspects under which the struggle for
existence appears in the animal world, and he never wrote the work he
proposed to write upon the natural checks to over-multiplication, although
that work would have been the crucial test for appreciating the real purport
of individual struggle. Nay, on the very pages just mentioned, amidst data
disproving the narrow Malthusian conception of struggle, the old
Malthusian leaven reappeared—namely, in Darwin's remarks as to the
alleged inconveniences of maintaining the "weak in mind and body" in our
civilized societies (ch. v). As if thousands of weak-bodied and infirm poets,
scientists, inventors, and reformers, together with other thousands of so-
called "fools" and "weak-minded enthusiasts," were not the most precious
weapons used by humanity in its struggle for existence by intellectual and
moral arms, which Darwin himself emphasized in those same chapters of
Descent of Man.

It happened with Darwin's theory as it always happens with theories
having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according
to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more. And while Herbert
Spencer, starting on independent but closely allied lines, attempted to widen
the inquiry into that great question, "Who are the fittest?" especially in the
appendix to the third edition of the Data of Ethics, the numberless followers
of Darwin reduced the notion of struggle for existence to its narrowest
limits. They came to conceive the animal world as a world of perpetual
struggle among half-starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood.
They made modern literature resound with the war-cry of woe to the
vanquished, as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the
"pitiless" struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological
principle which man must submit to as well, under the menace of otherwise
succumbing in a world based upon mutual extermination. Leaving aside the
economists who know of natural science but a few words borrowed from
second-hand vulgarizers, we must recognize that even the most authorized

exponents of Darwin's views did their best to maintain those false ideas. In
fact, if we take Huxley, who certainly is considered as one of the ablest
exponents of the theory of evolution, were we not taught by him, in a paper
on the 'Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man,' that,

"from the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on
about the same level as a gladiators' show. The creatures are fairly
well treated, and set to, fight hereby the strongest, the swiftest, and
the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need
to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given."

Or, further down in the same article, did he not tell us that, as among
animals, so among primitive men,

"the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest
and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their
circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was
a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary
relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was
the normal state of existence."(2)

In how far this view of nature is supported by fact, will be seen from the
evidence which will be here submitted to the reader as regards the animal
world, and as regards primitive man. But it may be remarked at once that
Huxley's view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific
deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love,
peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact, the first
walk in the forest, the first observation upon any animal society, or even the
perusal of any serious work dealing with animal life (D'Orbigny's,
Audubon's, Le Vaillant's, no matter which), cannot but set the naturalist
thinking about the part taken by social life in the life of animals, and
prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as

this would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and
peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw
fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the opposite error; but
neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley's pessimism can be accepted as an
impartial interpretation of nature.

As soon as we study animals—not in laboratories and museums only, but
in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains—we at once
perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and
extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst
various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps
even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst
animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society.
Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it
would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative
numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an
indirect test, and ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually
at war with each other, or those who support one another?" we at once see
that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the
fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their
respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily
organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to
support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid
is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of
evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it
favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the
maintenance and further development of the species, together with the
greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the
least waste of energy.

Of the scientific followers of Darwin, the first, as far as I know, who
understood the full purport of Mutual Aid as a law of Nature and the chief
factor of evolution, was a well-known Russian zoologist, the late Dean of
the St. Petersburg University, Professor Kessler. He developed his ideas in
an address which he delivered in January 1880, a few months before his
death, at a Congress of Russian naturalists; but, like so many good things
published in the Russian tongue only, that remarkable address remains
almost entirely unknown.(3)

"As a zoologist of old standing," he felt bound to protest against the
abuse of a term—the struggle for existence—borrowed from zoology, or, at
least, against overrating its importance. Zoology, he said, and those sciences
which deal with man, continually insist upon what they call the pitiless law
of struggle for existence. But they forget the existence of another law which
may be described as the law of mutual aid, which law, at least for the
animals, is far more essential than the former. He pointed out how the need
of leaving progeny necessarily brings animals together, and, "the more the
individuals keep together, the more they mutually support each other, and
the more are the chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making
further progress in its intellectual development." "All classes of animals,"
he continued, "and especially the higher ones, practise mutual aid," and he
illustrated his idea by examples borrowed from the life of the burying
beetles and the social life of birds and some mammalia. The examples were
few, as might have been expected in a short opening address, but the chief
points were clearly stated; and, after mentioning that in the evolution of
mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part, Professor Kessler
concluded as follows:—

"I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that
the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of
mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual

struggle…. All organic beings have two essential needs: that of nutrition,
and that of propagating the species. The former brings them to a struggle
and to mutual extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species
bring them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am
inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world—in the
progressive modification of organic beings—mutual support among
individuals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle."
(4)

The correctness of the above views struck most of the Russian zoologists
present, and Syevertsoff, whose work is well known to ornithologists and
geographers, supported them and illustrated them by a few more examples.
He mentioned sone of the species of falcons which have "an almost ideal
organization for robbery," and nevertheless are in decay, while other species
of falcons, which practise mutual help, do thrive. "Take, on the other side, a
sociable bird, the duck," he said; "it is poorly organized on the whole, but it
practises mutual support, and it almost invades the earth, as may be judged
from its numberless varieties and species."

The readiness of the Russian zoologists to accept Kessler's views seems
quite natural, because nearly all of them have had opportunities of studying
the animal world in the wide uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East
Russia; and it is impossible to study like regions without being brought to
the same ideas. I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by the
animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in the company
of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff was. We both were
under the fresh impression of the Origin of Species, but we vainly looked
for the keen competition between animals of the same species which the
reading of Darwin's work had prepared us to expect, even after taking into
account the remarks of the third chapter (p. 54). We saw plenty of
adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the adverse

circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and Polyakoff wrote
many a good page upon the mutual dependency of carnivores, ruminants,
and rodents in their geographical distribution; we witnessed numbers of
facts of mutual support, especially during the migrations of birds and
ruminants; but even in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life
swarms in abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher
animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice, though I
eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears in the works of
most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains why Kessler's ideas were
so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists, whilst like ideas are not in vogue
amidst the followers of Darwin in Western Europe.

The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying the struggle
for existence under both its aspects—direct and metaphorical—is the
abundance of facts of mutual aid, not only for rearing progeny, as
recognized by most evolutionists, but also for the safety of the individual,
and for providing it with the necessary food. With many large divisions of
the animal kingdom mutual aid is the rule. Mutual aid is met with even
amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some day,
from the students of microscopical pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual
support, even from the life of micro-organisms. Of course, our knowledge
of the life of the invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is
extremely limited; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we may
glean a few facts of well-ascertained cooperation. The numberless
associations of locusts, vanessae, cicindelae, cicadae, and so on, are
practically quite unexplored; but the very fact of their existence indicates
that they must be composed on about the same principles as the temporary
associations of ants or bees for purposes of migration. As to the beetles, we
have quite well-observed facts of mutual help amidst the burying beetles
(Necrophorus). They must have some decaying organic matter to lay their
eggs in, and thus to provide their larvae with food; but that matter must not

decay very rapidly. So they are wont to bury in the ground the corpses of all
kinds of small animals which they occasionally find in their rambles. As a
rule, they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered the
corpse of a mouse or of a bird, which it hardly could manage to bury itself,
it calls four, six, or ten other beetles to perform the operation with united
efforts; if necessary, they transport the corpse to a suitable soft ground; and
they bury it in a very considerate way, without quarrelling as to which of
them will enjoy the privilege of laying its eggs in the buried corpse. And
when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or
suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the
same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifice of
Man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-
beetles.

Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization
we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North
America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit
therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation,
and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in
1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which
these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of
need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its
heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural
position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered
the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one
hour's time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner.
They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after
strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright; but then the iron bar would
prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again
heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go
in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with

fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We
stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we
again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the work of rescue still
continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted
by Dr. Erasmus Darwin—namely, that "the common crab during the
moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled
individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in
their unprotected state."(5)

Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants, and the bees
are so well known to the general reader, especially through the works of
Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks
to a very few hints.(6) If we take an ants' nest, we not only see that every
description of work-rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of
aphides, and so on—is performed according to the principles of voluntary
mutual aid; we must also recognize, with Forel, that the chief, the
fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the
obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly
digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it.
Two ants belonging to two different species or to two hostile nests, when
they occasionally meet together, will avoid each other. But two ants
belonging to the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach
each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and "if one of
them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its crop full … it
immediately asks for food." The individual thus requested never refuses; it
sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of
transparent fluid which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food
for other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at liberty), and it
so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding
larvae, that Forel considers the digestive tube of the ants as consisting of
two different parts, one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the

individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the use of the
community. If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to
refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If
the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other
species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater
vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not
refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated
by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is confirmed by most
accurate observation and decisive experiments.(7)

In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more
than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend
that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members
of the same nest, or the colony of nests, does not exist. However terrible the
wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at
war-time, mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a
habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule.
The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian war," and they are the
better for it. Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size
to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their
spacious halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting" of
grain;(8) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of
building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so
picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; and, finally, their
courage, pluck, and, superior intelligence—all these are the natural outcome
of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and
laborious lives. That mode of life also necessarily resulted in the
development of another essential feature of the life of ants: the immense
development of individual initiative which, in its turn, evidently led to the
development of that high and varied intelligence which cannot but strike the
human observer.(9)

If we knew no other facts from animal life than what we know about the
ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude that mutual aid
(which leads to mutual confidence, the first condition for courage) and
individual initiative (the first condition for intellectual progress) are two
factors infinitely more important than mutual struggle in the evolution of
the animal kingdom. In fact, the ant thrives without having any of the
"protective" features which cannot be dispensed with by animals living an
isolated life. Its colour renders it conspicuous to its enemies, and the lofty
nests of many species are conspicuous in the meadows and forests. It is not
protected by a hard carapace, and its stinging apparatus, however dangerous
when hundreds of stings are plunged into the flesh of an animal, is not of a
great value for individual defence; while the eggs and larvae of the ants are
a dainty for a great number of the inhabitants of the forests. And yet the
ants, in their thousands, are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by
the ant-eaters, and they are dreaded by most stronger insects. When Forel
emptied a bagful of ants in a meadow, he saw that "the crickets ran away,
abandoning their holes to be sacked by the ants; the grasshoppers and the
crickets fled in all directions; the spiders and the beetles abandoned their
prey in order not to become prey themselves;" even the nests of the wasps
were taken by the ants, after a battle during which many ants perished for
the safety of the commonwealth. Even the swiftest insects cannot escape,
and Forel often saw butterflies, gnats, flies, and so on, surprised and killed
by the ants. Their force is in mutual support and mutual confidence. And if
the ant—apart from the still higher developed termites—stands at the very
top of the whole class of insects for its intellectual capacities; if its courage
is only equalled by the most courageous vertebrates; and if its brain—to use
Darwin's words—"is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the
world, perhaps more so than the brain of man," is it not due to the fact that
mutual aid has entirely taken the place of mutual struggle in the
communities of ants?

The same is true as regards the bees. These small insects, which so easily
might become the prey of so many birds, and whose honey has so many
admirers in all classes of animals from the beetle to the bear, also have none
of the protective features derived from mimicry or otherwise, without which
an isolatedly living insect hardly could escape wholesale destruction; and
yet, owing to the mutual aid they practise, they obtain the wide extension
which we know and the intelligence we admire, By working in common
they multiply their individual forces; by resorting to a temporary division of
labour combined with the capacity of each bee to perform every kind of
work when required, they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as
no isolated animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well armed
it may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than man,
when he neglects to take advantage of a well-planned mutual assistance.
Thus, when a new swarm of bees is going to leave the hive in search of a
new abode, a number of bees will make a preliminary exploration of the
neighbourhood, and if they discover a convenient dwelling-place—say, an
old basket, or anything of the kind—they will take possession of it, clean it,
and guard it, sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm comes to settle
therein. But how many human settlers will perish in new countries simply
for not having understood the necessity of combining their efforts! By
combining their individual intelligences they succeed in coping with
adverse circumstances, even quite unforeseen and unusual, like those bees
of the Paris Exhibition which fastened with their resinous propolis the
shutter to a glass-plate fitted in the wall of their hive. Besides, they display
none of the sanguinary proclivities and love of useless fighting with which
many writers so readily endow animals. The sentries which guard the
entrance to the hive pitilessly put to death the robbing bees which attempt
entering the hive; but those stranger bees which come to the hive by
mistake are left unmolested, especially if they come laden with pollen, or

are young individuals which can easily go astray. There is no more warfare
than is strictly required.

The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as predatory instincts
and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each
time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known
that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the
laborious life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of
an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class.
When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows
and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent occurrence; while, on the
other side, about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar
refineries of Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become
quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts continue to
exist amidst the bees as well; but natural selection continually must
eliminate them, because in the long run the practice of solidarity proves
much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals
endowed with predatory inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are
eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life
and mutual support.

Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the termites, have risen
to the conception of a higher solidarity embodying the whole of the species.
In that respect they evidently have not attained a degree of development
which we do not find even among our political, scientific, and religious
leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits of the hive or
the nest. However, colonies of no less than two hundred nests, belonging to
two different species (Formica exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been
described by Forel on Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve; and Forel
maintains that each member of these colonies recognizes every other
member of the colony, and that they all take part in common defence; while

in Pennsylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1,600 to 1,700
nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect intelligence; and Mr.
Bates has described the hillocks of the termites covering large surfaces in
the "campos"—some of the nests being the refuge of two or three different
species, and most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or arcades.
(10) Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger divisions of the species
for purposes of mutual protection are thus met with even among the
invertebrate animals.

Going now over to higher animals, we find far more instances of
undoubtedly conscious mutual help for all possible purposes, though we
must recognize at once that our knowledge even of the life of higher
animals still remains very imperfect. A large number of facts have been
accumulated by first-rate observers, but there are whole divisions of the
animal kingdom of which we know almost nothing. Trustworthy
information as regards fishes is extremely scarce, partly owing to the
difficulties of observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet
been paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already remarked
how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are nocturnal
in their habits; others conceal themselves underground; and those ruminants
whose social life and migrations offer the greatest interest do not let man
approach their herds. It is chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range
of information, and yet the social life of very many species remains but
imperfectly known. Still, we need not complain about the lack of well-
ascertained facts, as will be seen from the following.

I need not dwell upon the associations of male and female for rearing
their offspring, for providing it with food during their first steps in life, or
for hunting in common; though it may be mentioned by the way that such
associations are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and
rapacious birds; and that they derive a special interest from being the field

upon which tenderer feelings develop even amidst otherwise most cruel
animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that
of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though mostly
being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to
some extent as a consequence of the change produced in the animal world
by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate it is worthy of note that there
are species living a quite isolated life in densely-inhabited regions, while
the same species, or their nearest congeners, are gregarious in uninhabited
countries. Wolves, foxes, and several birds of prey may be quoted as
instances in point.

However, associations which do not extend beyond the family bonds are
of relatively small importance in our case, the more so as we know numbers
of associations for more general purposes, such as hunting, mutual
protection, and even simple enjoyment of life. Audubon already mentioned
that eagles occasionally associate for hunting, and his description of the two
bald eagles, male and female, hunting on the Mississippi, is well known for
its graphic powers. But one of the most conclusive observations of the kind
belongs to Syevertsoff. Whilst studying the fauna of the Russian Steppes,
he once saw an eagle belonging to an altogether gregarious species (the
white-tailed eagle, Haliactos albicilla) rising high in the air for half an hour
it was describing its wide circles in silence when at once its piercing voice
was heard. Its cry was soon answered by another eagle which approached it,
and was followed by a third, a fourth, and so on, till nine or ten eagles came
together and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Syevertsoff went to the
place whereto he saw the eagles flying; concealed by one of the undulations
of the Steppe, he approached them, and discovered that they had gathered
around the corpse of a horse. The old ones, which, as a rule, begin the meal
first—such are their rules of propriety-already were sitting upon the
haystacks of the neighbourhood and kept watch, while the younger ones
were continuing the meal, surrounded by bands of crows. From this and like

observations, Syevertsoff concluded that the white-tailed eagles combine
for hunting; when they all have risen to a great height they are enabled, if
they are ten, to survey an area of at least twenty-five miles square; and as
soon as any one has discovered something, he warns the others.(11) Of
course, it might be argued that a simple instinctive cry of the first eagle, or
even its movements, would have had the same effect of bringing several
eagles to the prey. But in this case there is strong evidence in favour of
mutual warning, because the ten eagles came together before descending
towards the prey, and Syevertsoff had later on several opportunities of
ascertaining that the whitetailed eagles always assemble for devouring a
corpse, and that some of them (the younger ones first) always keep watch
while the others are eating. In fact, the white-tailed eagle—one of the
bravest and best hunters—is a gregarious bird altogether, and Brehm says
that when kept in captivity it very soon contracts an attachment to its
keepers.

Sociability is a common feature with very many other birds of prey. The
Brazilian kite, one of the most "impudent" robbers, is nevertheless a most
sociable bird. Its hunting associations have been described by Darwin and
other naturalists, and it is a fact that when it has seized upon a prey which is
too big, it calls together five or six friends to carry it away. After a busy day,
when these kites retire for their night-rest to a tree or to the bushes, they
always gather in bands, sometimes coming together from distances of ten or
more miles, and they often are joined by several other vultures, especially
the percnopters, "their true friends," D'Orbigny says. In another continent,
in the Transcaspian deserts, they have, according to Zarudnyi, the same
habit of nesting together. The sociable vulture, one of the strongest vultures,
has received its very name from its love of society. They live in numerous
bands, and decidedly enjoy society; numbers of them join in their high
flights for sport. "They live in very good friendship," Le Vaillant says, "and
in the same cave I sometimes found as many as three nests close together."

(12) The Urubu vultures of Brazil are as, or perhaps even more, sociable
than rooks.(13) The little Egyptian vultures live in close friendship. They
play in bands in the air, they come together to spend the night, and in the
morning they all go together to search for their food, and never does the
slightest quarrel arise among them; such is the testimony of Brehm, who
had plenty of opportunities of observing their life. The red-throated falcon
is also met with in numerous bands in the forests of Brazil, and the kestrel
(Tinnunculus cenchris), when it has left Europe, and has reached in the
winter the prairies and forests of Asia, gathers in numerous societies. In the
Steppes of South Russia it is (or rather was) so sociable that Nordmann saw
them in numerous bands, with other falcons (Falco tinnunculus, F. oesulon,
and F. subbuteo), coming together every fine afternoon about four o'clock,
and enjoying their sports till late in the night. They set off flying, all at
once, in a quite straight line, towards some determined point, and, having
reached it, immediately returned over the same line, to repeat the same
flight.(14)

To take flights in flocks for the mere pleasure of the flight, is quite
common among all sorts of birds. "In the Humber district especially," Ch.
Dixon writes, "vast flights of dunlins often appear upon the mud-flats
towards the end of August, and remain for the winter…. The movements of
these birds are most interesting, as a vast flock wheels and spreads out or
closes up with as much precision as drilled troops. Scattered among them
are many odd stints and sanderlings and ringed-plovers."(15)

It would be quite impossible to enumerate here the various hunting
associations of birds; but the fishing associations of the pelicans are
certainly worthy of notice for the remarkable order and intelligence
displayed by these clumsy birds. They always go fishing in numerous
bands, and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half-
circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling towards the shore,

catching all fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On narrow rivers
and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a
half-circle, and both paddle to meet each other, just as if two parties of men
dragging two long nets should advance to capture all fish taken between the
nets when both parties come to meet. As the night comes they fly to their
resting-places—always the same for each flock—and no one has ever seen
them fighting for the possession of either the bay or the resting place. In
South America they gather in flocks of from forty to fifty thousand
individuals, part of which enjoy sleep while the others keep watch, and
others again go fishing.(16) And finally, I should be doing an injustice to
the much-calumniated house-sparrows if I did not mention how faithfully
each of them shares any food it discovers with all members of the society to
which it belongs. The fact was known to the Greeks, and it has been
transmitted to posterity how a Greek orator once exclaimed (I quote from
memory):—"While I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell to other
sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn, and they all
go there to feed upon the grain." The more, one is pleased to find this
observation of old confirmed in a recent little book by Mr. Gurney, who
does not doubt that the house sparrows always inform each other as to
where there is some food to steal; he says, "When a stack has been thrashed
ever so far from the yard, the sparrows in the yard have always had their
crops full of the grain."(17) True, the sparrows are extremely particular in
keeping their domains free from the invasions of strangers; thus the
sparrows of the Jardin du Luxembourg bitterly fight all other sparrows
which may attempt to enjoy their turn of the garden and its visitors; but
within their own communities they fully practise mutual support, though
occasionally there will be of course some quarrelling even amongst the best
friends.

Hunting and feeding in common is so much the habit in the feathered
world that more quotations hardly would be needful: it must be considered

as an established fact. As to the force derived from such associations, it is
self-evident. The strongest birds of prey are powerless in face of the
associations of our smallest bird pets. Even eagles—even the powerful and
terrible booted eagle, and the martial eagle, which is strong enough to carry
away a hare or a young antelope in its claws—are compelled to abandon
their prey to bands of those beggars the kites, which give the eagle a regular
chase as soon as they see it in possession of a good prey. The kites will also
give chase to the swift fishing-hawk, and rob it of the fish it has captured;
but no one ever saw the kites fighting together for the possession of the
prey so stolen. On the Kerguelen Island, Dr. Coues saw the gulls to
Buphogus—the sea-hen of the sealers—pursue make them disgorge their
food, while, on the other side, the gulls and the terns combined to drive
away the sea-hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at
nesting-time.(18) The little, but extremely swift lapwings (Vanellus
cristatus) boldly attack the birds of prey. "To see them attacking a buzzard,
a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles. One feels
that they are sure of victory, and one sees the anger of the bird of prey. In
such circumstances they perfectly support one another, and their courage
grows with their numbers."(19) The lapwing has well merited the name of a
"good mother" which the Greeks gave to it, for it never fails to protect other
aquatic birds from the attacks of their enemies. But even the little white
wagtails (Motacilla alba), whom we well know in our gardens and whose
whole length hardly attains eight inches, compel the sparrow-hawk to
abandon its hunt. "I often admired their courage and agility," the old Brehm
wrote, "and I am persuaded that the falcon alone is capable of capturing any
of them…. When a band of wagtails has compelled a bird of prey to retreat,
they make the air resound with their triumphant cries, and after that they
separate." They thus come together for the special purpose of giving chase
to their enemy, just as we see it when the whole bird-population of a forest
has been raised by the news that a nocturnal bird has made its appearance

during the day, and all together—birds of prey and small inoffensive singers
—set to chase the stranger and make it return to its concealment.

What an immense difference between the force of a kite, a buzzard or a
hawk, and such small birds as the meadow-wagtail; and yet these little
birds, by their common action and courage, prove superior to the
powerfully-winged and armed robbers! In Europe, the wagtails not only
chase the birds of prey which might be dangerous to them, but they chase
also the fishing-hawk "rather for fun than for doing it any harm;" while in
India, according to Dr. Jerdon's testimony, the jackdaws chase the gowinda-
kite "for simple matter of amusement." Prince Wied saw the Brazilian eagle
urubitinga surrounded by numberless flocks of toucans and cassiques (a
bird nearly akin to our rook), which mocked it. "The eagle," he adds,
"usually supports these insults very quietly, but from time to time it will
catch one of these mockers." In all such cases the little birds, though very
much inferior in force to the bird of prey, prove superior to it by their
common action.(20)

However, the most striking effects of common life for the security of the
individual, for its enjoyment of life, and for the development of its
intellectual capacities, are seen in two great families of birds, the cranes and
the parrots. The cranes are extremely sociable and live in most excellent
relations, not only with their congeners, but also with most aquatic birds.
Their prudence is really astonishing, so also their intelligence; they grasp
the new conditions in a moment, and act accordingly. Their sentries always
keep watch around a flock which is feeding or resting, and the hunters
know well how difficult it is to approach them. If man has succeeded in
surprising them, they will never return to the same place without having
sent out one single scout first, and a party of scouts afterwards; and when
the reconnoitring party returns and reports that there is no danger, a second
group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report, before the whole band

moves. With kindred species the cranes contract real friendship; and in
captivity there is no bird, save the also sociable and highly intelligent
parrot, which enters into such real friendship with man. "It sees in man, not
a master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it," Brehm concludes
from a wide personal experience. The crane is in continual activity from
early in the morning till late in the night; but it gives a few hours only in the
morning to the task of searching its food, chiefly vegetable. All the
remainder of the day is given to society life. "It picks up small pieces of
wood or small stones, throws them in the air and tries to catch them; it
bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps, runs about, and tries to
manifest by all means its good disposition of mind, and always it remains
graceful and beautiful."(21) As it lives in society it has almost no enemies,
and though Brehm occasionally saw one of them captured by a crocodile,
he wrote that except the crocodile he knew no enemies of the crane. It
eschews all of them by its proverbial prudence; and it attains, as a rule, a
very old age. No wonder that for the maintenance of the species the crane
need not rear a numerous offspring; it usually hatches but two eggs. As to
its superior intelligence, it is sufficient to say that all observers are
unanimous in recognizing that its intellectual capacities remind one very
much of those of man.

The other extremely sociable bird, the parrot, stands, as known, at the
very top of the whole feathered world for the development of its
intelligence. Brehm has so admirably summed up the manners of life of the
parrot, that I cannot do better than translate the following sentence:—

"Except in the pairing season, they live in very numerous societies or
bands. They choose a place in the forest to stay there, and thence they start
every morning for their hunting expeditions. The members of each band
remain faithfully attached to each other, and they share in common good or
bad luck. All together they repair in the morning to a field, or to a garden, or

to a tree, to feed upon fruits. They post sentries to keep watch over the
safety of the whole band, and are attentive to their warnings. In case of
danger, all take to flight, mutually supporting each other, and all
simultaneously return to their resting-place. In a word, they always live
closely united."

They enjoy society of other birds as well. In India, the jays and crows
come together from many miles round, to spend the night in company with
the parrots in the bamboo thickets. When the parrots start hunting, they
display the most wonderful intelligence, prudence, and capacity of coping
with circumstances. Take, for instance, a band of white cacadoos in
Australia. Before starting to plunder a corn-field, they first send out a
reconnoitring party which occupies the highest trees in the vicinity of the
field, while other scouts perch upon the intermediate trees between the field
and the forest and transmit the signals. If the report runs "All right," a score
of cacadoos will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air,
and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will scrutinize
the neighbourhood for a long while, and only then will they give the signal
for general advance, after which the whole band starts at once and plunders
the field in no time. The Australian settlers have the greatest difficulties in
beguiling the prudence of the parrots; but if man, with all his art and
weapons, has succeeded in killing some of them, the cacadoos become so
prudent and watchful that they henceforward baffle all stratagems.(22)

There can be no doubt that it is the practice of life in society which
enables the parrots to attain that very high level of almost human
intelligence and almost human feelings which we know in them. Their high
intelligence has induced the best naturalists to describe some species,
namely the grey parrot, as the "birdman." As to their mutual attachment it is
known that when a parrot has been killed by a hunter, the others fly over the
corpse of their comrade with shrieks of complaints and "themselves fall the

victims of their friendship," as Audubon said; and when two captive parrots,
though belonging to two different species, have contracted mutual
friendship, the accidental death of one of the two friends has sometimes
been followed by the death from grief and sorrow of the other friend. It is
no less evident that in their societies they find infinitely more protection
than they possibly might find in any ideal development of beak and claw.
Very few birds of prey or mammals dare attack any but the smaller species
of parrots, and Brehm is absolutely right in saying of the parrots, as he also
says of the cranes and the sociable monkeys, that they hardly have any
enemies besides men; and he adds: "It is most probable that the larger
parrots succumb chiefly to old age rather than die from the claws of any
enemies." Only man, owing to his still more superior intelligence and
weapons, also derived from association, succeeds in partially destroying
them. Their very longevity would thus appear as a result of their social life.
Could we not say the same as regards their wonderful memory, which also
must be favoured in its development by society—life and by longevity
accompanied by a full enjoyment of bodily and mental faculties till a very
old age?

As seen from the above, the war of each against all is not the law of
nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle, and that
law will become still more apparent when we have analyzed some other
associations of birds and those of the mammalia. A few hints as to the
importance of the law of mutual aid for the evolution of the animal
kingdom have already been given in the preceding pages; but their purport
will still better appear when, after having given a few more illustrations, we
shall be enabled presently to draw therefrom our conclusions.

NOTES:

1. Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition.

2. Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165.

3. Leaving aside the pre-Darwinian writers, like Toussenel, Fee, and
many others, several works containing many striking instances of mutual
aid—chiefly, however, illustrating animal intelligence were issued
previously to that date. I may mention those of Houzeau, Les facultes etales
des animaux, 2 vols., Brussels, 1872; L. Buchner's Aus dem Geistesleben
der Thiere, 2nd ed. in 1877; and Maximilian Perty's Ueber das Seelenleben
der Thiere, Leipzig, 1876. Espinas published his most remarkable work, Les
Societes animales, in 1877, and in that work he pointed out the importance
of animal societies, and their bearing upon the preservation of species, and
entered upon a most valuable discussion of the origin of societies. In fact,
Espinas's book contains all that has been written since upon mutual aid, and
many good things besides. If I nevertheless make a special mention of
Kessler's address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law
much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. The
same ideas were developed next year (in April 1881) by J. Lanessan in a
lecture published in 1882 under this title: La lutte pour l'existence et
l'association pour la lutte. G. Romanes's capital work, Animal Intelligence,
was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in
Animals. About the same time (1883), Buchner published another work,
Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was
issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air.

4. Memoirs (Trudy) of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi.
1880.

5. George J. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, 1st ed. p. 233.

6. Pierre Huber's Les fourmis indigees, Geneve, 1861; Forel's Recherches
sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J.T. Moggridge's Harvesting
Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the

hands of every boy and girl. See also: Blanchard's Metamorphoses des
Insectes, Paris, 1868; J.H. Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1886;
Ebrard's Etudes des moeurs des fourmis, Geneve, 1864; Sir John Lubbock's
Ants, Bees, and Wasps, and so on.

7. Forel's Recherches, pp. 244, 275, 278. Huber's description of the
process is admirable. It also contains a hint as to the possible origin of the
instinct (popular edition, pp. 158, 160). See Appendix II.

8. The agriculture of the ants is so wonderful that for a long time it has
been doubted. The fact is now so well proved by Mr. Moggridge, Dr.
Lincecum, Mr. MacCook, Col. Sykes, and Dr. Jerdon, that no doubt is
possible. See an excellent summary of evidence in Mr. Romanes's work.
See also Die Pilzgaerten einiger Sud-Amerikanischen Ameisen, by Alf.
Moeller, in Schimper's Botan. Mitth. aus den Tropen, vi. 1893.

9. This second principle was not recognized at once. Former observers
often spoke of kings, queens, managers, and so on; but since Huber and
Forel have published their minute observations, no doubt is possible as to
the free scope left for every individual's initiative in whatever the ants do,
including their wars.

10. H.W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 59 seq.

11. N. Syevertsoff, Periodical Phenomena in the Life of Mammalia,
Birds, and Reptiles of Voroneje, Moscow, 1855 (in Russian).

12. A. Brehm, Life of Animals, iii. 477; all quotations after the French
edition.

13. Bates, p. 151.

14. Catalogue raisonne des oiseaux de la faune pontique, in Demidoff's
Voyage; abstracts in Brehm, iii. 360. During their migrations birds of prey
often associate. One flock, which H. Seebohm saw crossing the Pyrenees,
represented a curious assemblage of "eight kites, one crane, and a peregrine
falcon" (The Birds of Siberia, 1901, p. 417).

15. Birds in the Northern Shires, p. 207.

16. Max. Perty, Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere (Leipzig, 1876), pp.
87, 103.

17. G. H. Gurney, The House-Sparrow (London, 1885), p. 5.

18. Dr. Elliot Coues, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, vol. xiii. No. 2, p. 11.

19. Brehm, iv. 567.

20. As to the house-sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T.W. Kirk,
described as follows the attack of these "impudent" birds upon an
"unfortunate" hawk.—"He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though
all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking
up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi—a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a
flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at
once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some
scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows
congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chattering and
noise" (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute; Nature, Oct. 10,
1891).

21. Brehm, iv. 671 seq.

22. R. Lendenfeld, in Der zoologische Garten, 1889.

CHAPTER II

MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS (continued)

Migrations of birds. Breeding associations. Autumn societies. Mammals:
small number of unsociable species. Hunting associations of wolves, lions,
etc. Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. Mutual Aid in the
struggle for life. Darwin's arguments to prove the struggle for life within the
species. Natural checks to over-multiplication. Supposed extermination of
intermediate links. Elimination of competition in Nature.

As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and
myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South
come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigour and joy, hasten
northwards to rear their offspring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each
ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America,
Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the
year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy, and
protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless
it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the
Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of
aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in
perfect peace—all protecting one another.

"For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and
terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-
coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply
enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while
higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms
everywhere."(1)

And here are the robbers—the strongest, the most cunning ones, those
"ideally organized for robbery." And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal
cries as for hours in succession they watch the opportunity of snatching
from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individual. But as
soon as they approach, their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary
sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened
by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he suddenly
dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all sides, he again is
compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but
the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the
robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a
cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.(2) And while
life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of
anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet
used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an
exuberant life, the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of
that life.

Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes,

"you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the ledges, all
the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to a height of from two to
five hundred feet, literally covered with sea-birds, whose white breasts

show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with
chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls."(3)

Each of such "bird-mountains" is a living illustration of mutual aid, as
well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual and specific, resulting
from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack
the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily
becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded
by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird;
but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when
surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there,
the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and
short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each
other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed
comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans,
and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she
conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with
the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have the dotterels, whose
family relations are so "charming and touching" that even passionate
hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the
eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the
Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest, or the lums,
which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, offering all
possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest: and that is
why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be
judged from the moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist
are themselves a result—mostly unconscious—of the observation of Nature.

Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds that more
examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows'
nests; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds; our farmhouses give

shelter to colonies of swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of
nocturnal birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming
descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these
nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from
their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Coues, saw, for
instance, the little cliff-swallows nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of
the prairie falcon (Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of
one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the canons of
Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little
peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour; they never let it
approach to their colony. They immediately surrounded it and chased it, so
that it had to make off at once.(4)

Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over; it begins
then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters,
generally including several species. Social life is practised at that time
chiefly for its own sake—partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures
derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young
nuthatchers (Sitta caesia), together with tit-mouses, chaffinches, wrens,
tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.(5) In Spain the swallow is met with in
company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of
America the young horned larks live in large societies, together with
another lark (Sprague's), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several
species of buntings and longspurs.(6) In fact, it would be much easier to
describe the species which live isolated than to simply name those species
which join the autumnal societies of young birds—not for hunting or
nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time
in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their
daily food.

And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds-
their migrations—which I dare not even enter upon in this place. Sufficient
to say that birds which have lived for months in small bands scattered over
a wide territory gather in thousands; they come together at a given place,
for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss
the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in
flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners,
and finally they start in a certain well chosen direction—a fruit of
accumulated collective experience—the strongest flying at the head of the
band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in
large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return
next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them
takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the
previous year.(7)

This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied; it offers so many
striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits, subsidiary to the main fact of
migration—each of which would, however, require a special study—that I
must refrain from entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer
to the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place, always
on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys north or south, as
also those which one sees in the north, after the birds have arrived at their
breeding-places on the Yenisei or in the northern counties of England. For
many days in succession—sometimes one month—they will come together
every morning for one hour, before flying in search of food—perhaps
discussing the spot where they are going to build their nests.(8) And if,
during the migration, their columns are overtaken by a storm, birds of the
most different species will be brought together by common misfortune. The
birds which are not exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and
southwards with the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So
far from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate individual

the advantages of better food or shelter which are to be found in another
district—they always wait for each other, and gather in flocks, before they
move north or south, in accordance with the season.(9)

Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the
overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few
carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the
Steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer,
antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of
which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America,
they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop
their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route
they followed; the march past of the dense column lasting sometimes for
two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they
found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other
sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a
hunting expedition which lasted for two hundred years; while the grass
plains of Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra, the
hartebeest, and other antelopes.

Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern
Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth
century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four
great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground-
squirrels, marmots, and other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and
Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants,
rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the
reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still further north we find the
herds of the musk-oxen and numberless bands of polar foxes. The coasts of
the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals
of sociable cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central

Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild
sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes
numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three
centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the debris of the immense
aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the
numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those
who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions
and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One
might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a
succession of war massacres.

Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find social
habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the cat tribe
(lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly
prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small
groups. And yet, even among lions "this is a very common practice to hunt
in company."(10) The two tribes of the civets (Viverridae) and the weasels
(Mustelidae) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a
fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than
it is now; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the
Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is
eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered
as eminently characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact,
that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent
description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is
grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud
barking, make it roll in the abyss.(11) Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the
Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his
cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow
so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case
in France some five-and-forty years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never

attack the horses otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter
fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl's testimony) sometimes
assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat
promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by
their hoofs. The prairie-wolves (Canis latrans) are known to associate in
bands of from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo
occasionally separated from its herd.(12) Jackals, which are most
courageous and may be considered as one of the most intelligent
representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in packs; thus united, they
have no fear of the bigger carnivores.(13) As to the wild dogs of Asia (the
Kholzuns, or Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger
animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and overpowering bears and
tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs, and the hunting
organizations of the painted lycaons are highly praised by Cumming. Nay,
even foxes, which, as a rule, live isolated in our civilized countries, have
been seen combining for hunting purposes.(14) As to the polar fox, it is—or
rather was in Steller's time—one of the most sociable animals; and when
one reads Steller's description of the war that was waged by Behring's
unfortunate crew against these intelligent small animals, one does not know
what to wonder at most: the extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the
mutual aid they displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or
stored upon a pillar (one fox would climb on its top and throw the food to
its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to despair by the
numerous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in societies where they are
not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw the black bear of Kamtchatka in
numerous packs, and the polar bears are occasionally found in small groups.
Even the unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain association.

However, it is especially with the rodents, the ungulata, and the
ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual aid. The
squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own

comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are
towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so
happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their
parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social
relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse,
and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they
emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are
eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging,
they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they
multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as
numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests,
the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal
birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals
remaining behind. The ground-squirrel—a closely-akin genus—is still more
sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean halls large
amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn.
According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a
miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and
Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found
several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with
common efforts.

The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of
Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more
intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling; but they live
in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia—the
souslik—of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man
alone, lives in numberless colonies; and while the Russian provincial
assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy of society,
it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful way. Their play is so
charming that no observer could refrain from paying them a tribute of

praise, and from mentioning the melodious concerts arising from the sharp
whistlings of the males and the melancholic whistlings of the females,
before—suddenly returning to his citizen's duties—he begins inventing the
most diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All kinds of
rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved powerless, the last word
of science in this warfare is the inoculation of cholera! The villages of the
prairie-dogs in America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can
embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them a prairie-
dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its neighbours by means
of short barkings. As soon as the approach of man is signalled, all plunge in
a moment into their dwellings; all have disappeared as by enchantment. But
if the danger is over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come
out of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch one
another, they worry one another, and display their gracefulness while
standing upright, and in the meantime the old ones keep watch. They go
visiting one another, and the beaten footpaths which connect all their heaps
testify to the frequency of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have
written some of their best pages in describing the associations of the prairie-
dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the polar marmots of
the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as regards the marmots, the same
remark as I have made when speaking of the bees. They have maintained
their fighting instincts, and these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their
big associations, in the face of free Nature, the unsociable instincts have no
opportunity to develop, and the general result is peace and harmony.

Even such harsh animals as the rats, which continually fight in our
cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our
larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and
migrations, and even to feed their invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-
rats of Canada, they are extremely sociable. Audubon could not but admire
"their peaceful communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy

happiness." Like all sociable animals, they are lively and playful, they
easily combine with other species, and they have attained a very high
degree of intellectual development. In their villages, always disposed on the
shores of lakes and rivers, they take into account the changing level of
water; their domeshaped houses, which are built of beaten clay interwoven
with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well
carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated.
As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic
character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and
die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully
illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the
development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are
familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the
beavers, the muskrats, and some other rodents, we already find the feature
which will also be distinctive of human communities—that is, work in
common.

I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the
chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South
Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent
illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.(15)
Precisely, the pleasures; because it is extremely difficult to say what brings
animals together—the needs of mutual protection, or simply the pleasure of
feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate, our common hares,
which do not gather in societies for life in common, and which are not even
endowed with intense parental feelings, cannot live without coming
together for play. Dietrich de Winckell, who is considered to be among the
best acquainted with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate
players, becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known
to take an approaching fox for a playmate.(16) As to the rabbit, it lives in
societies, and its family life is entirely built upon the image of the old

patriarchal family; the young ones being kept in absolute obedience to the
father and even the grandfather.(17) And here we have the example of two
very closely-allied species which cannot bear each other—not because they
live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are too often explained, but
most probably because the passionate, eminently-individualist hare cannot
make friends with that placid, quiet, and submissive creature, the rabbit.
Their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship.

Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of horses, which
includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the zebras, the mustangs, the
cimarrones of the Pampas, and the half-wild horses of Mongolia and
Siberia. They all live in numerous associations made up of many studs, each
of which consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male.
These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly
organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies and the
adverse conditions of climate, would soon have disappeared from the
surface of the earth were it not for their sociable spirit. When a beast of prey
approaches them, several studs unite at once; they repulse the beast and
sometimes chase it: and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can
capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached from the
herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the prairies, they gather in
herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals strong, and migrate. And when a
snow-storm rages in the Steppes, each stud keeps close together, and repairs
to a protected ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been
seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found
after the storm half dying from fatigue. Union is their chief arm in the
struggle for life, and man is their chief enemy. Before his increasing
numbers the ancestors of our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskii, so
named by Polyakoff) have preferred to retire to the wildest and least
accessible plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they continue to live,

surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the Arctic
regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.(18)

Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken from the life of
the reindeer, and especially of that large division of ruminants which might
include the roebucks, the fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex,
and, in fact, the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides,
the Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of their
herds against attacks of carnivores; the anxiety displayed by all individuals
in a herd of chamois as long as all of them have not cleared a difficult
passage over rocky cliffs, the adoption of orphans; the despair of the gazelle
whose mate, or even comrade of the same sex, has been killed; the plays of
the youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But perhaps
the most striking illustration of mutual support is given by the occasional
migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once on the Amur. When I crossed
the high plateau and its border ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from
Transbaikalia to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my
way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer
these mostly uninhabited regions are.(19) Two years later I was travelling
up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that
picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little
Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found
the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement,
because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur
where it is narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in
succession, upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the Cossacks
were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in which already floated
a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed every day, and the exodus
nevertheless continued. Like migrations were never seen either before or
since, and this one must have been called for by an early and heavy snow-
fall in the Great Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate

attempt at reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains.
Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under snow two or
three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense territory (almost as
big as Great Britain) from which the scattered groups of deer must have
gathered for a migration which was undertaken under the pressure of
exceptional circumstances, and realizes the difficulties which had to be
overcome before all the deer came to the common idea of crossing the
Amur further south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the
amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The fact is not
the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes of North America
displayed the same powers of combination. One saw them grazing in great
numbers in the plains, but these numbers were made up by an infinity of
small groups which never mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose,
all groups, however scattered over an immense territory, came together and
made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of
individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page.

I also ought to say a few words at least about the "compound families" of
the elephants, their mutual attachment, their deliberate ways in posting
sentries, and the feelings of sympathy developed by such a life of close
mutual support.(20) I might mention the sociable feelings of those
disreputable creatures the wild boars, and find a word of praise for their
powers of association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.(21) The
hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a work
devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might be given to the
sociability and mutual attachment of the seals and the walruses; and finally,
one might mention the most excellent feelings existing among the sociable
cetaceans. But I have to say yet a few words about the societies of
monkeys, which acquire an additional interest from their being the link
which will bring us to the societies of primitive men.

It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand at the very
top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and
intelligence, are eminently sociable. Evidently we must be prepared to meet
with all varieties of character and habits in so great a division of the animal
kingdom which includes hundreds of species. But, all things considered, it
must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a
high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of
social life, are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest
species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few
exceptions. The nocturnal apes prefer isolated life; the capuchins (Cebus
capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small families;
and the orang-outans have never been seen by A.R. Wallace otherwise than
either solitary or in very small groups of three or four individuals, while the
gorillas seem never to join in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey
tribe—the chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons,
and so on—are sociable in the highest degree. They live in great bands, and
even join with other species than their own. Most of them become quite
unhappy when solitary. The cries of distress of each one of the band
immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse
the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare
attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands—the old ones taking
care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish
sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another
when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades.
Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not
abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained that
it is dead and that they are helpless to restore it to life. Thus James Forbes
narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a fact of such resistance in reclaiming
from his hunting party the dead body of a female monkey that one fully
understands why "the witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never

again to fire at one of the monkey race."(22) In some species several
individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search for ants' eggs
under it. The hamadryas not only post sentries, but have been seen making a
chain for the transmission of the spoil to a safe place; and their courage is
well known. Brehm's description of the regular fight which his caravan had
to sustain before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the valley
of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.(23) The playfulness of
the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which reigns in the families of
chimpanzees also are familiar to the general reader. And if we find among
the highest apes two species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not
sociable, we must remember that both—limited as they are to very small
areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two islands of
Borneo and Sumatra have all the appearance of being the last remnants of
formerly much more numerous species. The gorilla at least seems to have
been sociable in olden times, if the apes mentioned in the Periplus really
were gorillas.

We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in societies is no
exception in the animal world; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it
reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species
which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their
numbers are limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few
exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now, were
living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and waged a
permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from which they
formerly derived food. "On ne s'associe pas pour mourir," was the sound
remark of Espinas; and Houzeau, who knew the animal world of some parts
of America when it was not yet affected by man, wrote to the same effect.

Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of evolution; and,
according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer, so brilliantly developed in
Perrier's Colonies Animales, colonies are at the very origin of evolution in
the animal kingdom. But, in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution,
we see association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely
physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it becomes reasoned.
With the higher vertebrates it is periodical, or is resorted to for the
satisfaction of a given want—propagation of the species, migration,
hunting, or mutual defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds
associate against a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of
exceptional circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a
voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination
sometimes appears in two or more degrees—the family first, then the group,
and finally the association of groups, habitually scattered, but uniting in
case of need, as we saw it with the bisons and other ruminants. It also takes
higher forms, guaranteeing more independence to the individual without
depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents the individual
has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when it prefers being left alone;
but the dwellings are laid out in villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all
inhabitants the benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several
species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc., sociable life is maintained
notwithstanding the quarrelsome or otherwise egotistic inclinations of the
isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed, as is the case with ants and bees,
by the very physiological structure of the individuals; it is cultivated for the
benefits of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of course,
appears with all possible gradations and with the greatest variety of
individual and specific characters—the very variety of aspects taken by
social life being a consequence, and for us a further proof, of its generality.
(24)

Sociability—that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like—
the love of society for society's sake, combined with the "joy of life," only
now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.(25) We know at the
present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds,
and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running
after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on.
And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behaviour of
the young in mature life, there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian
purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an
excess of forces—"the joy of life," and a desire to communicate in some
way or another with other individuals of the same or of other species—in
short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of
all the animal world.(26) Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at the
appearance of a bird of prey, or "a fit of gladness" which bursts out when
the animals are in good health and especially when young, or merely the
desire of giving play to an excess of impressions and of vital power—the
necessity of communicating impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of
simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living beings pervades
Nature, and is, as much as any other physiological function, a distinctive
feature of life and impressionability. This need takes a higher development
and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals, especially amidst their
young, and still more among the birds; but it pervades all Nature, and has
been fully observed by the best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even
amongst the ants, and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together
the big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already.

The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating the places
where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of course, well known
from the pages that Darwin gave to this subject in The Descent of Man (ch.
xiii). Visitors of the London Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the
satin bower-bird. But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely

spread than was formerly believed, and Mr. W. Hudson gives in his master-
work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the
original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds:
rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on.

The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several species of birds,
belongs to the same category of social instincts. It is most strikingly
developed with the chakar (Chauna chavarris), to which the English have
given the most unimaginative misnomer of "crested screamer." These birds
sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they frequently
sing all in concert. W.H. Hudson found them once in countless numbers,
ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined flocks, of about 500 birds in
each flock.

"Presently," he writes, "one flock near me began singing, and continued
their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased the next
flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the
notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear
across the water—then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once
more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again."

On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered with an
endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered in pairs and small
groups. About nine o'clock in the evening, "suddenly the entire multitude of
birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous
evening song…. It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to
hear."(27) It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily
becomes tame and grows very attached to man. "They are mild-tempered
birds, and very rarely quarrel"—we are told—although they are well
provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons
useless.

That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life,
taken in its widest sense, has been illustrated by several examples on the
foregoing pages, and could be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if
further evidence were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects,
the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect
themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits
longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of
energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables
the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while
fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and
endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and
Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or the species, the
fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any
circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life.
Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to
decay; while those animals which know best how to combine, have the
greatest chances of survival and of further evolution, although they may be
inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and
Wallace, save the intellectual faculty. The highest vertebrates, and
especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the
intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is
the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful factor
of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently
social faculty. Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so
many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is
deprived. Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants, the
parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest sociability with the
highest development of intelligence. The fittest are thus the most sociable
animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both

directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the
waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of intelligence.

Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible
without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of
a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every
individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the
others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society—life would be
possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious
animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes
come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy
sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even
steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy
comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no
nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have
separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for
them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each
group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.(28) We
have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the
nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of
grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals
which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses,
which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability
thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development
of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all
classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the
young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy
—not love—attains a further development in their associations. Leaving
aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which
have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept
in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion

between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Buchner have given a
number of such facts.(29) J.C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to
pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited
popularity.(30) So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey
to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed,
and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a
distance of thirty miles.(31) And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued
by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia
and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging
behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with
wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists.
Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social
life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general
intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of
higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further
evolution.

If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct, the question
necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent with the theory of struggle
for life as it has been developed by Darwin, Wallace, and their followers?
and I will now briefly answer this important question. First of all, no
naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through
organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century. Life is struggle;
and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions, "By
which arms is this struggle chiefly carried on?" and "Who are the fittest in
the struggle?" will widely differ according to the importance given to the
two different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and safety
among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as
"metaphorical"—the struggle, very often collective, against adverse
circumstances. No one will deny that there is, within each species, a certain
amount of real competition for food—at least, at certain periods. But the

question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent admitted by
Darwin, or even by Wallace; and whether this competition has played, in
the evolution of the animal kingdom, the part assigned to it.

The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of real
competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and
possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked
with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers
the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs
of that competition, we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently
convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled "Struggle for Life most
severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species," we find in it
none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to
find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the
same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single
instance: it is taken as granted; and the competition between closely-allied
animal species is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one, at least
(relating to the two species of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.(32) But
when we look for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of
one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species,
Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us:

"We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between
allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature; but probably in no
case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over
another in the great battle of life."

As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a slightly-modified
heading ("Struggle for Life between closely-allied Animals and Plants often
most severe"), he makes the following remark (italics are mine), which
gives quite another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says:

"In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the two, the
stronger killing the weaker. But this is by no means necessary, and there
may be cases in which the weaker species, physically, may prevail by its
power of more rapid multiplication, its better withstanding vicissitudes of
climate, or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common enemies."

In such cases what is described as competition may be no competition at
all. One species succumbs, not because it is exterminated or starved out by
the other species, but because it does not well accommodate itself to new
conditions, which the other does. The term "struggle for life" is again used
in its metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real competition
between individuals of the same species, which is illustrated in another
place by the cattle of South America during a period of drought, its value is
impaired by its being taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons
emigrate in like circumstances in order to avoid competition. However
severe the struggle between plants—and this is amply proved—we cannot
but repeat Wallace's remark to the effect that "plants live where they can,"
while animals have, to a great extent, the power of choice of their abode. So
that we again are asking ourselves, To what extent does competition really
exist within each animal species? Upon what is the assumption based? The
same remark must be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a
severe competition and struggle for life within each species, which may be
derived from the "extermination of transitional varieties," so often
mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time Darwin was worried
by the difficulty which he saw in the absence of a long chain of
intermediate forms between closely-allied species, and that he found the
solution of this difficulty in the supposed extermination of the intermediate
forms.(33) However, an attentive reading of the different chapters in which
Darwin and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the conclusion
that the word "extermination" does not mean real extermination; the same
remark which Darwin made concerning his expression: "struggle for

existence," evidently applies to the word "extermination" as well. It can by
no means be understood in its direct sense, but must be taken "in its
metaphoric sense." If we start from the supposition that a given area is
stocked with animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for
the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all the
inhabitants—each animal being compelled to fight against all its congeners
in order to get its daily food—then the appearance of a new and successful
variety would certainly mean in many cases (though not always) the
appearance of individuals which are enabled to seize more than their fair
share of the means of existence; and the result would be that those
individuals would starve both the parental form which does not possess the
new variation and the intermediate forms which do not possess it in the
same degree. It may be that at the outset, Darwin understood the appearance
of new varieties under this aspect; at least, the frequent use of the word
"extermination" conveys such an impression. But both he and Wallace knew
Nature too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only possible
and necessary course of affairs.

If the physical and the biological conditions of a given area, the extension
of the area occupied by a given species, and the habits of all the members of
the latter remained unchanged—then the sudden appearance of a new
variety might mean the starving out and the extermination of all the
individuals which were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new
feature by which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination
of conditions is precisely what we do not see in Nature. Each species is
continually tending to enlarge its abode; migration to new abodes is the rule
with the slow snail, as with the swift bird; physical changes are continually
going on in every given area; and new varieties among animals consist in an
immense number of cases-perhaps in the majority—not in the growth of
new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its congeners—food
is only one out of a hundred of various conditions of existence—but, as

Wallace himself shows in a charming paragraph on the "divergence of
characters" (Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new
abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no
extermination, even no competition—the new adaptation being a relief from
competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence
of intermediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are
best fitted for the new conditions—as surely as under the hypothesis of
extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that if we admit,
with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying
influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less
necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms.

The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation of groups of
animals, for the origin of new varieties and ultimately of new species,
which was indicated by Moritz Wagner, was fully recognized by Darwin
himself. Consequent researches have only accentuated the importance of
this factor, and they have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by
a given species—which Darwin considered with full reason so important
for the appearance of new varieties—can be combined with the isolation of
parts of the species, in consequence of local geological changes, or of local
barriers. It would be impossible to enter here into the discussion of this
wide question, but a few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action
of these agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often take
to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of
cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of
food has certain well-known physiological effects on the squirrels. If this
change of habits does not last—if next year the cones are again plentiful in
the dark larch woods—no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from
this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to
have its physical characters altered—in consequence of, let us say, a milder
climate or desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine

forests in proportion to the larch woods—and if some other conditions
concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating
region—we shall have then a new variety, i.e. an incipient new species of
squirrels, without there having been anything that would deserve the name
of extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the
new, better adapted variety would survive every year, and the intermediate
links would die in the course of time, without having been starved out by
Malthusian competitors. This is exactly what we see going on during the
great physical changes which are accomplished over large areas in Central
Asia, owing to the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial
period.

To take another example, it has been proved by geologists that the
present wild horse (Equus Przewalski) has slowly been evolved during the
later parts of the Tertiary and the Quaternary period, but that during this
succession of ages its ancestors were not confined to some given, limited
area of the globe. They wandered over both the Old and New World,
returning, in all probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in
the course of their migrations, formerly left.(34) Consequently, if we do not
find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse
and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the
intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever
taken place. No exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the
ancestral species: the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties
and species have died in the usual course of events—often amidst plentiful
food, and their remains were buried all over the globe.

In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and, carefully re-read what
Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we see that if the word
"extermination" be used at all in connection with transitional varieties, it
must be used in its metaphoric sense. As to "competition," this expression,

too, is continually used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph "On
Extinction") as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the
intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two portions
of the same species for the means of existence. At any rate, the absence of
intermediate forms is no argument in favour of it.

In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen competition for the
means of existence continually going on within every animal species is—to
use Professor Geddes' expression—the "arithmetical argument" borrowed
from Malthus.

But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well take a
number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants of which enjoy
plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation of any kind; and seeing
that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while
the population is now what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that
there has been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the truth
is that from year to year the population remained stationary, for the simple
reason that one-third of the new-born died before reaching their sixth month
of life; one-half died within the next four years, and out of each hundred
born, only seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went
away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if such is the
case with men, it is still more the case with animals. In the feathered world
the destruction of the eggs goes on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are
the chief food of several species in the early summer; not to, say a word of
the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America,
and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals.
Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird's nest, each sudden
change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so
terrible in theory.

As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and cattle in
America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even of wild animals
imported from Europe (where their numbers are kept down by man, not by
competition), they rather seem opposed to the theory of over-population. If
horses and cattle could so rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved
that, however numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that
time in the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the
prairies could maintain. If millions of intruders have found plenty of food
without starving out the former population of the prairies, we must rather
conclude that the Europeans found a want of grass-eaters in America, not an
excess. And we have good reasons to believe that want of animal population
is the natural state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary
exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given region are
determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the region, but by what it
is every year under the most unfavourable conditions. So that, for that
reason alone, competition hardly can be a normal condition. But other
causes intervene as well to cut, down the animal population below even that
low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the
winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and
exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because
there is not enough food for all of them—the grass buried under a thin sheet
of snow is everywhere in abundance—but because of the difficulty of
getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all
horses alike. Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and
if several such days come in succession the horses grow still more
exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which compels the already
weakened animals to remain without any food for several days, and very
great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are so severe that if
the season has been more inclement than usual they are even not repaired
by the new breeds—the more so as all horses are exhausted, and the young

foals are born in a weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus
always remain beneath what they otherwise might be; all the year round
there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet their population
increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the Buriate owner makes ever so
small a provision of hay in the steppe, and throws it open during days of
glazed frost, or heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his
herd. Almost all free grass-eating animals and many rodents in Asia and
America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say that
their numbers are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year
they can struggle for food, and that if they never reach anything
approaching to over-population, the cause is in the climate, not in
competition.

The importance of natural checks to over-multiplication, and especially
their bearing upon the competition hypothesis, seems never to have been
taken into due account. The checks, or rather some of them, are mentioned,
but their action is seldom studied in detail. However, if we compare the
action of the natural checks with that of competition, we must recognize at
once that the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks.
Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged ants
which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or half-dead bodies of
the formica de fuego (Myrmica saevissima) which had been blown into the
river during a gale "were heaped in a line an inch or two in height and
breadth, the line continuing without interruption for miles at the edge of the
water."(35) Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might
support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr. Altum, a
German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about animals injurious
to our forests, also gives many facts showing the immense importance of
natural checks. He says, that a succession of gales or cold and damp
weather during the exodus of the pine-moth (Bombyx pini) destroy it to
incredible amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths

disappeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights.(36)
Many like examples relative to various insects could be quoted from
various parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also mentions the bird-enemies of the
pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes; but he
adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it are a far more
terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy the moth over very large
areas at once. As to various species of mice (Mus sylvaticus, Arvicola
arvalis, and A. agrestis), the same author gives a long list of their enemies,
but he remarks: "However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other
animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year."
Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless
quantities; "one single sudden change can reduce thousands of mice to the
number of a few individuals." On the other side, a warm winter, or a winter
which gradually steps in, make them multiply in menacing proportions,
notwithstanding every enemy; such was the case in 1876 and 1877.(37)
Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when
compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as
regards squirrels.

As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of
weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English
moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch. Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed
during some exceptionally severe winters, that they quitted the moors in
numbers, "and we have then known them actually to be taken in the streets
of Sheffield. Persistent wet," he adds, "is almost as fatal to them."

On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually visit most
animal species destroy them in such numbers that the losses often cannot be
repaired for many years, even with the most rapidly-multiplying animals.
Thus, some sixty years ago, the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the
neighbourhood of Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of

some epidemics; and for years no sousliks were seen in that neighbourhood.
It took many years before they became as numerous as they formerly were.
(38)

Like facts, all tending to reduce the importance given to competition,
could be produced in numbers. Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin's
words, that nevertheless each organic being "at some period of its life,
during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has
to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction," and that the fittest
survive during such periods of hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of
the animal world were based exclusively, or even chiefly, upon the survival
of the fittest during periods of calamities; if natural selection were limited
in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or sudden changes of
temperature, or inundations, retrogression would be the rule in the animal
world. Those who survive a famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or
small-pox, or diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are
neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent. No
progress could be based on those survivals—the less so as all survivors
usually come out of the ordeal with an impaired health, like the
Transbaikalian horses just mentioned, or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of
a fortress which has been compelled to live for a few months on half
rations, and comes out of its experience with a broken health, and
subsequently shows a quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection
can do in times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the
greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian
horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed upon the Polar birch in
case of need; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable
of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease; no
Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no
natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with Europeans.
They may better endure hunger and cold, but their physical force is very far

below that of a well-fed European, and their intellectual progress is
despairingly slow. "Evil cannot be productive of good," as Tchernyshevsky
wrote in a remarkable essay upon Darwinism.(39)

Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or
in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural
selection finds better fields for its activity. Better conditions are created by
the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual Support.
(40) In the great struggle for life—for the greatest possible fulness and
intensity of life with the least waste of energy—natural selection
continually seeks out the ways precisely for avoiding competition as much
as possible. The ants combine in nests and nations; they pile up their stores,
they rear their cattle—and thus avoid competition; and natural selection
picks out of the ants' family the species which know best how to avoid
competition, with its unavoidably deleterious consequences. Most of our
birds slowly move southwards as the winter comes, or gather in numberless
societies and undertake long journeys—and thus avoid competition. Many
rodents fall asleep when the time comes that competition should set in;
while other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large villages for
obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the
lichens are dry in the interior of the continent, migrate towards the sea.
Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of food. And
the beavers, when they grow numerous on a river, divide into two parties,
and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and
avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate,
nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do what
the titmouse does, and what Wallace (Darwinism, ch. v) has so charmingly
described: they resort to new kinds of food—and thus, again, avoid
competition.

"Don't compete!—competition is always injurious to the species, and you
have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That is the tendency of nature, not
always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which
comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore
combine—practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each
and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress,
bodily, intellectual, and moral." That is what Nature teaches us; and that is
what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their
respective classes have done. That is also what man—the most primitive
man—has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon
which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to
mutual aid in human societies.

NOTES:

1. Syevettsoff's Periodical Phenomena, p. 251.

2. Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760.

3. The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjold, London, 1879, p. 135. See
also the powerful description of the St. Kilda islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted
by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel.

4. Elliot Coues, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp.
556, 579, etc. Among the gulls (Larus argentatus), Polyakoff saw on a
marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting grounds of a very great number
of these birds were always patrolled by one male, which warned the colony
of the approach of danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the
enemy with great vigour. The females, which had five or six nests together
on each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their nests in
search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are extremely unprotected
and easily become the prey of the rapacious birds, were never left alone

("Family Habits among the Aquatic Birds," in Proceedings of the Zool.
Section of St. Petersburg Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874).

5. Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White's
Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI.

6. Dr. Coues, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin U.S. Survey of
Territories, iv. No. 7.

7. It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport
some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but
the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side, it is certain that some
smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed
several times, and it was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim.
He saw several parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on
both sides of their migratory columns (Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p.
133).

8. H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit.

9. The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with reference to
England several examples may be found in Charles Dixon's Among the
Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches arrive during winter in vast
flocks; and about the same time, i.e. in November, come flocks of
bramblings; redwings also frequent the same places "in similar large
companies," and so on (pp. 165, 166).

10. S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316.

11. Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404.

12. Houzeau's Etudes, ii. 463.

13. For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant's Natural History of
Ceylon, quoted in Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 432.

14. See Emil Huter's letter in L. Buchner's Liebe.

15. With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these
highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each
village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights. Sociability is thus
extended to the whole species—not only to a given society, or to a nation,
as we saw it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow,
and buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas—we are
told by Hudson—"come from a distance to dig out those that are buried
alive" (l.c., p. 311). This is a widely-known fact in La Plata, verified by the
author.

16. Handbuch für Jäger und Jagdberechtigte, quoted by Brehm, ii. 223.

17. Buffon's Histoire Naturelle.

18. In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga
zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives
on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries,
but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have
a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be
explained by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together
with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis,
and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the
hare and the rabbit. Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley's Big Game
Shooting (Badminton Library), which contains excellent illustrations of
various species living together in East Africa.

19. Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was
prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was
beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His efforts
were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed every day;
and he was an excellent hunter.

20. According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups
than the "compound family." "I have frequently observed," he wrote, "in the
portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants in
great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have
joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered
insecure" (Wild Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102).

21. Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.).

22. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472.

23. Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff
expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a
similar fight.

24. The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article
by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau:
"The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual war—
whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step—created
society" (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been
created by man; it is anterior to man.

25. Such monographs as the chapter on "Music and Dancing in Nature"
which we have in Hudson's Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross' Play
of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an instinct which
is absolutely universal in Nature.

26. Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling
together—in many cases always at the same spot—to indulge in antics and
dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson's experience is that nearly all
mammals and birds ("probably there are really no exceptions") indulge
frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or without
sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264).

27. For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm.

28. Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58.

29. To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried away by
another badger suddenly appearing on the scene; rats have been seen
feeding a blind couple (Seelenleben der Thiere, p. 64 seq.). Brehm himself
saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded;
its wound was several weeks old (Hausfreund, 1874, 715; Buchner's Liebe,
203). Mr. Blyth saw Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades; and
so on.

30. Man and Beast, p. 344.

31. L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272; Descent of Man,
ch. iv.

32. One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of another
swallow species in North America; the recent increase of the missel-thrush
in Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush; the brown rat has
taken the place of the black rat in Europe; in Russia the small cockroach has
everywhere driven before it its greater congener; and in Australia the
imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small stingless bee. Two
other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned in the
preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts, A.R. Wallace

remarks in a footnote relative to the Scottish thrushes: "Prof. A. Newton,
however, informs me that these species do not interfere in the way here
stated" (Darwinism, p. 34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to
its amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human dwellings
(low cellars, sewers, etc.), as also on the banks of canals and rivers; it also
undertakes distant migrations in numberless bands. The black rat, on the
contrary, prefers staying in our dwellings themselves, under the floor, as
well as in our stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be
exterminated by man; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to
certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or starved out by the
brown rat and not by man.

33. "But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit
the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many
transitional forms…. By my theory these allied species are descended from
a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become
adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and
exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties
between its past and present states" (Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also
p. 137, 296 (all paragraph "On Extinction").

34. According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special study
of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed there some time,
and returned next to Asia. Whether this double migration be confirmed or
not, the fact of a former extension of the ancestor of our horse over Asia,
Africa, and America is settled beyond doubt.

35. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95.

36. Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschadigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel
(Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq.

37. Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187.

38. A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Societe des Naturalistes de Moscou,
1889, p. 625.

39. Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: "The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle
for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and
Human Life," by an Old Transformist.

40. "One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection acts is,
by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat different mode of
life, whereby they are able to seize unappropriated places in Nature"
(Origin of Species, p. 145)—in other words, to avoid competition.

CHAPTER III

MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES

Supposed war of each against all. Tribal origin of human society. Late
appearance of the separate family. Bushmen and Hottentots. Australians,
Papuas. Eskimos, Aleoutes. Features of savage life difficult to understand
for the European. The Dayak's conception of justice. Common law.

The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in the
evolution of the animal world has been briefly analyzed in the preceding
chapters. We have now to cast a glance upon the part played by the same
agencies in the evolution of mankind. We saw how few are the animal
species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live
in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or
for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common. We also
saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different classes of
animals, or different species, or even different tribes of the same species,
peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe or the species; and
that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid
competition, have the best chances of survival and of a further progressive
development. They prosper, while the unsociable species decay.

It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature
if men were an exception to so general a rule: if a creature so defenceless as
man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to
progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless
competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the
species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a
proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and
unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters. There
always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it,
more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew
of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty, and
oppression, told of it, and little more besides; and they concluded that
mankind is nothing but a loose aggregation of beings, always ready to fight
with each other, and only prevented from so doing by the intervention of
some authority.

Hobbes took that position; and while some of his eighteenth-century
followers endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence—not even
in its most primitive condition—mankind lived in a state of perpetual
warfare; that men have been sociable even in "the state of nature," and that
want of knowledge, rather than the natural bad inclinations of man, brought
humanity to all the horrors of its early historical life,—his idea was, on the
contrary, that the so-called "state of nature" was nothing but a permanent
fight between individuals, accidentally huddled together by the mere
caprice of their bestial existence. True, that science has made some progress
since Hobbes's time, and that we have safer ground to stand upon than the
speculations of Hobbes or Rousseau. But the Hobbesian philosophy has
plenty of admirers still; and we have had of late quite a school of writers
who, taking possession of Darwin's terminology rather than of his leading
ideas, made of it an argument in favour of Hobbes's views upon primitive
man, and even succeeded in giving them a scientific appearance. Huxley, as

is known, took the lead of that school, and in a paper written in 1888 he
represented primitive men as a sort of tigers or lions, deprived of all ethical
conceptions, fighting out the struggle for existence to its bitter end, and
living a life of "continual free fight"; to quote his own words—"beyond the
limited and, temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each
against all was the normal state of existence."(1)

It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and
the eighteenth-century philosophers as well, was to imagine that mankind
began its life in the shape of small straggling families, something like the
"limited and temporary" families of the bigger carnivores, while in reality it
is now positively known that such was not the case. Of course, we have no
direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first man-like beings. We are
not yet settled even as to the time of their first appearance, geologists being
inclined at present to see their traces in the pliocene, or even the miocene,
deposits of the Tertiary period. But we have the indirect method which
permits us to throw some light even upon that remote antiquity. A most
careful investigation into the social institutions of the lowest races has been
carried on during the last forty years, and it has revealed among the present
institutions of primitive folk some traces of still older institutions which
have long disappeared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of their
previous existence. A whole science devoted to the embryology of human
institutions has thus developed in the hands of Bachofen, MacLennan,
Morgan, Edwin Tylor, Maine, Post, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and many others.
And that science has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not
begin its life in the shape of small isolated families.

Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late
product of human evolution. As far as we can go back in the palaeo-
ethnology of mankind, we find men living in societies—in tribes similar to
those of the highest mammals; and an extremely slow and long evolution

was required to bring these societies to the gentile, or clan organization,
which, in its turn, had to undergo another, also very long evolution, before
the first germs of family, polygamous or monogamous, could appear.
Societies, bands, or tribes—not families—were thus the primitive form of
organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors. That is what ethnology
has come to after its painstaking researches. And in so doing it simply came
to what might have been foreseen by the zoologist. None of the higher
mammals, save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly-decaying species
of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live in small families, isolatedly
straggling in the woods. All others live in societies. And Darwin so well
understood that isolately-living apes never could have developed into man-
like beings, that he was inclined to consider man as descended from some
comparatively weak but social species, like the chimpanzee, rather than
from some stronger but unsociable species, like the gorilla.(2) Zoology and
palaeo-ethnology are thus agreed in considering that the band, not the
family, was the earliest form of social life. The first human societies simply
were a further development of those societies which constitute the very
essence of life of the higher animals.(3)

If we now go over to positive evidence, we see that the earliest traces of
man, dating from the glacial or the early post-glacial period, afford
unmistakable proofs of man having lived even then in societies. Isolated
finds of stone implements, even from the old stone age, are very rare; on the
contrary, wherever one flint implement is discovered others are sure to be
found, in most cases in very large quantities. At a time when men were
dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in company with
mammals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the roughest sorts
of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of life in societies. In the
valleys of the tributaries of the Dordogne, the surface of the rocks is in
some places entirely covered with caves which were inhabited by
palaeolithic men.(4) Sometimes the cave-dwellings are superposed in

storeys, and they certainly recall much more the nesting colonies of
swallows than the dens of carnivores. As to the flint implements discovered
in those caves, to use Lubbock's words, "one may say without exaggeration
that they are numberless." The same is true of other palaeolithic stations. It
also appears from Lartet's investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac
region in the south of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their
dead. So that men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship, even
at that extremely remote epoch.

The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the stone age.
Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless quantities, so that
we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great extent. When the ice-cap
(which must have spread from the Polar regions as far south as middle
France, middle Germany, and middle Russia, and covered Canada as well
as a good deal of what is now the United States) began to melt away, the
surfaces freed from ice were covered, first, with swamps and marshes, and
later on with numberless lakes.(5) Lakes filled all depressions of the valleys
before their waters dug out those permanent channels which, during a
subsequent epoch, became our rivers. And wherever we explore, in Europe,
Asia, or America, the shores of the literally numberless lakes of that period,
whose proper name would be the Lacustrine period, we find traces of
neolithic man. They are so numerous that we can only wonder at the
relative density of population at that time. The "stations" of neolithic man
closely follow each other on the terraces which now mark the shores of the
old lakes. And at each of those stations stone implements appear in such
numbers, that no doubt is possible as to the length of time during which
they were inhabited by rather numerous tribes. Whole workshops of flint
implements, testifying of the numbers of workers who used to come
together, have been discovered by the archaeologists.

Traces of a more advanced period, already characterized by the use of
some pottery, are found in the shell-heaps of Denmark. They appear, as is
well known, in the shape of heaps from five to ten feet thick, from 100 to
200 feet wide, and 1,000 feet or more in length, and they are so common
along some parts of the sea-coast that for a long time they were considered
as natural growths. And yet they "contain nothing but what has been in
some way or other subservient to the use of man," and they are so densely
stuffed with products of human industry that, during a two days' stay at
Milgaard, Lubbock dug out no less than 191 pieces of stone-implements
and four fragments of pottery.(6) The very size and extension of the shell
heaps prove that for generations and generations the coasts of Denmark
were inhabited by hundreds of small tribes which certainly lived as
peacefully together as the Fuegian tribes, which also accumulate like
shellheaps, are living in our own times.

As to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which represent a still further
advance in civilization, they yield still better evidence of life and work in
societies. It is known that even during the stone age the shores of the Swiss
lakes were dotted with a succession of villages, each of which consisted of
several huts, and was built upon a platform supported by numberless pillars
in the lake. No less than twenty-four, mostly stone age villages, were
discovered along the shores of Lake Leman, thirty-two in the Lake of
Constance, forty-six in the Lake of Neuchatel, and so on; and each of them
testifies to the immense amount of labour which was spent in common by
the tribe, not by the family. It has even been asserted that the life of the
lake-dwellers must have been remarkably free of warfare. And so it
probably was, especially if we refer to the life of those primitive folk who
live until the present time in similar villages built upon pillars on the sea
coasts.

It is thus seen, even from the above rapid hints, that our knowledge of
primitive man is not so scanty after all, and that, so far as it goes, it is rather
opposed than favourable to the Hobbesian speculations. Moreover, it may
be supplemented, to a great extent, by the direct observation of such
primitive tribes as now stand on the same level of civilization as the
inhabitants of Europe stood in prehistoric times.

That these primitive tribes which we find now are not degenerated
specimens of mankind who formerly knew a higher civilization, as it has
occasionally been maintained, has sufficiently been proved by Edwin Tylor
and Lubbock. However, to the arguments already opposed to the
degeneration theory, the following may be added. Save a few tribes
clustering in the less-accessible highlands, the "savages" represent a girdle
which encircles the more or less civilized nations, and they occupy the
extremities of our continents, most of which have retained still, or recently
were bearing, an early post-glacial character. Such are the Eskimos and
their congeners in Greenland, Arctic America, and Northern Siberia; and, in
the Southern hemisphere, the Australians, the Papuas, the Fuegians, and,
partly, the Bushmen; while within the civilized area, like primitive folk are
only found in the Himalayas, the highlands of Australasia, and the plateaus
of Brazil. Now it must be borne in mind that the glacial age did not come to
an end at once over the whole surface of the earth. It still continues in
Greenland. Therefore, at a time when the littoral regions of the Indian
Ocean, the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico already enjoyed a warmer
climate, and became the seats of higher civilizations, immense territories in
middle Europe, Siberia, and Northern America, as well as in Patagonia,
Southern Africa, and Southern Australasia, remained in early postglacial
conditions which rendered them inaccessible to the civilized nations of the
torrid and sub-torrid zones. They were at that time what the terrible urmans
of North-West Siberia are now, and their population, inaccessible to and
untouched by civilization, retained the characters of early post-glacial man.

Later on, when desiccation rendered these territories more suitable for
agriculture, they were peopled with more civilized immigrants; and while
part of their previous inhabitants were assimilated by the new settlers,
another part migrated further, and settled where we find them. The
territories they inhabit now are still, or recently were, sub-glacial, as to their
physical features; their arts and implements are those of the neolithic age;
and, notwithstanding their racial differences, and the distances which
separate them, their modes of life and social institutions bear a striking
likeness. So we cannot but consider them as fragments of the early post-
glacial population of the now civilized area.

The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying primitive
folk is the complexity of the organization of marriage relations under which
they are living. With most of them the family, in the sense we attribute to it,
is hardly found in its germs. But they are by no means loose aggregations of
men and women coming in a disorderly manner together in conformity with
their momentary caprices. All of them are under a certain organization,
which has been described by Morgan in its general aspects as the "gentile,"
or clan organization.(7)

To tell the matter as briefly as possible, there is little doubt that mankind
has passed at its beginnings through a stage which may be described as that
of "communal marriage"; that is, the whole tribe had husbands and wives in
common with but little regard to consanguinity. But it is also certain that
some restrictions to that free intercourse were imposed at a very early
period. Inter-marriage was soon prohibited between the sons of one mother
and her sisters, granddaughters, and aunts. Later on it was prohibited
between the sons and daughters of the same mother, and further limitations
did not fail to follow. The idea of a gens, or clan, which embodied all
presumed descendants from one stock (or rather all those who gathered in
one group) was evolved, and marriage within the clan was entirely

prohibited. It still remained "communal," but the wife or the husband had to
be taken from another clan. And when a gens became too numerous, and
subdivided into several gentes, each of them was divided into classes
(usually four), and marriage was permitted only between certain well-
defined classes. That is the stage which we find now among the Kamilaroi-
speaking Australians. As to the family, its first germs appeared amidst the
clan organization. A woman who was captured in war from some other clan,
and who formerly would have belonged to the whole gens, could be kept at
a later period by the capturer, under certain obligations towards the tribe.
She may be taken by him to a separate hut, after she had paid a certain
tribute to the clan, and thus constitute within the gens a separate family, the
appearance of which evidently was opening a quite new phase of
civilization.

Now, if we take into consideration that this complicated organization
developed among men who stood at the lowest known degree of
development, and that it maintained itself in societies knowing no kind of
authority besides the authority of public opinion, we at once see how deeply
inrooted social instincts must have been in human nature, even at its lowest
stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an organization, and of
freely submitting to rules which continually clash with his personal desires,
certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical principles and knowing no rein to
its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the
immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the
primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the
Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts and the early Slavonians, all have had
their own period of clan organization, closely analogous to that of the
Australians, the Red Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants of the
"savage girdle."(9) So we must admit that either the evolution of marriage
laws went on on the same lines among all human races, or the rudiments of
the clan rules were developed among some common ancestors of the

Semites, the Aryans, the Polynesians, etc., before their differentiation into
separate races took place, and that these rules were maintained, until now,
among races long ago separated from the common stock. Both alternatives
imply, however, an equally striking tenacity of the institution—such a
tenacity that no assaults of the individual could break it down through the
scores of thousands of years that it was in existence. The very persistence of
the clan organization shows how utterly false it is to represent primitive
mankind as a disorderly agglomeration of individuals, who only obey their
individual passions, and take advantage of their personal force and
cunningness against all other representatives of the species. Unbridled
individualism is a modern growth, but it is not characteristic of primitive
mankind.(10)

Going now over to the existing savages, we may begin with the
Bushmen, who stand at a very low level of development—so low indeed
that they have no dwellings and sleep in holes dug in the soil, occasionally
protected by some screens. It is known that when Europeans settled in their
territory and destroyed deer, the Bushmen began stealing the settlers' cattle,
whereupon a war of extermination, too horrible to be related here, was
waged against them. Five hundred Bushmen were slaughtered in 1774,
three thousand in 1808 and 1809 by the Farmers' Alliance, and so on. They
were poisoned like rats, killed by hunters lying in ambush before the
carcass of some animal, killed wherever met with.(11) So that our
knowledge of the Bushmen, being chiefly borrowed from those same
people who exterminated them, is necessarily limited. But still we know
that when the Europeans came, the Bushmen lived in small tribes (or clans),
sometimes federated together; that they used to hunt in common, and
divided the spoil without quarrelling; that they never abandoned their
wounded, and displayed strong affection to their comrades. Lichtenstein has
a most touching story about a Bushman, nearly drowned in a river, who was
rescued by his companions. They took off their furs to cover him, and

shivered themselves; they dried him, rubbed him before the fire, and
smeared his body with warm grease till they brought him back to life. And
when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der Walt, a man who treated them
well, they expressed their thankfulness by a most touching attachment to
that man.(12) Burchell and Moffat both represent them as goodhearted,
disinterested, true to their promises, and grateful,(13) all qualities which
could develop only by being practised within the tribe. As to their love to
children, it is sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a
Bushman woman as a slave, he stole her child: the mother was sure to come
into slavery to share the fate of her child.(14)

The same social manners characterize the Hottentots, who are but a little
more developed than the Bushmen. Lubbock describes them as "the filthiest
animals," and filthy they really are. A fur suspended to the neck and worn
till it falls to pieces is all their dress; their huts are a few sticks assembled
together and covered with mats, with no kind of furniture within. And
though they kept oxen and sheep, and seem to have known the use of iron
before they made acquaintance with the Europeans, they still occupy one of
the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet those who knew them
highly praised their sociability and readiness to aid each other. If anything is
given to a Hottentot, he at once divides it among all present—a habit which,
as is known, so much struck Darwin among the Fuegians. He cannot eat
alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food.
And when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the
answer. "That is Hottentot manner." But this is not Hottentot manner only: it
is an all but universal habit among the "savages." Kolben, who knew the
Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise
their tribal morality highly enough.

"Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the corruptness
and faithless arts of Europe." "They live in great tranquillity and are seldom

at war with their neighbours." They are "all kindness and goodwill to one
another.. One of the greatest pleasures of the Hottentots certainly lies in
their gifts and good offices to one another." "The integrity of the Hottentots,
their strictness and celerity in the exercise of justice, and their chastity, are
things in which they excel all or most nations in the world."(15)

Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie(16) fully confirm Kolben's testimony. Let
me only remark that when Kolben wrote that "they are certainly the most
friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that
ever appeared on the earth" (i. 332), he wrote a sentence which has
continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first meeting
with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of their life;
but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a longer time, he
generally describes them as the "kindest" or "the gentlest" race on the earth.
These very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes,
the Eskimos, the Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the Papuas, and so on, by the
highest authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the
Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very frequency
of that high commendation already speaks volumes in itself.

The natives of Australia do not stand on a higher level of development
than their South African brothers. Their huts are of the same character: very
often simple screens are the only protection against cold winds. In their
food they are most indifferent: they devour horribly putrefied corpses, and
cannibalism is resorted to in times of scarcity. When first discovered by
Europeans, they had no implements but in stone or bone, and these were of
the roughest description. Some tribes had even no canoes, and did not know
barter-trade. And yet, when their manners and customs were carefully
studied, they proved to be living under that elaborate clan organization
which I have mentioned on a preceding page.(17)

The territory they inhabit is usually allotted between the different gentes
or clans; but the hunting and fishing territories of each clan are kept in
common, and the produce of fishing and hunting belongs to the whole clan;
so also the fishing and hunting implements.(18) The meals are taken in
common. Like many other savages, they respect certain regulations as to the
seasons when certain gums and grasses may be collected.(19) As to their
morality altogether, we cannot do better than transcribe the following
answers given to the questions of the Paris Anthropological Society by
Lumholtz, a missionary who sojourned in North Queensland:(20)—

"The feeling of friendship is known among them; it is strong. Weak
people are usually supported; sick people are very well attended to; they
never are abandoned or killed. These tribes are cannibals, but they very
seldom eat members of their own tribe (when immolated on religious
principles, I suppose); they eat strangers only. The parents love their
children, play with them, and pet them. Infanticide meets with common
approval. Old people are very well treated, never put to death. No religion,
no idols, only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage, quarrels arising within
the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with wooden swords and
shields. No slaves; no culture of any kind; no pottery; no dress, save an
apron sometimes worn by women. The clan consists of two hundred
individuals, divided into four classes of men and four of women; marriage
being only permitted within the usual classes, and never within the gens."

For the Papuas, closely akin to the above, we have the testimony of G.L.
Bink, who stayed in New Guinea, chiefly in Geelwink Bay, from 1871 to
1883. Here is the essence of his answers to the same questioner:(21)—

"They are sociable and cheerful; they laugh very much. Rather timid than
courageous. Friendship is relatively strong among persons belonging to
different tribes, and still stronger within the tribe. A friend will often pay the

debt of his friend, the stipulation being that the latter will repay it without
interest to the children of the lender. They take care of the ill and the old;
old people are never abandoned, and in no case are they killed—unless it be
a slave who was ill for a long time. War prisoners are sometimes eaten. The
children are very much petted and loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are
killed, the others are sold as slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no
idols, no authority of any description; the oldest man in the family is the
judge. In cases of adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes to the negoria
(the community). The soil is kept in common, but the crop belongs to those
who have grown it. They have pottery, and know barter-trade—the custom
being that the merchant gives them the goods, whereupon they return to
their houses and bring the native goods required by the merchant; if the
latter cannot be obtained, the European goods are returned.(22) They are
head-hunters, and in so doing they prosecute blood revenge. 'Sometimes,'
Finsch says, 'the affair is referred to the Rajah of Namototte, who
terminates it by imposing a fine.'"

When well treated, the Papuas are very kind. Miklukho-Maclay landed
on the eastern coast of New Guinea, followed by one single man, stayed for
two years among tribes reported to be cannibals, and left them with regret;
he returned again to stay one year more among them, and never had he any
conflict to complain of. True that his rule was never—under no pretext
whatever—to say anything which was not truth, nor make any promise
which he could not keep. These poor creatures, who even do not know how
to obtain fire, and carefully maintain it in their huts, live under their
primitive communism, without any chiefs; and within their villages they
have no quarrels worth speaking of. They work in common, just enough to
get the food of the day; they rear their children in common; and in the
evenings they dress themselves as coquettishly as they can, and dance. Like
all savages, they are fond of dancing. Each village has its barla, or balai—
the "long house," "longue maison," or "grande maison"—for the unmarried

men, for social gatherings, and for the discussion of common affairs—again
a trait which is common to most inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the
Eskimos, the Red Indians, and so on. Whole groups of villages are on
friendly terms, and visit each other en bloc.

Unhappily, feuds are not uncommon—not in consequence of
"Overstocking of the area," or "keen competition," and like inventions of a
mercantile century, but chiefly in consequence of superstition. As soon as
any one falls ill, his friends and relatives come together, and deliberately
discuss who might be the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are
considered, every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally the
real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has called it down,
and a raid upon that village is decided upon. Therefore, feuds are rather
frequent, even between the coast villages, not to say a word of the cannibal
mountaineers who are considered as real witches and enemies, though, on a
closer acquaintance, they prove to be exactly the same sort of people as
their neighbours on the seacoast.(23)

Many striking pages could be written about the harmony which prevails
in the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. But they
belong to a more advanced stage of civilization. So we shall now take our
illustrations from the far north. I must mention, however, before leaving the
Southern Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose reputation has been so
bad, appear under a much better light since they begin to be better known.
A few French missionaries who stay among them "know of no act of
malevolence to complain of." In their clans, consisting of from 120 to 150
souls, they practise the same primitive communism as the Papuas; they
share everything in common, and treat their old people very well. Peace
prevails among these tribes.(24) With the Eskimos and their nearest
congeners, the Thlinkets, the Koloshes, and the Aleoutes, we find one of the
nearest illustrations of what man may have been during the glacial age.

Their implements hardly differ from those of palaeolithic man, and some of
their tribes do not yet know fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind
of harpoon.(25) They know the use of iron, but they receive it from the
Europeans, or find it on wrecked ships. Their social organization is of a
very primitive kind, though they already have emerged from the stage of
"communal marriage," even under the gentile restrictions. They live in
families, but the family bonds are often broken; husbands and wives are
often exchanged.(26) The families, however, remain united in clans, and
how could it be otherwise? How could they sustain the hard struggle for life
unless by closely combining their forces? So they do, and the tribal bonds
are closest where the struggle for life is hardest, namely, in North-East
Greenland. The "long house" is their usual dwelling, and several families
lodge in it, separated from each other by small partitions of ragged furs,
with a common passage in the front. Sometimes the house has the shape of
a cross, and in such case a common fire is kept in the centre. The German
Expedition which spent a winter close by one of those "long houses" could
ascertain that "no quarrel disturbed the peace, no dispute arose about the
use of this narrow space" throughout the long winter. "Scolding, or even
unkind words, are considered as a misdemeanour, if not produced under the
legal form of process, namely, the nith-song."(27) Close cohabitation and
close interdependence are sufficient for maintaining century after century
that deep respect for the interests of the community which is characteristic
of Eskimo life. Even in the larger communities of Eskimos, "public opinion
formed the real judgment-seat, the general punishment consisting in the
offenders being shamed in the eyes of the people."(28)

Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by hunting and
fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes, especially in the West,
under the influence of the Danes, private property penetrates into their
institutions. However, they have an original means for obviating the
inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth which

would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he
convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and, after much eating,
distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, Dall saw an
Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, 200
strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, 200 beavers, and 500
zibelines. After that they took off their festival dresses, gave them away,
and, putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk,
saying that though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have
won their friendship.(29) Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular
habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an
exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year.(30) In my opinion
these distributions reveal a very old institution, contemporaneous with the
first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-
establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been
disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land
and the periodical abandonment of all debts which took place in historical
times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a
survival of that old custom. And the habit of either burying with the dead,
or destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him personally—a habit
which we find among all primitive races—must have had the same origin.
In fact, while everything that belongs personally to the dead is burnt or
broken upon his grave, nothing is destroyed of what belonged to him in
common with the tribe, such as boats, or the communal implements of
fishing. The destruction bears upon personal property alone. At a later
epoch this habit becomes a religious ceremony. It receives a mystical
interpretation, and is imposed by religion, when public opinion alone
proves incapable of enforcing its general observance. And, finally, it is
substituted by either burning simple models of the dead man's property (as
in China), or by simply carrying his property to the grave and taking it back
to his house after the burial ceremony is over—a habit which still prevails

with the Europeans as regards swords, crosses, and other marks of public
distinction.(31)

The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been
mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon
the manners of the Aleoutes—nearly akin to the Eskimos—will better
illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten years'
stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man—the Russian
missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:—

Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal. Not
only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked on the
beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when at hard work
on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted
scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his children; he gives them all he
has, and himself fasts. They are not inclined to stealing; that was remarked
even by the first Russian immigrants. Not that they never steal; every
Aleoute would confess having sometime stolen something, but it is always
a trifle; the whole is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their
children is touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The
Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made
it he will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a
gift of dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the
departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the missionary
was in January; and in November and December there was a great scarcity
of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never touched by the
starving people, and in January it was sent to its destination.) Their code of
morality is both varied and severe. It is considered shameful to be afraid of
unavoidable death; to ask pardon from an enemy; to die without ever
having killed an enemy; to be convicted of stealing; to capsize a boat in the
harbour; to be afraid of going to sea in stormy weather; to be the first in a

party on a long journey to become an invalid in case of scarcity of food; to
show greediness when spoil is divided, in which case every one gives his
own part to the greedy man to shame him; to divulge a public secret to his
wife; being two persons on a hunting expedition, not to offer the best game
to the partner; to boast of his own deeds, especially of invented ones; to
scold any one in scorn. Also to beg; to pet his wife in other people's
presence, and to dance with her to bargain personally: selling must always
be made through a third person, who settles the price. For a woman it is a
shame not to know sewing, dancing and all kinds of woman's work; to pet
her husband and children, or even to speak to her husband in the presence
of a stranger.(32)

Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further illustrated by their
tales and legends. Let me also add that when Veniaminoff wrote (in 1840)
one murder only had been committed since the last century in a population
of 60,000 people, and that among 1,800 Aleoutes not one single common
law offence had been known for forty years. This will not seem strange if
we remark that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough words are
absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never fight, and
never abuse each other in words. All they may say is, "Your mother does
not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of one eye."(33)

Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans.
The high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which
primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by any
amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain that those
same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they abandon their old
people, and that they blindly obey the rules of blood-revenge. We must then
explain the coexistence of facts which, to the European mind, seem so
contradictory at the first sight. I have just mentioned how the Aleoute father
starves for days and weeks, and gives everything eatable to his child; and

how the Bushman mother becomes a slave to follow her child; and I might
fill pages with illustrations of the really tender relations existing among the
savages and their children. Travellers continually mention them
incidentally. Here you read about the fond love of a mother; there you see a
father wildly running through the forest and carrying upon his shoulders his
child bitten by a snake; or a missionary tells you the despair of the parents
at the loss of a child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being
immolated at its birth, you learn that the "savage" mothers usually nurse
their children till the age of four, and that, in the New Hebrides, on the loss
of a specially beloved child, its mother, or aunt, will kill herself to take care
of it in the other world.(34) And so on.

Like facts are met with by the score; so that, when we see that these same
loving parents practise infanticide, we are bound to recognize that the habit
(whatever its ulterior transformations may be) took its origin under the
sheer pressure of necessity, as an obligation towards the tribe, and a means
for rearing the already growing children. The savages, as a rule, do not
"multiply without stint," as some English writers put it. On the contrary,
they take all kinds of measures for diminishing the birth-rate. A whole
series of restrictions, which Europeans certainly would find extravagant, are
imposed to that effect, and they are strictly obeyed. But notwithstanding
that, primitive folk cannot rear all their children. However, it has been
remarked that as soon as they succeed in increasing their regular means of
subsistence, they at once begin to abandon the practice of infanticide. On
the whole, the parents obey that obligation reluctantly, and as soon as they
can afford it they resort to all kinds of compromises to save the lives of
their new-born. As has been so well pointed out by my friend Elie Reclus,
(35) they invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare the children
born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the sentence for a few hours,
and then say that if the baby has lived one day it must live all its natural
life.(36) They hear the cries of the little ones coming from the forest, and

maintain that, if heard, they forbode a misfortune for the tribe; and as they
have no baby-farming nor creches for getting rid of the children, every one
of them recoils before the necessity of performing the cruel sentence; they
prefer to expose the baby in the wood rather than to take its life by violence.
Ignorance, not cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the
savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow the
example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age, crossed the sea of
Okhotsk in a miserable boat, or travelled on dogs among his Tchuktchis,
supplying them with bread and fishing implements. He thus had really
stopped infanticide.

The same is true as regards what superficial observers describe as
parricide. We just now saw that the habit of abandoning old people is not so
widely spread as some writers have maintained it to be. It has been
extremely exaggerated, but it is occasionally met with among nearly all
savages; and in such cases it has the same origin as the exposure of
children. When a "savage" feels that he is a burden to his tribe; when every
morning his share of food is taken from the mouths of the children—and the
little ones are not so stoical as their fathers: they cry when they are hungry;
when every day he has to be carried across the stony beach, or the virgin
forest, on the shoulders of younger people there are no invalid carriages,
nor destitutes to wheel them in savage lands—he begins to repeat what the
old Russian peasants say until now-a-day. "Tchujoi vek zayedayu, Pora na
pokoi!" ("I live other people's life: it is time to retire!") And he retires. He
does what the soldier does in a similar case. When the salvation of his
detachment depends upon its further advance, and he can move no more,
and knows that he must die if left behind, the soldier implores his best
friend to render him the last service before leaving the encampment. And
the friend, with shivering hands, discharges his gun into the dying body. So
the savages do. The old man asks himself to die; he himself insists upon this
last duty towards the community, and obtains the consent of the tribe; he

digs out his grave; he invites his kinsfolk to the last parting meal. His father
has done so, it is now his turn; and he parts with his kinsfolk with marks of
affection. The savage so much considers death as part of his duties towards
his community, that he not only refuses to be rescued (as Moffat has told),
but when a woman who had to be immolated on her husband's grave was
rescued by missionaries, and was taken to an island, she escaped in the
night, crossed a broad sea-arm, swimming and rejoined her tribe, to die on
the grave.(37) It has become with them a matter of religion. But the
savages, as a rule, are so reluctant to take any one's life otherwise than in
fight, that none of them will take upon himself to shed human blood, and
they resort to all kinds of stratagems, which have been so falsely
interpreted. In most cases, they abandon the old man in the wood, after
having given him more than his share of the common food. Arctic
expeditions have done the same when they no more could carry their
invalid comrades. "Live a few days more, maybe there will be some
unexpected rescue!" West European men of science, when coming across
these facts, are absolutely unable to stand them; they can not reconcile them
with a high development of tribal morality, and they prefer to cast a doubt
upon the exactitude of absolutely reliable observers, instead of trying to
explain the parallel existence of the two sets of facts: a high tribal morality
together with the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these
same Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable, fond
of their own children, and so impressionable that they cry when they see a
misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in Europe within a stone's
throw from dens in which children die from sheer want of food, the savage,
too, would not understand them. I remember how vainly I tried to make
some of my Tungus friends understand our civilization of individualism:
they could not, and they resorted to the most fantastical suggestions. The
fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal solidarity in everything
for bad and for good, is as incapable of understanding a "moral" European,

who knows nothing of that solidarity, as the average European is incapable
of understanding the savage. But if our scientist had lived amidst a half-
starving tribe which does not possess among them all one man's food for so
much as a few days to come, he probably might have understood their
motives. So also the savage, if he had stayed among us, and received our
education, may be, would understand our European indifference towards
our neighbours, and our Royal Commissions for the prevention of
"babyfarming." "Stone houses make stony hearts," the Russian peasants say.
But he ought to live in a stone house first.

Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking into
account all the facts which were brought to light during a recent
controversy on this subject at the Paris Anthropological Society, and many
incidental remarks scattered throughout the "savage" literature, we are
bound to recognize that that practice was brought into existence by sheer
necessity. But that it was further developed by superstition and religion into
the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a fact that until this day
many savages are compelled to devour corpses in the most advanced state
of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute scarcity some of them have
had to disinter and to feed upon human corpses, even during an epidemic.
These are ascertained facts. But if we now transport ourselves to the
conditions which man had to face during the glacial period, in a damp and
cold climate, with but little vegetable food at his disposal; if we take into
account the terrible ravages which scurvy still makes among underfed
natives, and remember that meat and fresh blood are the only restoratives
which they know, we must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous
animal, became a flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty of
deer at that time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic regions, and
sometimes they entirely abandon a territory for a number of years. In such
cases his last resources disappeared. During like hard trials, cannibalism has
been resorted to even by Europeans, and it was resorted to by the savages.

Until the present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of their own
dead: they must have devoured then the corpses of those who had to die.
Old people died, convinced that by their death they were rendering a last
service to the tribe. This is why cannibalism is represented by some savages
as of divine origin, as something that has been ordered by a messenger from
the sky. But later on it lost its character of necessity, and survived as a
superstition. Enemies had to be eaten in order to inherit their courage; and,
at a still later epoch, the enemy's eye or heart was eaten for the same
purpose; while among other tribes, already having a numerous priesthood
and a developed mythology, evil gods, thirsty for human blood, were
invented, and human sacrifices required by the priests to appease the gods.
In this religious phase of its existence, cannibalism attained its most
revolting characters. Mexico is a well-known example; and in Fiji, where
the king could eat any one of his subjects, we also find a mighty cast of
priests, a complicated theology,(38) and a full development of autocracy.
Originated by necessity, cannibalism became, at a later period, a religious
institution, and in this form it survived long after it had disappeared from
among tribes which certainly practised it in former times, but did not attain
the theocratical stage of evolution. The same remark must be made as
regards infanticide and the abandonment of parents. In some cases they also
have been maintained as a survival of olden times, as a religiously-kept
tradition of the past.

I will terminate my remarks by mentioning another custom which also is
a source of most erroneous conclusions. I mean the practice of blood-
revenge. All savages are under the impression that blood shed must be
revenged by blood. If any one has been killed, the murderer must die; if any
one has been wounded, the aggressor's blood must be shed. There is no
exception to the rule, not even for animals; so the hunter's blood is shed on
his return to the village when he has shed the blood of an animal. That is the
savages' conception of justice—a conception which yet prevails in Western

Europe as regards murder. Now, when both the offender and the offended
belong to the same tribe, the tribe and the offended person settle the affair.
(39) But when the offender belongs to another tribe, and that tribe, for one
reason or another, refuses a compensation, then the offended tribe decides
to take the revenge itself. Primitive folk so much consider every one's acts
as a tribal affair, dependent upon tribal approval, that they easily think the
clan responsible for every one's acts. Therefore, the due revenge may be
taken upon any member of the offender's clan or relatives.(40) It may often
happen, however, that the retaliation goes further than the offence. In trying
to inflict a wound, they may kill the offender, or wound him more than they
intended to do, and this becomes a cause for a new feud, so that the
primitive legislators were careful in requiring the retaliation to be limited to
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and blood for blood.(41)

It is remarkable, however, that with most primitive folk like feuds are
infinitely rarer than might be expected; though with some of them they may
attain abnormal proportions, especially with mountaineers who have been
driven to the highlands by foreign invaders, such as the mountaineers of
Caucasia, and especially those of Borneo—the Dayaks. With the Dayaks—
we were told lately—the feuds had gone so far that a young man could
neither marry nor be proclaimed of age before he had secured the head of
an enemy. This horrid practice was fully described in a modern English
work.(42) It appears, however, that this affirmation was a gross
exaggeration. Moreover, Dayak "head-hunting" takes quite another aspect
when we learn that the supposed "headhunter" is not actuated at all by
personal passion. He acts under what he considers as a moral obligation
towards his tribe, just as the European judge who, in obedience to the same,
evidently wrong, principle of "blood for blood," hands over the condemned
murderer to the hangman. Both the Dayak and the judge would even feel
remorse if sympathy moved them to spare the murderer. That is why the
Dayaks, apart from the murders they commit when actuated by their

conception of justice, are depicted, by all those who know them, as a most
sympathetic people. Thus Carl Bock, the same author who has given such a
terrible picture of head-hunting, writes:

"As regards morality, I am bound to assign to the Dayaks a high
place in the scale of civilization…. Robberies and theft are entirely
unknown among them. They also are very truthful…. If I did not
always get the 'whole truth,' I always got, at least, nothing but the
truth from them. I wish I could say the same of the Malays" (pp.
209 and 210).

Bock's testimony is fully corroborated by that of Ida Pfeiffer. "I fully
recognized," she wrote, "that I should be pleased longer to travel among
them. I usually found them honest, good, and reserved … much more so
than any other nation I know."(43) Stoltze used almost the same language
when speaking of them. The Dayaks usually have but one wife, and treat
her well. They are very sociable, and every morning the whole clan goes
out for fishing, hunting, or gardening, in large parties. Their villages consist
of big huts, each of which is inhabited by a dozen families, and sometimes
by several hundred persons, peacefully living together. They show great
respect for their wives, and are fond of their children; and when one of them
falls ill, the women nurse him in turn. As a rule they are very moderate in
eating and drinking. Such is the Dayak in his real daily life.

It would be a tedious repetition if more illustrations from savage life
were given. Wherever we go we find the same sociable manners, the same
spirit of solidarity. And when we endeavour to penetrate into the darkness
of past ages, we find the same tribal life, the same associations of men,
however primitive, for mutual support. Therefore, Darwin was quite right
when he saw in man's social qualities the chief factor for his further

evolution, and Darwin's vulgarizers are entirely wrong when they maintain
the contrary.

The small strength and speed of man (he wrote), his want of natural
weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual
faculties (which, he remarked on another page, have been chiefly or even
exclusively gained for the benefit of the community). and secondly, by his
social qualities, which led him to give and receive aid from his fellow men.
(44)

In the last century the "savage" and his "life in the state of nature" were
idealized. But now men of science have gone to the opposite extreme,
especially since some of them, anxious to prove the animal origin of man,
but not conversant with the social aspects of animal life, began to charge the
savage with all imaginable "bestial" features. It is evident, however, that
this exaggeration is even more unscientific than Rousseau's idealization.
The savage is not an ideal of virtue, nor is he an ideal of "savagery." But the
primitive man has one quality, elaborated and maintained by the very
necessities of his hard struggle for life—he identifies his own existence
with that of his tribe; and without that quality mankind never would have
attained the level it has attained now.

Primitive folk, as has been already said, so much identify their lives with
that of the tribe, that each of their acts, however insignificant, is considered
as a tribal affair. Their whole behaviour is regulated by an infinite series of
unwritten rules of propriety which are the fruit of their common experience
as to what is good or bad—that is, beneficial or harmful for their own tribe.
Of course, the reasonings upon which their rules of propriety are based
sometimes are absurd in the extreme. Many of them originate in
superstition; and altogether, in whatever the savage does, he sees but the
immediate consequences of his acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and

ulterior consequences—thus simply exaggerating a defect with which
Bentham reproached civilized legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage
obeys the prescriptions of the common law, however inconvenient they may
be. He obeys them even more blindly than the civilized man obeys the
prescriptions of the written law. His common law is his religion; it is his
very habit of living. The idea of the clan is always present to his mind, and
self-restriction and self-sacrifice in the interest of the clan are of daily
occurrence. If the savage has infringed one of the smaller tribal rules, he is
prosecuted by the mockeries of the women. If the infringement is grave, he
is tortured day and night by the fear of having called a calamity upon his
tribe. If he has wounded by accident any one of his own clan, and thus has
committed the greatest of all crimes, he grows quite miserable: he runs
away in the woods, and is ready to commit suicide, unless the tribe absolves
him by inflicting upon him a physical pain and sheds some of his own
blood.(45) Within the tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel
of food is divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the
woods, he does not begin eating before he has loudly shouted thrice an
invitation to any one who may hear his voice to share his meal.(46)

In short, within the tribe the rule of "each for all" is supreme, so long as
the separate family has not yet broken up the tribal unity. But that rule is not
extended to the neighbouring clans, or tribes, even when they are federated
for mutual protection. Each tribe, or clan, is a separate unity. Just as among
mammals and birds, the territory is roughly allotted among separate tribes,
and, except in times of war, the boundaries are respected. On entering the
territory of his neighbours one must show that he has no bad intentions. The
louder one heralds his coming, the more confidence he wins; and if he
enters a house, he must deposit his hatchet at the entrance. But no tribe is
bound to share its food with the others: it may do so or it may not.
Therefore the life of the savage is divided into two sets of actions, and
appears under two different ethical aspects: the relations within the tribe,

and the relations with the outsiders; and (like our international law) the
"inter-tribal" law widely differs from the common law. Therefore, when it
comes to a war the most revolting cruelties may be considered as so many
claims upon the admiration of the tribe. This double conception of morality
passes through the whole evolution of mankind, and maintains itself until
now. We Europeans have realized some progress—not immense, at any rate
—in eradicating that double conception of ethics; but it also must be said
that while we have in some measure extended our ideas of solidarity—in
theory, at least—over the nation, and partly over other nations as well, we
have lessened the bonds of solidarity within our own nations, and even
within our own families.

The appearance of a separate family amidst the clan necessarily disturbs
the established unity. A separate family means separate property and
accumulation of wealth. We saw how the Eskimos obviate its
inconveniences; and it is one of the most interesting studies to follow in the
course of ages the different institutions (village communities, guilds, and so
on) by means of which the masses endeavoured to maintain the tribal unity,
notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to break it down. On the
other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which appeared at an
extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves with
witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual which could
be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in secrecy, and
transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies of witches, shamans,
and priests, which we find among all savages. By the same time, wars and
invasions created military authority, as also castes of warriors, whose
associations or clubs acquired great powers. However, at no period of man's
life were wars the normal state of existence. While warriors exterminated
each other, and the priests celebrated their massacres, the masses continued
to live their daily life, they prosecuted their daily toil. And it is one of the
most interesting studies to follow that life of the masses; to study the means

by which they maintained their own social organization, which was based
upon their own conceptions of equity, mutual aid, and mutual support—of
common law, in a word, even when they were submitted to the most
ferocious theocracy or autocracy in the State.

NOTES:

1. Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165.

2. The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition.

3. Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man
nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in polygamous families,
under the leadership of "a strong and jealous male." I do not know how far
that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But the passage from
Brehm's Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be
taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys;
but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or
do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopitheques, Brehm is affirmative
in saying that they "nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in
families" (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of
their bands, always containing many males, render the "polygamous
family" more than doubtful further observation is evidently wanted.

4. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890.

5. That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists who
have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey
already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists
maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central
plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists,
when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether.

6. Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242.

7. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery
through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan,
Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896;
L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four
writers—as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon,—starting from
different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods,
have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the
maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan—the system of
kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main
phases of human evolution; to MacLennan—the law of exogeny; and to
Fison and Howitt—the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in
Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of
the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in
his epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization,—
both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and
maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive
steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the
most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of
ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having
passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we
now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun,
Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc.

8. None

9. For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim
Kovalevsky's Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his
Lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution de

la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an
admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die
Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875.

10. It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of
the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups,
similar to Morgan's Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live
together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be
traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations
between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from
speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations
really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like
marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious
necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs
altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their
"thinkers" and savants-wizards, doctors, prophets, etc.—whose knowledge
and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in
their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly
capable of exercising a powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the
utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe.

11. Col. Collins, in Philips' Researches in South Africa, London, 1828.
Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334.

12. Lichtenstein's Reisen im sudlichen Afrika, ii. Pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811.

13. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also
Fritsch's Die Eingeboren Süd-Afrika's, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and
Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen
Folklore, Capetown, 1875.

14. Elisee Reclus, Geographie Universelle, xiii. 475.

15. P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated
from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333, 336,
etc.

16. Quoted in Waitz's Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq.

17. The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the Kamilaroi
language, are best known under this aspect, through the capital work of
Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii, Melbourne, 1880.
See also A.W. Howitt's "Further Note on the Australian Class Systems," in
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol. xviii. p. 31, showing the
wide extension of the same organization in Australia.

18. The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian Aborigines, Adelaide,
1879, p. 11.

19. Grey's Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and
Western Australia, London, 1841, vol. ii. pp. 237, 298.

20. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 652. I abridge
the answers.

21. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 386.

22. The same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a
high reputation of honesty. "It never happens that the Papua be untrue to his
promise," Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen, 1865, p.
829.

23. Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1880, pp. 161 seq. Few
books of travel give a better insight into the petty details of the daily life of
savages than these scraps from Maklay's notebooks.

24. L.F. Martial, in Mission Scientifique au Cap Horn, Paris, 1883, vol. i.
pp. 183-201.

25. Captain Holm's Expedition to East Greenland.

26. In Australia whole clans have been seen exchanging all their wives,
in order to conjure a calamity (Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte
des Familienrechts, 1890, p. 342). More brotherhood is their specific
against calamities.

27. Dr. H. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, p. 26 (Meddelelser om Gronland,
vol. xi. 1887).

28. Dr. Rink, loc. cit. p. 24. Europeans, grown in the respect of Roman
law, are seldom capable of understanding that force of tribal authority. "In
fact," Dr. Rink writes, "it is not the exception, but the rule, that white men
who have stayed for ten or twenty years among the Eskimo, return without
any real addition to their knowledge of the traditional ideas upon which
their social state is based. The white man, whether a missionary or a trader,
is firm in his dogmatic opinion that the most vulgar European is better than
the most distinguished native."—The Eskimo Tribes, p. 31.

29. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870.

30. Dall saw it in Alaska, Jacobsen at Ignitok in the vicinity of the Bering
Strait. Gilbert Sproat mentions it among the Vancouver indians; and Dr.
Rink, who describes the periodical exhibitions just mentioned, adds: "The
principal use of the accumulation of personal wealth is for periodically
distributing it." He also mentions (loc. cit. p. 31) "the destruction of
property for the same purpose," (of maintaining equality).

31. See Appendix VIII.

32. Veniaminoff, Memoirs relative to the District of Unalashka (Russian),
3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1840. Extracts, in English, from the above are given
in Dall's Alaska. A like description of the Australians' morality is given in
Nature, xlii. p. 639.

33. It is most remarkable that several writers (Middendorff, Schrenk, O.
Finsch) described the Ostyaks and Samoyedes in almost the same words.
Even when drunken, their quarrels are insignificant. "For a hundred years
one single murder has been committed in the tundra;" "their children never
fight;" "anything may be left for years in the tundra, even food and gin, and
nobody will touch it;" and so on. Gilbert Sproat "never witnessed a fight
between two sober natives" of the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island.
"Quarrelling is also rare among their children." (Rink, loc. cit.) And so on.

34. Gill, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 641. See also
pp. 636-640, where many facts of parental and filial love are quoted.

35. Primitive Folk, London, 1891.

36. Gerland, loc. cit. v. 636.

37. Erskine, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 640.

38. W.T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, London, 1866, p. 363.

39. It is remarkable, however, that in case of a sentence of death, nobody
will take upon himself to be the executioner. Every one throws his stone, or
gives his blow with the hatchet, carefully avoiding to give a mortal blow. At
a later epoch, the priest will stab the victim with a sacred knife. Still later, it
will be the king, until civilization invents the hired hangman. See Bastian's
deep remarks upon this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die
Blutrache, pp. 1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor

E. Nys, has survived in military executions till our own times. In the middle
portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of the
twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with eleven
ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never knew who of
them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed conscience by
thinking that he was not one of the murderers.

40. In Africa, and elsewhere too, it is a widely-spread habit, that if a theft
has been committed, the next clan has to restore the equivalent of the stolen
thing, and then look itself for the thief. A. H. Post, Afrikanische
Jurisprudenz, Leipzig, 1887, vol. i. p. 77.

41. See Prof. M. Kovalevsky's Modern Customs and Ancient Law
(Russian), Moscow, 1886, vol. ii., which contains many important
considerations upon this subject.

42. See Carl Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, London, 1881. I am
told, however, by Sir Hugh Law, who was for a long time Governor of
Borneo, that the "head-hunting" described in this book is grossly
exaggerated. Altogether, my informant speaks of the Dayaks in exactly the
same sympathetic terms as Ida Pfeiffer. Let me add that Mary Kingsley
speaks in her book on West Africa in the same sympathetic terms of the
Fans, who had been represented formerly as the most "terrible cannibals."

43. Ida Pfeiffer, Meine zweite Weltriese, Wien, 1856, vol. i. pp. 116 seq.
See also Muller and Temminch's Dutch Possessions in Archipelagic India,
quoted by Elisee Reclus, in Geographie Universelle, xiii.

44. Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64.

45. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc. cit.
ii. p. 238.

46. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots.

CHAPTER IV

MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS

The great migrations. New organization rendered necessary. The village
community. Communal work. Judicial procedure. Inter-tribal law.
Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries. Buryates. Kabyles.
Caucasian mountaineers. African stems.

It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply
impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life.
Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the
later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners
of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together
by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine
their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress.
Man is no exception in nature. He also is subject to the great principle of
Mutual Aid which grants the best chances of survival to those who best
support each other in the struggle for life. These were the conclusions
arrived at in the previous chapters.

However, as soon as we come to a higher stage of civilization, and refer
to history which already has something to say about that stage, we are
bewildered by the struggles and conflicts which it reveals. The old bonds

seem entirely to be broken. Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes
against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest
of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots,
separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And,
with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher
triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of
human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be
restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace
and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better
life for humanity in times to come.

And yet, as soon as the every-day life of man during the historical period
is submitted to a closer analysis and so it has been, of late, by many patient
students of very early institutions—it appears at once under quite a different
aspect. Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their
pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the
very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of
human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The
bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our
own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future
historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in
our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down
to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and
skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual
suffering; but they hardly bear any trace of the countless acts of mutual
support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own
experience; they hardly take notice of what makes the very essence of our
daily life—our social instincts and manners. No wonder, then, if the records
of the past were so imperfect. The annalists of old never failed to chronicle
the petty wars and calamities which harassed their contemporaries; but they
paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses

chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting. The epic
poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace—nearly all
historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of
peace, not with peace itself. So that the best-intentioned historian
unconsciously draws a distorted picture of the times he endeavours to
depict; and, to restore the real proportion between conflict and union, we
are now bound to enter into a minute analysis of thousands of small facts
and faint indications accidentally preserved in the relics of the past; to
interpret them with the aid of comparative ethnology; and, after having
heard so much about what used to divide men, to reconstruct stone by stone
the institutions which used to unite them.

Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines, so as to take into
account these two currents of human life and to appreciate the part played
by each of them in evolution. But in the meantime we may avail ourselves
of the immense preparatory work recently done towards restoring the
leading features of the second current, so much neglected. From the better-
known periods of history we may take some illustrations of the life of the
masses, in order to indicate the part played by mutual support during those
periods; and, in so doing, we may dispense (for the sake of brevity) from
going as far back as the Egyptian, or even the Greek and Roman antiquity.
For, in fact, the evolution of mankind has not had the character of one
unbroken series. Several times civilization came to an end in one given
region, with one given race, and began anew elsewhere, among other races.
But at each fresh start it began again with the same clan institutions which
we have seen among the savages. So that if we take the last start of our own
civilization, when it began afresh in the first centuries of our era, among
those whom the Romans called the "barbarians," we shall have the whole
scale of evolution, beginning with the gentes and ending in the institutions
of our own time. To these illustrations the following pages will be devoted.

Men of science have not yet settled upon the causes which some two
thousand years ago drove whole nations from Asia into Europe and resulted
in the great migrations of barbarians which put an end to the West Roman
Empire. One cause, however, is naturally suggested to the geographer as he
contemplates the ruins of populous cities in the deserts of Central Asia, or
follows the old beds of rivers now disappeared and the wide outlines of
lakes now reduced to the size of mere ponds. It is desiccation: a quite recent
desiccation, continued still at a speed which we formerly were not prepared
to admit.(1) Against it man was powerless. When the inhabitants of North-
West Mongolia and East Turkestan saw that water was abandoning them,
they had no course open to them but to move down the broad valleys
leading to the lowlands, and to thrust westwards the inhabitants of the
plains.(2) Stems after stems were thus thrown into Europe, compelling
other stems to move and to remove for centuries in succession, westwards
and eastwards, in search of new and more or less permanent abodes. Races
were mixing with races during those migrations, aborigines with
immigrants, Aryans with Ural-Altayans; and it would have been no wonder
if the social institutions which had kept them together in their mother
countries had been totally wrecked during the stratification of races which
took place in Europe and Asia. But they were not wrecked; they simply
underwent the modification which was required by the new conditions of
life.

The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others,
when they first came in contact with the Romans, were in a transitional
state of social organization. The clan unions, based upon a real or supposed
common origin, had kept them together for many thousands of years in
succession. But these unions could answer their purpose so long only as
there were no separate families within the gens or clan itself. However, for
causes already mentioned, the separate patriarchal family had slowly but
steadily developed within the clans, and in the long run it evidently meant

the individual accumulation of wealth and power, and the hereditary
transmission of both. The frequent migrations of the barbarians and the
ensuing wars only hastened the division of the gentes into separate families,
while the dispersing of stems and their mingling with strangers offered
singular facilities for the ultimate disintegration of those unions which were
based upon kinship. The barbarians thus stood in a position of either seeing
their clans dissolved into loose aggregations of families, of which the
wealthiest, especially if combining sacerdotal functions or military repute
with wealth, would have succeeded in imposing their authority upon the
others; or of finding out some new form of organization based upon some
new principle.

Many stems had no force to resist disintegration: they broke up and were
lost for history. But the more vigorous ones did not disintegrate. They came
out of the ordeal with a new organization—the village community—which
kept them together for the next fifteen centuries or more. The conception of
a common territory, appropriated or protected by common efforts, was
elaborated, and it took the place of the vanishing conceptions of common
descent. The common gods gradually lost their character of ancestors and
were endowed with a local territorial character. They became the gods or
saints of a given locality; "the land" was identified with its inhabitants.
Territorial unions grew up instead of the consanguine unions of old, and this
new organization evidently offered many advantages under the given
circumstances. It recognized the independence of the family and even
emphasized it, the village community disclaiming all rights of interference
in what was going on within the family enclosure; it gave much more
freedom to personal initiative; it was not hostile in principle to union
between men of different descent, and it maintained at the same time the
necessary cohesion of action and thought, while it was strong enough to
oppose the dominative tendencies of the minorities of wizards, priests, and
professional or distinguished warriors. Consequently it became the primary

cell of future organization, and with many nations the village community
has retained this character until now.

It is now known, and scarcely contested, that the village community was
not a specific feature of the Slavonians, nor even of the ancient Teutons. It
prevailed in England during both the Saxon and Norman times, and
partially survived till the last century;(3) it was at the bottom of the social
organization of old Scotland, old Ireland, and old Wales. In France, the
communal possession and the communal allotment of arable land by the
village folkmote persisted from the first centuries of our era till the times of
Turgot, who found the folkmotes "too noisy" and therefore abolished them.
It survived Roman rule in Italy, and revived after the fall of the Roman
Empire. It was the rule with the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, the Finns
(in the pittaya, as also, probably, the kihla-kunta), the Coures, and the lives.
The village community in India—past and present, Aryan and non-Aryan—
is well known through the epoch-making works of Sir Henry Maine; and
Elphinstone has described it among the Afghans. We also find it in the
Mongolian oulous, the Kabyle thaddart, the Javanese dessa, the Malayan
kota or tofa, and under a variety of names in Abyssinia, the Soudan, in the
interior of Africa, with natives of both Americas, with all the small and
large tribes of the Pacific archipelagoes. In short, we do not know one
single human race or one single nation which has not had its period of
village communities. This fact alone disposes of the theory according to
which the village community in Europe would have been a servile growth.
It is anterior to serfdom, and even servile submission was powerless to
break it. It was a universal phase of evolution, a natural outcome of the clan
organization, with all those stems, at least, which have played, or play still,
some part in history.(4)

It was a natural growth, and an absolute uniformity in its structure was
therefore not possible. As a rule, it was a union between families considered

as of common descent and owning a certain territory in common. But with
some stems, and under certain circumstances, the families used to grow
very numerous before they threw off new buds in the shape of new families;
five, six, or seven generations continued to live under the same roof, or
within the same enclosure, owning their joint household and cattle in
common, and taking their meals at the common hearth. They kept in such
case to what ethnology knows as the "joint family," or the "undivided
household," which we still see all over China, in India, in the South
Slavonian zadruga, and occasionally find in Africa, in America, in
Denmark, in North Russia, and West France.(5) With other stems, or in
other circumstances, not yet well specified, the families did not attain the
same proportions; the grandsons, and occasionally the sons, left the
household as soon as they were married, and each of them started a new cell
of his own. But, joint or not, clustered together or scattered in the woods,
the families remained united into village communities; several villages were
grouped into tribes; and the tribes joined into confederations. Such was the
social organization which developed among the so-called "barbarians,"
when they began to settle more or less permanently in Europe.

A very long evolution was required before the gentes, or clans,
recognized the separate existence of a patriarchal family in a separate hut;
but even after that had been recognized, the clan, as a rule, knew no
personal inheritance of property. The few things which might have
belonged personally to the individual were either destroyed on his grave or
buried with him. The village community, on the contrary, fully recognized
the private accumulation of wealth within the family and its hereditary
transmission. But wealth was conceived exclusively in the shape of
movable property, including cattle, implements, arms, and the dwelling
house which—"like all things that can be destroyed by fire"—belonged to
the same category(6). As to private property in land, the village community
did not, and could not, recognize anything of the kind, and, as a rule, it does

not recognize it now. The land was the common property of the tribe, or of
the whole stem, and the village community itself owned its part of the tribal
territory so long only as the tribe did not claim a re-distribution of the
village allotments. The clearing of the woods and the breaking of the
prairies being mostly done by the communities or, at least, by the joint work
of several families—always with the consent of the community—the
cleared plots were held by each family for a term of four, twelve, or twenty
years, after which term they were treated as parts of the arable land owned
in common. Private property, or possession "for ever" was as incompatible,
with the very principles and the religious conceptions of the village
community as it was with the principles of the gens; so that a long influence
of the Roman law and the Christian Church, which soon accepted the
Roman principles, were required to accustom the barbarians to the idea of
private property in land being possible.(7) And yet, even when such
property, or possession for an unlimited time, was recognized, the owner of
a separate estate remained a co-proprietor in the waste lands, forests, and
grazing-grounds. Moreover, we continually see, especially in the history of
Russia, that when a few families, acting separately, had taken possession of
some land belonging to tribes which were treated as strangers, they very
soon united together, and constituted a village community which in the third
or fourth generation began to profess a community of origin.

A whole series of institutions, partly inherited from the clan period, have
developed from that basis of common ownership of land during the long
succession of centuries which was required to bring the barbarians under
the dominion of States organized upon the Roman or Byzantine pattern. The
village community was not only a union for guaranteeing to each one his
fair share in the common land, but also a union for common culture, for
mutual support in all possible forms, for protection from violence, and for a
further development of knowledge, national bonds, and moral conceptions;
and every change in the judicial, military, educational, or economical

manners had to be decided at the folkmotes of the village, the tribe, or the
confederation. The community being a continuation of the gens, it inherited
all its functions. It was the universitas, the mir—a world in itself.

Common hunting, common fishing, and common culture of the orchards
or the plantations of fruit trees was the rule with the old gentes. Common
agriculture became the rule in the barbarian village communities. True, that
direct testimony to this effect is scarce, and in the literature of antiquity we
only have the passages of Diodorus and Julius Caesar relating to the
inhabitants of the Lipari Islands, one of the Celt-Iberian tribes, and the
Sueves. But there is no lack of evidence to prove that common agriculture
was practised among some Teuton tribes, the Franks, and the old Scotch,
Irish, and Welsh.(8) As to the later survivals of the same practice, they
simply are countless. Even in perfectly Romanized France, common culture
was habitual some five and twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).(9)
The old Welsh cyvar, or joint team, as well as the common culture of the
land allotted to the use of the village sanctuary are quite common among
the tribes of Caucasus the least touched by civilization,(10) and like facts
are of daily occurrence among the Russian peasants. Moreover, it is well
known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to
cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely spread
among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems, and
so on.(11) In short, communal culture is so habitual with many Aryan, Ural-
Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and Melanesian stems
that we must consider it as a universal—though not as the only possible—
form of primitive agriculture.(12)

Communal cultivation does not, however, imply by necessity communal
consumption. Already under the clan organization we often see that when
the boats laden with fruits or fish return to the village, the food they bring in
is divided among the huts and the "long houses" inhabited by either several

families or the youth, and is cooked separately at each separate hearth. The
habit of taking meals in a narrower circle of relatives or associates thus
prevails at an early period of clan life. It became the rule in the village
community. Even the food grown in common was usually divided between
the households after part of it had been laid in store for communal use.
However, the tradition of communal meals was piously kept alive; every
available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the
religious festivals, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the
marriages, and the funerals, being seized upon to bring the community to a
common meal. Even now this habit, well known in this country as the
"harvest supper," is the last to disappear. On the other hand, even when the
fields had long since ceased to be tilled and sown in common, a variety of
agricultural work continued, and continues still, to be performed by the
community. Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many
cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the
communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The
irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal
meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian
commune mowing a meadow—the men rivalling each other in their
advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it
up into heaps—is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human
work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the
separate households, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay
from a neighbour's stack without his permission; but the limitation of this
last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the
cuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows
will soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right of
taking from a neighbour's stack the hay he wants for his cattle.(13) The old
communal rights are thus re-asserted, as if to prove how contrary unbridled
individualism is to human nature.

When the European traveller lands in some small island of the Pacific,
and, seeing at a distance a grove of palm trees, walks in that direction, he is
astonished to discover that the little villages are connected by roads paved
with big stones, quite comfortable for the unshod natives, and very similar
to the "old roads" of the Swiss mountains. Such roads were traced by the
"barbarians" all over Europe, and one must have travelled in wild, thinly-
peopled countries, far away from the chief lines of communication, to
realize in full the immense work that must have been performed by the
barbarian communities in order to conquer the woody and marshy
wilderness which Europe was some two thousand years ago. Isolated
families, having no tools, and weak as they were, could not have conquered
it; the wilderness would have overpowered them. Village communities
alone, working in common, could master the wild forests, the sinking
marshes, and the endless steppes. The rough roads, the ferries, the wooden
bridges taken away in the winter and rebuilt after the spring flood was over,
the fences and the palisaded walls of the villages, the earthen forts and the
small towers with which the territory was dottedall these were the work of
the barbarian communities. And when a community grew numerous it used
to throw off a new bud. A new community arose at a distance, thus step by
step bringing the woods and the steppes under the dominion of man. The
whole making of European nations was such a budding of the village
communities. Even now-a-days the Russian peasants, if they are not quite
broken down by misery, migrate in communities, and they till the soil and
build the houses in com mon when they settle on the banks of the Amur, or
in Manitoba. And even the English, when they first began to colonize
America, used to return to the old system; they grouped into village
communities.(14)

The village community was the chief arm of the barbarians in their hard
struggle against a hostile nature. It also was the bond they opposed to
oppression by the cunningest and the strongest which so easily might have

developed during those disturbed times. The imaginary barbarian—the man
who fights and kills at his mere caprice—existed no more than the
"bloodthirsty" savage. The real barbarian was living, on the contrary, under
a wide series of institutions, imbued with considerations as to what may be
useful or noxious to his tribe or confederation, and these institutions were
piously handed down from generation to generation in verses and songs, in
proverbs or triads, in sentences and instructions. The more we study them
the more we recognize the narrow bonds which united men in their villages.
Every quarrel arising between two individuals was treated as a communal
affair—even the offensive words that might have been uttered during a
quarrel being considered as an offence to the community and its ancestors.
They had to be repaired by amends made both to the individual and the
community;(15) and if a quarrel ended in a fight and wounds, the man who
stood by and did not interpose was treated as if he himself had inflicted the
wounds.(16) The judicial procedure was imbued with the same spirit. Every
dispute was brought first before mediators or arbiters, and it mostly ended
with them, the arbiters playing a very important part in barbarian society.
But if the case was too grave to be settled in this way, it came before the
folkmote, which was bound "to find the sentence," and pronounced it in a
conditional form; that is, "such compensation was due, if the wrong be
proved," and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve
persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in
case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which
remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks
volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members
of the community. Moreover, there was no other authority to enforce the
decisions of the folkmote besides its own moral authority. The only possible
menace was that the community might declare the rebel an outlaw, but even
this menace was reciprocal. A man discontented with the folkmote could
declare that he would abandon the tribe and go over to another tribe—a

most dreadful menace, as it was sure to bring all kinds of misfortunes upon
a tribe that might have been unfair to one of its members.(17) A rebellion
against a right decision of the customary law was simply "inconceivable,"
as Henry Maine has so well said, because "law, morality, and fact" could
not be separated from each other in those times.(18) The moral authority of
the commune was so great that even at a much later epoch, when the village
communities fell into submission to the feudal lord, they maintained their
judicial powers; they only permitted the lord, or his deputy, to "find" the
above conditional sentence in accordance with the customary law he had
sworn to follow, and to levy for himself the fine (the fred) due to the
commune. But for a long time, the lord himself, if he remained a co-
proprietor in the waste land of the commune, submitted in communal affairs
to its decisions. Noble or ecclesiastic, he had to submit to the folkmote—
Wer daselbst Wasser und Weid genusst, muss gehorsam sein—"Who enjoys
here the right of water and pasture must obey"—was the old saying. Even
when the peasants became serfs under the lord, he was bound to appear
before the folkmote when they summoned him.(19)

In their conceptions of justice the barbarians evidently did not much
differ from the savages. They also maintained the idea that a murder must
be followed by putting the murderer to death; that wounds had to be
punished by equal wounds, and that the wronged family was bound to fulfil
the sentence of the customary law. This was a holy duty, a duty towards the
ancestors, which had to be accomplished in broad daylight, never in
secrecy, and rendered widely known. Therefore the most inspired passages
of the sagas and epic poetry altogether are those which glorify what was
supposed to be justice. The gods themselves joined in aiding it. However,
the predominant feature of barbarian justice is, on the one hand, to limit the
numbers of persons who may be involved in a feud, and, on the other hand,
to extirpate the brutal idea of blood for blood and wounds for wounds, by
substituting for it the system of compensation. The barbarian codes which

were collections of common law rules written down for the use of judges
—"first permitted, then encouraged, and at last enforced," compensation
instead of revenge.(20) The compensation has, however, been totally
misunderstood by those who represented it as a fine, and as a sort of carte
blanche given to the rich man to do whatever he liked. The compensation
money (wergeld), which was quite different from the fine or fred,(21) was
habitually so high for all kinds of active offences that it certainly was no
encouragement for such offences. In case of a murder it usually exceeded
all the possible fortune of the murderer "Eighteen times eighteen cows" is
the compensation with the Ossetes who do not know how to reckon above
eighteen, while with the African tribes it attains 800 cows or 100 camels
with their young, or 416 sheep in the poorer tribes.(22) In the great majority
of cases, the compensation money could not be paid at all, so that the
murderer had no issue but to induce the wronged family, by repentance, to
adopt him. Even now, in the Caucasus, when feuds come to an end, the
offender touches with his lips the breast of the oldest woman of the tribe,
and becomes a "milk-brother" to all men of the wronged family.(23) With
several African tribes he must give his daughter, or sister, in marriage to
some one of the family; with other tribes he is bound to marry the woman
whom he has made a widow; and in all cases he becomes a member of the
family, whose opinion is taken in all important family matters.(24)

Far from acting with disregard to human life, the barbarians, moreover,
knew nothing of the horrid punishments introduced at a later epoch by the
laic and canonic laws under Roman and Byzantine influence. For, if the
Saxon code admitted the death penalty rather freely even in cases of
incendiarism and armed robbery, the other barbarian codes pronounced it
exclusively in cases of betrayal of one's kin, and sacrilege against the
community's gods, as the only means to appease the gods.

All this, as seen is very far from the supposed "moral dissoluteness" of
the barbarians. On the contrary, we cannot but admire the deeply moral
principles elaborated within the early village communities which found
their expression in Welsh triads, in legends about King Arthur, in Brehon
commentaries,(25) in old German legends and so on, or find still their
expression in the sayings of the modern barbarians. In his introduction to
The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the
qualities of a Northman, as they appear in the sagas:—

To do what lay before him openly and like a man, without fear
of either foes, fiends, or fate; … to be free and daring in all his
deeds; to be gentle and generous to his friends and kinsmen; to be
stern and grim to his foes [those who are under the lex talionis],
but even towards them to fulfil all bounden duties…. To be no
truce-breaker, nor tale-bearer, nor backbiter. To utter nothing
against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To
turn no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even
though he were a foe.(26)

The same or still better principles permeate the Welsh epic poetry and
triads. To act "according to the nature of mildness and the principles of
equity," without regard to the foes or to the friends, and "to repair the
wrong," are the highest duties of man; "evil is death, good is life," exclaims
the poet legislator.(27) "The World would be fool, if agreements made on
lips were not honourable"—the Brehon law says. And the humble
Shamanist Mordovian, after having praised the same qualities, will add,
moreover, in his principles of customary law, that "among neighbours the
cow and the milking-jar are in common;" that, "the cow must be milked for
yourself and him who may ask milk;" that "the body of a child reddens from
the stroke, but the face of him who strikes reddens from shame;"(28) and so

on. Many pages might be filled with like principles expressed and followed
by the "barbarians."

One feature more of the old village communities deserves a special
mention. It is the gradual extension of the circle of men embraced by the
feelings of solidarity. Not only the tribes federated into stems, but the stems
as well, even though of different origin, joined together in confederations.
Some unions were so close that, for instance, the Vandals, after part of their
confederation had left for the Rhine, and thence went over to Spain and
Africa, respected for forty consecutive years the landmarks and the
abandoned villages of their confederates, and did not take possession of
them until they had ascertained through envoys that their confederates did
not intend to return. With other barbarians, the soil was cultivated by one
part of the stem, while the other part fought on or beyond the frontiers of
the common territory. As to the leagues between several stems, they were
quite habitual. The Sicambers united with the Cherusques and the Sueves,
the Quades with the Sarmates; the Sarmates with the Alans, the Carpes, and
the Huns. Later on, we also see the conception of nations gradually
developing in Europe, long before anything like a State had grown in any
part of the continent occupied by the barbarians. These nations—for it is
impossible to refuse the name of a nation to the Merovingian France, or to
the Russia of the eleventh and twelfth century—were nevertheless kept
together by nothing else but a community of language, and a tacit
agreement of the small republics to take their dukes from none but one
special family.

Wars were certainly unavoidable; migration means war; but Sir Henry
Maine has already fully proved in his remarkable study of the tribal origin
of International Law, that "Man has never been so ferocious or so stupid as
to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of effort to prevent it,"
and he has shown how exceedingly great is "the number of ancient

institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the way of war, or
to provide an alternative to it."(29) In reality, man is so far from the warlike
being he is supposed to be, that when the barbarians had once settled they
so rapidly lost the very habits of warfare that very soon they were
compelled to keep special dukes followed by special scholae or bands of
warriors, in order to protect them from possible intruders. They preferred
peaceful toil to war, the very peacefulness of man being the cause of the
specialization of the warrior's trade, which specialization resulted later on in
serfdom and in all the wars of the "States period" of human history.

History finds great difficulties in restoring to life the institutions of the
barbarians. At every step the historian meets with some faint indication
which he is unable to explain with the aid of his own documents only. But a
broad light is thrown on the past as soon as we refer to the institutions of
the very numerous tribes which are still living under a social organization
almost identical with that of our barbarian ancestors. Here we simply have
the difficulty of choice, because the islands of the Pacific, the steppes of
Asia, and the tablelands of Africa are real historical museums containing
specimens of all possible intermediate stages which mankind has lived
through, when passing from the savage gentes up to the States' organization.
Let us, then, examine a few of those specimens.

If we take the village communities of the Mongol Buryates, especially
those of the Kudinsk Steppe on the upper Lena which have better escaped
Russian influence, we have fair representatives of barbarians in a
transitional state, between cattle-breeding and agriculture.(30) These
Buryates are still living in "joint families"; that is, although each son, when
he is married, goes to live in a separate hut, the huts of at least three
generations remain within the same enclosure, and the joint family work in
common in their fields, and own in common their joint households and their
cattle, as well as their "calves' grounds" (small fenced patches of soil kept

under soft grass for the rearing of calves). As a rule, the meals are taken
separately in each hut; but when meat is roasted, all the twenty to sixty
members of the joint household feast together. Several joint households
which live in a cluster, as well as several smaller families settled in the
same village—mostly debris of joint households accidentally broken up—
make the oulous, or the village community; several oulouses make a tribe;
and the forty-six tribes, or clans, of the Kudinsk Steppe are united into one
confederation. Smaller and closer confederations are entered into, as
necessity arises for special wants, by several tribes. They know no private
property in land—the land being held in common by the oulous, or rather
by the confederation, and if it becomes necessary, the territory is re-allotted
between the different oulouses at a folkmote of the tribe, and between the
forty-six tribes at a folkmote of the confederation. It is worthy of note that
the same organization prevails among all the 250,000 Buryates of East
Siberia, although they have been for three centuries under Russian rule, and
are well acquainted with Russian institutions.

With all that, inequalities of fortune rapidly develop among the Buryates,
especially since the Russian Government is giving an exaggerated
importance to their elected taishas (princes), whom it considers as
responsible tax-collectors and representatives of the confederations in their
administrative and even commercial relations with the Russians. The
channels for the enrichment of the few are thus many, while the
impoverishment of the great number goes hand in hand, through the
appropriation of the Buryate lands by the Russians. But it is a habit with the
Buryates, especially those of Kudinsk—and habit is more than law—that if
a family has lost its cattle, the richer families give it some cows and horses
that it may recover. As to the destitute man who has no family, he takes his
meals in the huts of his congeners; he enters a hut, takes—by right, not for
charity—his seat by the fire, and shares the meal which always is
scrupulously divided into equal parts; he sleeps where he has taken his

evening meal. Altogether, the Russian conquerors of Siberia were so much
struck by the communistic practices of the Buryates, that they gave them
the name of Bratskiye—"the Brotherly Ones"—and reported to Moscow.
"With them everything is in common; whatever they have is shared in
common." Even now, when the Lena Buryates sell their wheat, or send
some of their cattle to be sold to a Russian butcher, the families of the
oulous, or the tribe, put their wheat and cattle together, and sell it as a
whole. Each oulous has, moreover, its grain store for loans in case of need,
its communal baking oven (the four banal of the old French communities),
and its blacksmith, who, like the blacksmith of the Indian communities,(31)
being a member of the community, is never paid for his work within the
community. He must make it for nothing, and if he utilizes his spare time
for fabricating the small plates of chiselled and silvered iron which are used
in Buryate land for the decoration of dress, he may occasionally sell them to
a woman from another clan, but to the women of his own clan the attire is
presented as a gift. Selling and buying cannot take place within the
community, and the rule is so severe that when a richer family hires a
labourer the labourer must be taken from another clan or from among the
Russians. This habit is evidently not specific to the Buryates; it is so widely
spread among the modern barbarians, Aryan and Ural-Altayan, that it must
have been universal among our ancestors.

The feeling of union within the confederation is kept alive by the
common interests of the tribes, their folkmotes, and the festivities which are
usually kept in connection with the folkmotes. The same feeling is,
however, maintained by another institution, the aba, or common hunt,
which is a reminiscence of a very remote past. Every autumn, the forty-six
clans of Kudinsk come together for such a hunt, the produce of which is
divided among all the families. Moreover, national abas, to assert the unity
of the whole Buryate nation, are convoked from time to time. In such cases,
all Buryate clans which are scattered for hundreds of miles west and east of

Lake Baikal, are bound to send their delegate hunters. Thousands of men
come together, each one bringing provisions for a whole month. Every one's
share must be equal to all the others, and therefore, before being put
together, they are weighed by an elected elder (always "with the hand":
scales would be a profanation of the old custom). After that the hunters
divide into bands of twenty, and the parties go hunting according to a well-
settled plan. In such abas the entire Buryate nation revives its epic traditions
of a time when it was united in a powerful league. Let me add that such
communal hunts are quite usual with the Red Indians and the Chinese on
the banks of the Usuri (the kada).(32)

With the Kabyles, whose manners of life have been so well described by
two French explorers,(33) we have barbarians still more advanced in
agriculture. Their fields, irrigated and manured, are well attended to, and in
the hilly tracts every available plot of land is cultivated by the spade. The
Kabyles have known many vicissitudes in their history; they have followed
for sometime the Mussulman law of inheritance, but, being adverse to it,
they have returned, 150 years ago, to the tribal customary law of old.
Accordingly, their land-tenure is of a mixed character, and private property
in land exists side by side with communal possession. Still, the basis of
their present organization is the village community, the thaddart, which
usually consists of several joint families (kharoubas), claiming a
community of origin, as well as of smaller families of strangers. Several
villages are grouped into clans or tribes (arch); several tribes make the
confederation (thak'ebilt); and several confederations may occasionally
enter into a league, chiefly for purposes of armed defence.

The Kabyles know no authority whatever besides that of the djemmaa, or
folkmote of the village community. All men of age take part in it, in the
open air, or in a special building provided with stone seats. And the
decisions of the djemmaa are evidently taken at unanimity: that is, the

discussions continue until all present agree to accept, or to submit to, some
decision. There being no authority in a village community to impose a
decision, this system has been practised by mankind wherever there have
been village communities, and it is practised still wherever they continue to
exist, i.e. by several hundred million men all over the world. The djemmaa
nominates its executive—the elder, the scribe, and the treasurer; it assesses
its own taxes; and it manages the repartition of the common lands, as well
as all kinds of works of public utility. A great deal of work is done in
common: the roads, the mosques, the fountains, the irrigation canals, the
towers erected for protection from robbers, the fences, and so on, are built
by the village community; while the high-roads, the larger mosques, and the
great market-places are the work of the tribe. Many traces of common
culture continue to exist, and the houses continue to be built by, or with the
aid of, all men and women of the village. Altogether, the "aids" are of daily
occurrence, and are continually called in for the cultivation of the fields, for
harvesting, and so on. As to the skilled work, each community has its
blacksmith, who enjoys his part of the communal land, and works for the
community; when the tilling season approaches he visits every house, and
repairs the tools and the ploughs, without expecting any pay, while the
making of new ploughs is considered as a pious work which can by no
means be recompensed in money, or by any other form of salary.

As the Kabyles already have private property, they evidently have both
rich and poor among them. But like all people who closely live together,
and know how poverty begins, they consider it as an accident which may
visit every one. "Don't say that you will never wear the beggar's bag, nor go
to prison," is a proverb of the Russian peasants; the Kabyles practise it, and
no difference can be detected in the external behaviour between rich and
poor; when the poor convokes an "aid," the rich man works in his field, just
as the poor man does it reciprocally in his turn.(34) Moreover, the
djemmaas set aside certain gardens and fields, sometimes cultivated in

common, for the use of the poorest members. Many like customs continue
to exist. As the poorer families would not be able to buy meat, meat is
regularly bought with the money of the fines, or the gifts to the djemmaa, or
the payments for the use of the communal olive-oil basins, and it is
distributed in equal parts among those who cannot afford buying meat
themselves. And when a sheep or a bullock is killed by a family for its own
use on a day which is not a market day, the fact is announced in the streets
by the village crier, in order that sick people and pregnant women may take
of it what they want. Mutual support permeates the life of the Kabyles, and
if one of them, during a journey abroad, meets with another Kabyle in need,
he is bound to come to his aid, even at the risk of his own fortune and life;
if this has not been done, the djemmaa of the man who has suffered from
such neglect may lodge a complaint, and the djemmaa of the selfish man
will at once make good the loss. We thus come across a custom which is
familiar to the students of the mediaeval merchant guilds. Every stranger
who enters a Kabyle village has right to housing in the winter, and his
horses can always graze on the communal lands for twenty-four hours. But
in case of need he can reckon upon an almost unlimited support. Thus,
during the famine of 1867-68, the Kabyles received and fed every one who
sought refuge in their villages, without distinction of origin. In the district
of Dellys, no less than 12,000 people who came from all parts of Algeria,
and even from Morocco, were fed in this way. While people died from
starvation all over Algeria, there was not one single case of death due to this
cause on Kabylian soil. The djemmaas, depriving themselves of necessaries,
organized relief, without ever asking any aid from the Government, or
uttering the slightest complaint; they considered it as a natural duty. And
while among the European settlers all kind of police measures were taken to
prevent thefts and disorder resulting from such an influx of strangers,
nothing of the kind was required on the Kabyles' territory: the djemmaas
needed neither aid nor protection from without.(35)

I can only cursorily mention two other most interesting features of
Kabyle life; namely, the anaya, or protection granted to wells, canals,
mosques, marketplaces, some roads, and so on, in case of war, and the cofs.
In the anaya we have a series of institutions both for diminishing the evils
of war and for preventing conflicts. Thus the market-place is anaya,
especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers
together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance
arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market
town. The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain
also is anaya in case of war; and so on. As to the cof it is a widely spread
form of association, having some characters of the mediaeval Burgschaften
or Gegilden, as well as of societies both for mutual protection and for
various purposes—intellectual, political, and emotional—which cannot be
satisfied by the territorial organization of the village, the clan, and the con
federation. The cof knows no territorial limits; it recruits its members in
various villages, even among strangers; and it protects them in all possible
eventualities of life. Altogether, it is an attempt at supplementing the
territorial grouping by an extra-territorial grouping intended to give an
expression to mutual affinities of all kinds across the frontiers. The free
international association of individual tastes and ideas, which we consider
as one of the best features of our own life, has thus its origin in barbarian
antiquity.

The mountaineers of Caucasia offer another extremely instructive field
for illustrations of the same kind. In studying the present customs of the
Ossetes—their joint families and communes and their judiciary conceptions
—Professor Kovalevsky, in a remarkable work on Modern Custom and
Ancient Law was enabled step by step to trace the similar dispositions of
the old barbarian codes and even to study the origins of feudalism. With
other Caucasian stems we occasionally catch a glimpse into the origin of
the village community in those cases where it was not tribal but originated

from a voluntary union between families of distinct origin. Such was
recently the case with some Khevsoure villages, the inhabitants of which
took the oath of "community and fraternity."(36) In another part of
Caucasus, Daghestan, we see the growth of feudal relations between two
tribes, both maintaining at the same time their village communities (and
even traces of the gentile "classes"), and thus giving a living illustration of
the forms taken by the conquest of Italy and Gaul by the barbarians. The
victorious race, the Lezghines, who have conquered several Georgian and
Tartar villages in the Zakataly district, did not bring them under the
dominion of separate families; they constituted a feudal clan which now
includes 12,000 households in three villages, and owns in common no less
than twenty Georgian and Tartar villages. The conquerors divided their own
land among their clans, and the clans divided it in equal parts among the
families; but they did not interfere with the djemmaas of their tributaries
which still practise the habit mentioned by Julius Caesar; namely, the
djemmaa decides each year which part of the communal territory must be
cultivated, and this land is divided into as many parts as there are families,
and the parts are distributed by lot. It is worthy of note that although
proletarians are of common occurrence among the Lezghines (who live
under a system of private property in land, and common ownership of
serfs(37)) they are rare among their Georgian serfs, who continue to hold
their land in common. As to the customary law of the Caucasian
mountaineers, it is much the same as that of the Longobards or Salic
Franks, and several of its dispositions explain a good deal the judicial
procedure of the barbarians of old. Being of a very impressionable
character, they do their best to prevent quarrels from taking a fatal issue; so,
with the Khevsoures, the swords are very soon drawn when a quarrel breaks
out; but if a woman rushes out and throws among them the piece of linen
which she wears on her head, the swords are at once returned to their
sheaths, and the quarrel is appeased. The head-dress of the women is anaya.

If a quarrel has not been stopped in time and has ended in murder, the
compensation money is so considerable that the aggressor is entirely ruined
for his life, unless he is adopted by the wronged family; and if he has
resorted to his sword in a trifling quarrel and has inflicted wounds, he loses
for ever the consideration of his kin. In all disputes, mediators take the
matter in hand; they select from among the members of the clan the judges
—six in smaller affairs, and from ten to fifteen in more serious matters—
and Russian observers testify to the absolute incorruptibility of the judges.
An oath has such a significance that men enjoying general esteem are
dispensed from taking it: a simple affirmation is quite sufficient, the more
so as in grave affairs the Khevsoure never hesitates to recognize his guilt (I
mean, of course, the Khevsoure untouched yet by civilization). The oath is
chiefly reserved for such cases, like disputes about property, which require
some sort of appreciation in addition to a simple statement of facts; and in
such cases the men whose affirmation will decide in the dispute, act with
the greatest circumspection. Altogether it is certainly not a want of honesty
or of respect to the rights of the congeners which characterizes the
barbarian societies of Caucasus.

The stems of Africa offer such an immense variety of extremely
interesting societies standing at all intermediate stages from the early
village community to the despotic barbarian monarchies that I must
abandon the idea of giving here even the chief results of a comparative
study of their institutions.(38) Suffice it to say, that, even under the most
horrid despotism of kings, the folkmotes of the village communities and
their customary law remain sovereign in a wide circle of affairs. The law of
the State allows the king to take any one's life for a simple caprice, or even
for simply satisfying his gluttony; but the customary law of the people
continues to maintain the same network of institutions for mutual support
which exist among other barbarians or have existed among our ancestors.
And with some better-favoured stems (in Bornu, Uganda, Abyssinia), and

especially the Bogos, some of the dispositions of the customary law are
inspired with really graceful and delicate feelings.

The village communities of the natives of both Americas have the same
character. The Tupi of Brazil were found living in "long houses" occupied
by whole clans which used to cultivate their corn and manioc fields in
common. The Arani, much more advanced in civilization, used to cultivate
their fields in common; so also the Oucagas, who had learned under their
system of primitive communism and "long houses" to build good roads and
to carry on a variety of domestic industries,(39) not inferior to those of the
early medieval times in Europe. All of them were also living under the same
customary law of which we have given specimens on the preceding pages.
At another extremity of the world we find the Malayan feudalism, but this
feudalism has been powerless to unroot the negaria, or village community,
with its common ownership of at least part of the land, and the
redistribution of land among the several negarias of the tribe.(40) With the
Alfurus of Minahasa we find the communal rotation of the crops; with the
Indian stem of the Wyandots we have the periodical redistribution of land
within the tribe, and the clan-culture of the soil; and in all those parts of
Sumatra where Moslem institutions have not yet totally destroyed the old
organization we find the joint family (suka) and the village community
(kota) which maintains its right upon the land, even if part of it has been
cleared without its authorization.(41) But to say this, is to say that all
customs for mutual protection and prevention of feuds and wars, which
have been briefly indicated in the preceding pages as characteristic of the
village community, exist as well. More than that: the more fully the
communal possession of land has been maintained, the better and the
gentler are the habits. De Stuers positively affirms that wherever the
institution of the village community has been less encroached upon by the
conquerors, the inequalities of fortunes are smaller, and the very
prescriptions of the lex talionis are less cruel; while, on the contrary,

wherever the village community has been totally broken up, "the
inhabitants suffer the most unbearable oppression from their despotic
rulers."(42) This is quite natural. And when Waitz made the remark that
those stems which have maintained their tribal confederations stand on a
higher level of development and have a richer literature than those stems
which have forfeited the old bonds of union, he only pointed out what
might have been foretold in advance.

More illustrations would simply involve me in tedious repetitions—so
strikingly similar are the barbarian societies under all climates and amidst
all races. The same process of evolution has been going on in mankind with
a wonderful similarity. When the clan organization, assailed as it was from
within by the separate family, and from without by the dismemberment of
the migrating clans and the necessity of taking in strangers of different
descent—the village community, based upon a territorial conception, came
into existence. This new institution, which had naturally grown out of the
preceding one—the clan—permitted the barbarians to pass through a most
disturbed period of history without being broken into isolated families
which would have succumbed in the struggle for life. New forms of culture
developed under the new organization; agriculture attained the stage which
it hardly has surpassed until now with the great number; the domestic
industries reached a high degree of perfection. The wilderness was
conquered, it was intersected by roads, dotted with swarms thrown off by
the mother-communities. Markets and fortified centres, as well as places of
public worship, were erected. The conceptions of a wider union, extended
to whole stems and to several stems of various origin, were slowly
elaborated. The old conceptions of justice which were conceptions of mere
revenge, slowly underwent a deep modification—the idea of amends for the
wrong done taking the place of revenge. The customary law which still
makes the law of the daily life for two-thirds or more of mankind, was
elaborated under that organization, as well as a system of habits intended to

prevent the oppression of the masses by the minorities whose powers grew
in proportion to the growing facilities for private accumulation of wealth.
This was the new form taken by the tendencies of the masses for mutual
support. And the progress—economical, intellectual, and moral—which
mankind accomplished under this new popular form of organization, was so
great that the States, when they were called later on into existence, simply
took possession, in the interest of the minorities, of all the judicial,
economical, and administrative functions which the village community
already had exercised in the interest of all.

NOTES:

1. Numberless traces of post-pliocene lakes, now disappeared, are found
over Central, West, and North Asia. Shells of the same species as those now
found in the Caspian Sea are scattered over the surface of the soil as far
East as half-way to Lake Aral, and are found in recent deposits as far north
as Kazan. Traces of Caspian Gulfs, formerly taken for old beds of the Amu,
intersect the Turcoman territory. Deduction must surely be made for
temporary, periodical oscillations. But with all that, desiccation is evident,
and it progresses at a formerly unexpected speed. Even in the relatively wet
parts of South-West Siberia, the succession of reliable surveys, recently
published by Yadrintseff, shows that villages have grown up on what was,
eighty years ago, the bottom of one of the lakes of the Tchany group; while
the other lakes of the same group, which covered hundreds of square miles
some fifty years ago, are now mere ponds. In short, the desiccation of
North-West Asia goes on at a rate which must be measured by centuries,
instead of by the geological units of time of which we formerly used to
speak.

2. Whole civilizations had thus disappeared, as is proved now by the
remarkable discoveries in Mongolia on the Orkhon and in the Lukchun

depression (by Dmitri Clements).

3. If I follow the opinions of (to name modern specialists only) Nasse,
Kovalevsky, and Vinogradov, and not those of Mr. Seebohm (Mr. Denman
Ross can only be named for the sake of completeness), it is not only
because of the deep knowledge and concordance of views of these three
writers, but also on account of their perfect knowledge of the village
community altogether—a knowledge the want of which is much felt in the
otherwise remarkable work of Mr. Seebohm. The same remark applies, in a
still higher degree, to the most elegant writings of Fustel de Coulanges,
whose opinions and passionate interpretations of old texts are confined to
himself.

4. The literature of the village community is so vast that but a few works
can be named. Those of Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Seebohm, and Walter's Das
alte Wallis (Bonn, 1859), are well-known popular sources of information
about Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For France, P. Viollet, Precis de
l'histoire du droit francais. Droit prive, 1886, and several of his monographs
in Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes; Babeau, Le Village sous l'ancien regime (the
mir in the eighteenth century), third edition, 1887; Bonnemere, Doniol, etc.
For Italy and Scandinavia, the chief works are named in Laveleye's
Primitive Property, German version by K. Bucher. For the Finns, Rein's
Forelasningar, i. 16; Koskinen, Finnische Geschichte, 1874, and various
monographs. For the Lives and Coures, Prof. Lutchitzky in Severnyi
Vestnil, 1891. For the Teutons, besides the well-known works of Maurer,
Sohm (Altdeutsche Reichs-und Gerichts-Verfassung), also Dahn (Urzeit,
Volkerwanderung, Langobardische Studien), Janssen, Wilh. Arnold, etc. For
India, besides H. Maine and the works he names, Sir John Phear's Aryan
Village. For Russia and South Slavonians, see Kavelin, Posnikoff,
Sokolovsky, Kovalevsky, Efimenko, Ivanisheff, Klaus, etc. (copious
bibliographical index up to 1880 in the Sbornik svedeniy ob obschinye of

the Russ. Geog. Soc.). For general conclusions, besides Laveleye's
Propriete, Morgan's Ancient Society, Lippert's Kulturgeschichte, Post,
Dargun, etc., also the lectures of M. Kovalevsky (Tableau des origines et de
l'evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890). Many special
monographs ought to be mentioned; their titles may be found in the
excellent lists given by P. Viollet in Droit prive and Droit public. For other
races, see subsequent notes.

5. Several authorities are inclined to consider the joint household as an
intermediate stage between the clan and the village community; and there is
no doubt that in very many cases village communities have grown up out of
undivided families. Nevertheless, I consider the joint household as a fact of
a different order. We find it within the gentes; on the other hand, we cannot
affirm that joint families have existed at any period without belonging
either to a gens or to a village community, or to a Gau. I conceive the early
village communities as slowly originating directly from the gentes, and
consisting, according to racial and local circumstances, either of several
joint families, or of both joint and simple families, or (especially in the case
of new settlements) of simple families only. If this view be correct, we
should not have the right of establishing the series: gens, compound family,
village community—the second member of the series having not the same
ethnological value as the two others. See Appendix IX.

6. Stobbe, Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtes, p. 62.

7. The few traces of private property in land which are met with in the
early barbarian period are found with such stems (the Batavians, the Franks
in Gaul) as have been for a time under the influence of Imperial Rome. See
Inama-Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in
Deutschland, Bd. i. 1878. Also, Besseler, Neubruch nach dem alteren

deutschen Recht, pp. 11-12, quoted by Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and
Ancient Law, Moscow, 1886, i. 134.

8. Maurer's Markgenossenschaft; Lamprecht's "Wirthschaft und Recht
der Franken zur Zeit der Volksrechte," in Histor. Taschenbuch, 1883;
Seebohm's The English Village Community, ch. vi, vii, and ix.

9. Letourneau, in Bulletin de la Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p.
476.

10. Walter, Das alte Wallis, p. 323; Dm. Bakradze and N. Khoudadoff in
Russian Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. Part I.

11. Bancroft's Native Races; Waitz, Anthropologie, iii. 423; Montrozier,
in Bull. Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1870; Post's Studien, etc.

12. A number of works, by Ory, Luro, Laudes, and Sylvestre, on the
village community in Annam, proving that it has had there the same forms
as in Germany or Russia, is mentioned in a review of these works by Jobbe-
Duval, in Nouvelle Revue historique de droit francais et etranger, October
and December, 1896. A good study of the village community of Peru,
before the establishment of the power of the Incas, has been brought out by
Heinrich Cunow (Die Soziale Verfassung des Inka-Reichs, Stuttgart, 1896.)
The communal possession of land and communal culture are described in
that work.

13. Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and Ancient Law, i. 115.

14. Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 13; quoted in Maine's Village
Communities, New York, 1876, p. 201.

15. Konigswarter, Etudes sur le developpement des societes humaines,
Paris, 1850.

16. This is, at least, the law of the Kalmucks, whose customary law bears
the closest resemblance to the laws of the Teutons, the old Slavonians, etc.

17. The habit is in force still with many African and other tribes.

18. Village Communities, pp. 65-68 and 199.

19. Maurer (Gesch. der Markverfassung, sections 29, 97) is quite
decisive upon this subject. He maintains that "All members of the
community … the laic and clerical lords as well, often also the partial co-
possessors (Markberechtigte), and even strangers to the Mark, were
submitted to its jurisdiction" (p. 312). This conception remained locally in
force up to the fifteenth century.

20. Konigswarter, loc. cit. p. 50; J. Thrupp, Historical Law Tracts,
London, 1843, p. 106.

21. Konigswarter has shown that the fred originated from an offering
which had to be made to appease the ancestors. Later on, it was paid to the
community, for the breach of peace; and still later to the judge, or king, or
lord, when they had appropriated to themselves the rights of the community.

22. Post's Bausteine and Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887,
vol. i. pp. 64 seq.; Kovalevsky, loc. cit. ii. 164-189.

23. O. Miller and M. Kovalevsky, "In the Mountaineer Communities of
Kabardia," in Vestnik Evropy, April, 1884. With the Shakhsevens of the
Mugan Steppe, blood feuds always end by marriage between the two hostile
sides (Markoff, in appendix to the Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Soc. xiv.
1, 21).

24. Post, in Afrik. Jurisprudenz, gives a series of facts illustrating the
conceptions of equity inrooted among the African barbarians. The same

may be said of all serious examinations into barbarian common law.

25. See the excellent chapter, "Le droit de La Vieille Irlande," (also "Le
Haut Nord") in Etudes de droit international et de droit politique, by Prof.
E. Nys, Bruxelles, 1896.

26. Introduction, p. xxxv.

27. Das alte Wallis, pp. 343-350.

28. Maynoff, "Sketches of the Judicial Practices of the Mordovians," in
the ethnographical Zapiski of the Russian Geographical Society, 1885, pp.
236, 257.

29. Henry Maine, International Law, London, 1888, pp. 11-13. E. Nys,
Les origines du droit international, Bruxelles, 1894.

30. A Russian historian, the Kazan Professor Schapoff, who was exiled in
1862 to Siberia, has given a good description of their institutions in the
Izvestia of the East-Siberian Geographical Society, vol. v. 1874.

31. Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities, New York, 1876, pp. 193-
196.

32. Nazaroff, The North Usuri Territory (Russian), St. Petersburg, 1887,
p. 65.

33. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, 3 vols. Paris, 1883.

34. To convoke an "aid" or "bee," some kind of meal must be offered to
the community. I am told by a Caucasian friend that in Georgia, when the
poor man wants an "aid," he borrows from the rich man a sheep or two to
prepare the meal, and the community bring, in addition to their work, so

many provisions that he may repay the debt. A similar habit exists with the
Mordovians.

35. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La kabylie, ii. 58. The same respect to
strangers is the rule with the Mongols. The Mongol who has refused his
roof to a stranger pays the full blood-compensation if the stranger has
suffered therefrom (Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 231).

36. N. Khoudadoff, "Notes on the Khevsoures," in Zapiski of the
Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. 1, Tiflis, 1890, p. 68. They also took the oath
of not marrying girls from their own union, thus displaying a remarkable
return to the old gentile rules.

37. Dm. Bakradze, "Notes on the Zakataly District," in same Zapiski, xiv.
1, p. 264. The "joint team" is as common among the Lezghines as it is
among the Ossetes.

38. See Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887. Munzinger,
Ueber das Recht und Sitten der Bogos, Winterthur 1859; Casalis, Les
Bassoutos, Paris, 1859; Maclean, Kafir Laws and Customs, Mount Coke,
1858, etc.

39. Waitz, iii. 423 seq.

40. Post's Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familien Rechts
Oldenburg, 1889, pp. 270 seq.

41. Powell, Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography, Washington,
1881, quoted in Post's Studien, p. 290; Bastian's Inselgruppen in Oceanien,
1883, p. 88.

42. De Stuers, quoted by Waitz, v. 141.

CHAPTER V

MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY

Growth of authority in Barbarian Society. Serfdom in the villages. Revolt
of fortified towns: their liberation; their charts. The guild. Double origin of
the free medieval city. Self-jurisdiction, self-administration. Honourable
position of labour. Trade by the guild and by the city.

Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of
human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in small
isolated families, fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the
contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters,
proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to
agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common
descent and by worship of common ancestors. For thousands and thousands
of years this organization has kept men together, even though there was no
authority whatever to impose it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent
development of mankind; and when the bonds of common descent had been
loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the development of the
separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the
clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle—the village
community—was called into existence by the social genius of man. This
institution, again, kept men together for a number of centuries, permitting

them to further develop their social institutions and to pass through some of
the darkest periods of history, without being dissolved into loose
aggregations of families and individuals, to make a further step in their
evolution, and to work out a number of secondary social institutions,
several of which have survived down to the present time. We have now to
follow the further developments of the same ever-living tendency for
mutual aid. Taking the village communities of the so-called barbarians at a
time when they were making a new start of civilization after the fall of the
Roman Empire, we have to study the new aspects taken by the sociable
wants of the masses in the middle ages, and especially in the medieval
guilds and the medieval city.

Far from being the fighting animals they have often been compared to,
the barbarians of the first centuries of our era (like so many Mongolians,
Africans, Arabs, and so on, who still continue in the same barbarian stage)
invariably preferred peace to war. With the exception of a few tribes which
had been driven during the great migrations into unproductive deserts or
highlands, and were thus compelled periodically to prey upon their better-
favoured neighbours—apart from these, the great bulk of the Teutons, the
Saxons, the Celts, the Slavonians, and so on, very soon after they had
settled in their newly-conquered abodes, reverted to the spade or to their
herds. The earliest barbarian codes already represent to us societies
composed of peaceful agricultural communities, not hordes of men at war
with each other. These barbarians covered the country with villages and
farmhouses;(1) they cleared the forests, bridged the torrents, and colonized
the formerly quite uninhabited wilderness; and they left the uncertain
warlike pursuits to brotherhoods, scholae, or "trusts" of unruly men,
gathered round temporary chieftains, who wandered about, offering their
adventurous spirit, their arms, and their knowledge of warfare for the
protection of populations, only too anxious to be left in peace. The warrior
bands came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass

continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so
long as they did not interfere with the independence of their village
communities.(2) The new occupiers of Europe evolved the systems of land
tenure and soil culture which are still in force with hundreds of millions of
men; they worked out their systems of compensation for wrongs, instead of
the old tribal blood-revenge; they learned the first rudiments of industry;
and while they fortified their villages with palisaded walls, or erected
towers and earthen forts whereto to repair in case of a new invasion, they
soon abandoned the task of defending these towers and forts to those who
made of war a speciality.

The very peacefulness of the barbarians, certainly not their supposed
warlike instincts, thus became the source of their subsequent subjection to
the military chieftains. It is evident that the very mode of life of the armed
brotherhoods offered them more facilities for enrichment than the tillers of
the soil could find in their agricultural communities. Even now we see that
armed men occasionally come together to shoot down Matabeles and to rob
them of their droves of cattle, though the Matabeles only want peace and
are ready to buy it at a high price. The scholae of old certainly were not
more scrupulous than the scholae of our own time. Droves of cattle, iron
(which was extremely costly at that time(3)), and slaves were appropriated
in this way; and although most acquisitions were wasted on the spot in
those glorious feasts of which epic poetry has so much to say—still some
part of the robbed riches was used for further enrichment. There was plenty
of waste land, and no lack of men ready to till it, if only they could obtain
the necessary cattle and implements. Whole villages, ruined by murrains,
pests, fires, or raids of new immigrants, were often abandoned by their
inhabitants, who went anywhere in search of new abodes. They still do so in
Russia in similar circumstances. And if one of the hirdmen of the armed
brotherhoods offered the peasants some cattle for a fresh start, some iron to
make a plough, if not the plough itself, his protection from further raids,

and a number of years free from all obligations, before they should begin to
repay the contracted debt, they settled upon the land. And when, after a hard
fight with bad crops, inundations and pestilences, those pioneers began to
repay their debts, they fell into servile obligations towards the protector of
the territory. Wealth undoubtedly did accumulate in this way, and power
always follows wealth.(4) And yet, the more we penetrate into the life of
those times, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era, the more we see that
another element, besides wealth and military force, was required to
constitute the authority of the few. It was an element of law and tight, a
desire of the masses to maintain peace, and to establish what they
considered to be justice, which gave to the chieftains of the scholae—kings,
dukes, knyazes, and the like—the force they acquired two or three hundred
years later. That same idea of justice, conceived as an adequate revenge for
the wrong done, which had grown in the tribal stage, now passed as a red
thread through the history of subsequent institutions, and, much more even
than military or economic causes, it became the basis upon which the
authority of the kings and the feudal lords was founded.

In fact, one of the chief preoccupations of the barbarian village
community always was, as it still is with our barbarian contemporaries, to
put a speedy end to the feuds which arose from the then current conception
of justice. When a quarrel took place, the community at once interfered, and
after the folkmote had heard the case, it settled the amount of composition
(wergeld) to be paid to the wronged person, or to his family, as well as the
fred, or fine for breach of peace, which had to be paid to the community.
Interior quarrels were easily appeased in this way. But when feuds broke
out between two different tribes, or two confederations of tribes,
notwithstanding all measures taken to prevent them,(5) the difficulty was to
find an arbiter or sentence-finder whose decision should be accepted by
both parties alike, both for his impartiality and for his knowledge of the
oldest law. The difficulty was the greater as the customary laws of different

tribes and confederations were at variance as to the compensation due in
different cases. It therefore became habitual to take the sentence-finder
from among such families, or such tribes, as were reputed for keeping the
law of old in its purity; of being versed in the songs, triads, sagas, etc., by
means of which law was perpetuated in memory; and to retain law in this
way became a sort of art, a "mystery," carefully transmitted in certain
families from generation to generation. Thus in Iceland, and in other
Scandinavian lands, at every A11thing, or national folkmote, a lövsögmathr
used to recite the whole law from memory for the enlightening of the
assembly; and in Ireland there was, as is known, a special class of men
reputed for the knowledge of the old traditions, and therefore enjoying a
great authority as judges.(6) Again, when we are told by the Russian annals
that some stems of North-West Russia, moved by the growing disorder
which resulted from "clans rising against clans," appealed to Norman
varingiar to be their judges and commanders of warrior scholae; and when
we see the knyazes, or dukes, elected for the next two hundred years always
from the same Norman family, we cannot but recognize that the Slavonians
trusted to the Normans for a better knowledge of the law which would be
equally recognized as good by different Slavonian kins. In this case the
possession of runes, used for the transmission of old customs, was a
decided advantage in favour of the Normans; but in other cases there are
faint indications that the "eldest" branch of the stem, the supposed
motherbranch, was appealed to to supply the judges, and its decisions were
relied upon as just;(7) while at a later epoch we see a distinct tendency
towards taking the sentence-finders from the Christian clergy, which, at that
time, kept still to the fundamental, now forgotten, principle of Christianity,
that retaliation is no act of justice. At that time the Christian clergy opened
the churches as places of asylum for those who fled from blood revenge,
and they willingly acted as arbiters in criminal cases, always opposing the
old tribal principle of life for life and wound for wound. In short, the deeper

we penetrate into the history of early institutions, the less we find grounds
for the military theory of origin of authority. Even that power which later on
became such a source of oppression seems, on the contrary, to have found
its origin in the peaceful inclinations of the masses.

In all these cases the fred, which often amounted to half the
compensation, went to the folkmote, and from times immemorial it used to
be applied to works of common utility and defence. It has still the same
destination (the erection of towers) among the Kabyles and certain
Mongolian stems; and we have direct evidence that even several centuries
later the judicial fines, in Pskov and several French and German cities,
continued to be used for the repair of the city walls.(8) It was thus quite
natural that the fines should be handed over to the sentence-finder, who was
bound, in return, both to maintain the schola of armed men to whom the
defence of the territory was trusted, and to execute the sentences. This
became a universal custom in the eighth and ninth centuries, even when the
sentence-finder was an elected bishop. The germ of a combination of what
we should now call the judicial power and the executive thus made its
appearance. But to these two functions the attributions of the duke or king
were strictly limited. He was no ruler of the people—the supreme power
still belonging to the folkmote—not even a commander of the popular
militia; when the folk took to arms, it marched under a separate, also
elected, commander, who was not a subordinate, but an equal to the king.(9)
The king was a lord on his personal domain only. In fact, in barbarian
language, the word konung, koning, or cyning synonymous with the Latin
rex, had no other meaning than that of a temporary leader or chieftain of a
band of men. The commander of a flotilla of boats, or even of a single
pirate boat, was also a konung, and till the present day the commander of
fishing in Norway is named Not-kong—"the king of the nets."(10) The
veneration attached later on to the personality of a king did not yet exist,
and while treason to the kin was punished by death, the slaying of a king

could be recouped by the payment of compensation: a king simply was
valued so much more than a freeman.(11) And when King Knu (or Canute)
had killed one man of his own schola, the saga represents him convoking
his comrades to a thing where he stood on his knees imploring pardon. He
was pardoned, but not till he had agreed to pay nine times the regular
composition, of which one-third went to himself for the loss of one of his
men, one-third to the relatives of the slain man, and one-third (the fred) to
the schola.(12) In reality, a complete change had to be accomplished in the
current conceptions, under the double influence of the Church and the
students of Roman law, before an idea of sanctity began to be attached to
the personality of the king.

However, it lies beyond the scope of these essays to follow the gradual
development of authority out of the elements just indicated. Historians,
such as Mr. and Mrs. Green for this country, Augustin Thierry, Michelet,
and Luchaire for France, Kaufmann, Janssen, W. Arnold, and even Nitzsch,
for Germany, Leo and Botta for Italy, Byelaeff, Kostomaroff, and their
followers for Russia, and many others, have fully told that tale. They have
shown how populations, once free, and simply agreeing "to feed" a certain
portion of their military defenders, gradually became the serfs of these
protectors; how "commendation" to the Church, or to a lord, became a hard
necessity for the freeman; how each lord's and bishop's castle became a
robber's nest—how feudalism was imposed, in a word—and how the
crusades, by freeing the serfs who wore the cross, gave the first impulse to
popular emancipation. All this need not be retold in this place, our chief aim
being to follow the constructive genius of the masses in their mutual-aid
institutions.

At a time when the last vestiges of barbarian freedom seemed to
disappear, and Europe, fallen under the dominion of thousands of petty
rulers, was marching towards the constitution of such theocracies and

despotic States as had followed the barbarian stage during the previous
starts of civilization, or of barbarian monarchies, such as we see now in
Africa, life in Europe took another direction. It went on on lines similar to
those it had once taken in the cities of antique Greece. With a unanimity
which seems almost incomprehensible, and for a long time was not
understood by historians, the urban agglomerations, down to the smallest
burgs, began to shake off the yoke of their worldly and clerical lords. The
fortified village rose against the lord's castle, defied it first, attacked it next,
and finally destroyed it. The movement spread from spot to spot, involving
every town on the surface of Europe, and in less than a hundred years free
cities had been called into existence on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the
North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down to the fjords of
Scandinavia; at the feet of the Apennines, the Alps, the Black Forest, the
Grampians, and the Carpathians; in the plains of Russia, Hungary, France
and Spain. Everywhere the same revolt took place, with the same features,
passing through the same phases, leading to the same results. Wherever
men had found, or expected to find, some protection behind their town
walls, they instituted their "co-jurations," their "fraternities," their
"friendships," united in one common idea, and boldly marching towards a
new life of mutual support and liberty. And they succeeded so well that in
three or four hundred years they had changed the very face of Europe. They
had covered the country with beautiful sumptuous buildings, expressing the
genius of free unions of free men, unrivalled since for their beauty and
expressiveness; and they bequeathed to the following generations all the
arts, all the industries, of which our present civilization, with all its
achievements and promises for the future, is only a further development.
And when we now look to the forces which have produced these grand
results, we find them—not in the genius of individual heroes, not in the
mighty organization of huge States or the political capacities of their rulers,
but in the very same current of mutual aid and support which we saw at

work in the village community, and which was vivified and reinforced in
the Middle Ages by a new form of unions, inspired by the very same spirit
but shaped on a new model—the guilds.

It is well known by this time that feudalism did not imply a dissolution of
the village community. Although the lord had succeeded in imposing servile
labour upon the peasants, and had appropriated for himself such rights as
were formerly vested in the village community alone (taxes, mortmain,
duties on inheritances and marriages), the peasants had, nevertheless,
maintained the two fundamental rights of their communities: the common
possession of the land, and self-jurisdiction. In olden times, when a king
sent his vogt to a village, the peasants received him with flowers in one
hand and arms in the other, and asked him—which law he intended to
apply: the one he found in the village, or the one he brought with him? And,
in the first case, they handed him the flowers and accepted him; while in the
second case they fought him.(13) Now, they accepted the king's or the lord's
official whom they could not refuse; but they maintained the folkmote's
jurisdiction, and themselves nominated six, seven, or twelve judges, who
acted with the lord's judge, in the presence of the folkmote, as arbiters and
sentence-finders. In most cases the official had nothing left to him but to
confirm the sentence and to levy the customary fred. This precious right of
self-jurisdiction, which, at that time, meant self-administration and self-
legislation, had been maintained through all the struggles; and even the
lawyers by whom Karl the Great was surrounded could not abolish it; they
were bound to confirm it. At the same time, in all matters concerning the
community's domain, the folkmote retained its supremacy and (as shown by
Maurer) often claimed submission from the lord himself in land tenure
matters. No growth of feudalism could break this resistance; the village
community kept its ground; and when, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the
invasions of the Normans, the Arabs, and the Ugrians had demonstrated that
military scholae were of little value for protecting the land, a general

movement began all over Europe for fortifying the villages with stone walls
and citadels. Thousands of fortified centres were then built by the energies
of the village communities; and, once they had built their walls, once a
common interest had been created in this new sanctuary—the town walls—
they soon understood that they could henceforward resist the
encroachments of the inner enemies, the lords, as well as the invasions of
foreigners. A new life of freedom began to develop within the fortified
enclosures. The medieval city was born.(14)

No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the
popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the fortified
villages and market-places, representing so many "oases amidst the feudal
forest," began to free themselves from their lord's yoke, and slowly
elaborated the future city organization; but, unhappily, this is a period about
which historical information is especially scarce: we know the results, but
little has reached us about the means by which they were achieved. Under
the protection of their walls the cities' folkmotes—either quite independent,
or led by the chief noble or merchant families—conquered and maintained
the right of electing the military defensor and supreme judge of the town, or
at least of choosing between those who pretended to occupy this position. In
Italy the young communes were continually sending away their defensors
or domini, fighting those who refused to go. The same went on in the East.
In Bohemia, rich and poor alike (Bohemicae gentis magni et parvi, nobiles
et ignobiles) took part in the election;(15) while, the vyeches (folkmotes) of
the Russian cities regularly elected their dukes—always from the same
Rurik family—covenanted with them, and sent the knyaz away if he had
provoked discontent.(16) At the same time in most cities of Western and
Southern Europe, the tendency was to take for defensor a bishop whom the
city had elected itself; and so many bishops took the lead in protecting the
"immunities" of the towns and in defending their liberties, that numbers of
them were considered, after their death, as saints and special patrons of

different cities. St. Uthelred of Winchester, St. Ulrik of Augsburg, St.
Wolfgang of Ratisbon, St. Heribert of Cologne, St. Adalbert of Prague, and
so on, as well as many abbots and monks, became so many cities' saints for
having acted in defence of popular rights.(17) And under the new defensors,
whether laic or clerical, the citizens conquered full self-jurisdiction and
self-administration for their folkmotes.(18)

The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible
acts of devotion to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out
of the masses—by unknown heroes whose very names have not been
preserved by history. The wonderful movement of the God's peace (treuga
Dei) by which the popular masses endeavoured to put a limit to the endless
family feuds of the noble families, was born in the young towns, the
bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the nobles the peace they had
established within their town walls.(19) Already at that period, the
commercial cities of Italy, and especially Amalfi (which had its elected
consuls since 844, and frequently changed its doges in the tenth century)
(20) worked out the customary maritime and commercial law which later on
became a model for all Europe; Ravenna elaborated its craft organization,
and Milan, which had made its first revolution in 980, became a great centre
of commerce, its trades enjoying a full independence since the eleventh
century.(21) So also Brugge and Ghent; so also several cities of France in
which the Mahl or forum had become a quite independent institution.(22)
And already during that period began the work of artistic decoration of the
towns by works of architecture, which we still admire and which loudly
testify of the intellectual movement of the times. "The basilicae were then
renewed in almost all the universe," Raoul Glaber wrote in his chronicle,
and some of the finest monuments of medieval architecture date from that
period: the wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century,
Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa
in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the

Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism—
the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities
were still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed by
walls.

However, another element, besides the village-community principle, was
required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment the
unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which made their
force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the growing diversity of
occupations, crafts and arts, and with the growing commerce in distant
lands, some new form of union was required, and this necessary new
element was supplied by the guilds. Volumes and volumes have been
written about these unions which, under the name of guilds, brotherhoods,
friendships and druzhestva, minne, artels in Russia, esnaifs in Servia and
Turkey, amkari in Georgia, and so on, took such a formidable development
in medieval times and played such an important part in the emancipation of
the cities. But it took historians more than sixty years before the
universality of this institution and its true characters were understood. Only
now, when hundreds of guild statutes have been published and studied, and
their relationship to the Roman collegiae, and the earlier unions in Greece
and in India,(25) is known, can we maintain with full confidence that these
brotherhoods were but a further development of the same principles which
we saw at work in the gens and the village community.

Nothing illustrates better these medieval brother hoods than those
temporary guilds which were formed on board ships. When a ship of the
Hansa had accomplished her first half-day passage after having left the port,
the captain (Schiffer) gathered all crew and passengers on the deck, and
held the following language, as reported by a contemporary:—

"'As we are now at the mercy of God and the waves,' he said, 'each one
must be equal to each other. And as we are surrounded by storms, high
waves, pirates and other dangers, we must keep a strict order that we may
bring our voyage to a good end. That is why we shall pronounce the prayer
for a good wind and good success, and, according to marine law, we shall
name the occupiers of the judges' seats (Schoffenstellen).' Thereupon the
crew elected a Vogt and four scabini, to act as their judges. At the end of the
voyage the Vogt and the scabini abdicated their functions and addressed the
crew as follows:—'What has happened on board ship, we must pardon to
each other and consider as dead (todt und ab sein lassen). What we have
judged right, was for the sake of justice. This is why we beg you all, in the
name of honest justice, to forget all the animosity one may nourish against
another, and to swear on bread and salt that he will not think of it in a bad
spirit. If any one, however, considers himself wronged, he must appeal to
the land Vogt and ask justice from him before sunset.' On landing, the Stock
with the fredfines was handed over to the Vogt of the sea-port for
distribution among the poor."(26)

This simple narrative, perhaps better than anything else, depicts the spirit
of the medieval guilds. Like organizations came into existence wherever a
group of men—fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants, builders, or settled
craftsmen—came together for a common pursuit. Thus, there was on board
ship the naval authority of the captain; but, for the very success of the
common enterprise, all men on board, rich and poor, masters and crew,
captain and sailors, agreed to be equals in their mutual relations, to be
simply men, bound to aid each other and to settle their possible disputes
before judges elected by all of them. So also when a number of craftsmen—
masons, carpenters, stone-cutters, etc.—came together for building, say, a
cathedral, they all belonged to a city which had its political organization,
and each of them belonged moreover to his own craft; but they were united
besides by their common enterprise, which they knew better than any one

else, and they joined into a body united by closer, although temporary,
bonds; they founded the guild for the building of the cathedral.(27) We may
see the same till now in the Kabylian. cof:(28) the Kabyles have their
village community; but this union is not sufficient for all political,
commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of the
cof is constituted.

As to the social characters of the medieval guild, any guild-statute may
illustrate them. Taking, for instance, the skraa of some early Danish guild,
we read in it, first, a statement of the general brotherly feelings which must
reign in the guild; next come the regulations relative to self-jurisdiction in
cases of quarrels arising between two brothers, or a brother and a stranger;
and then, the social duties of the brethren are enumerated. If a brother's
house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's
voyage, all the brethren must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously
ill, two brethren must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if
he dies, the brethren must bury him—a great affair in those times of
pestilences—and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death
they must provide for his children, if necessary; very often the widow
becomes a sister to the guild.(29)

These two leading features appeared in every brotherhood formed for any
possible purpose. In each case the members treated each other as, and
named each other, brother and sister;(30) all were equals before the guild.
They owned some "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of worship, or
"stock") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning all feuds of
old; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation of never
quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should degenerate into a feud,
or into a law-suit before another court than the tribunal of the brothers
themselves. And if a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the
guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he

was unjustly accused of aggression, or really was the aggressor, they had to
support him, and to bring things to a peaceful end. So long as his was not a
secret aggression—in which case he would have been treated as an outlaw
—the brotherhood stood by him.(31) If the relatives of the wronged man
wanted to revenge the offence at once by a new aggression, the brother-
hood supplied him with a horse to run away, or with a boat, a pair of oars, a
knife and a steel for striking light; if he remained in town, twelve brothers
accompanied him to protect him; and in the meantime they arranged the
composition. They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his
statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin
and become a slave through not paying the due compensation: they all paid
it, just as the gens did in olden times. Only when a brother had broken the
faith towards his guild-brethren, or other people, he was excluded from the
brotherhood "with a Nothing's name" (tha scal han maeles af brodrescap
met nidings nafn).(32)

Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually
covered the whole of medieval life. In fact, we know of guilds among all
possible professions: guilds of serfs,(33) guilds of freemen, and guilds of
both serfs and freemen; guilds called into life for the special purpose of
hunting, fishing, or a trading expedition, and dissolved when the special
purpose had been achieved; and guilds lasting for centuries in a given craft
or trade. And, in proportion as life took an always greater variety of
pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in proportion. So we see not only
merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see
guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities,
guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing
the "mystery" of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation—
even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on
the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.(34) For
Russia we have positive evidence showing that the very "making of Russia"

was as much the work of its hunters', fishermen's, and traders' artels as of
the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country is
covered with artels.(35)

These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early
explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the
institution in its yearly festival. In reality, the day of the common meal was
always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of aldermen, of
discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often the day of judgment
of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,(36) or of renewed allegiance
to the guild. The common meal, like the festival at the old tribal folkmote—
the mahl or malum—or the Buryate aba, or the parish feast and the harvest
supper, was simply an affirmation of brotherhood. It symbolized the times
when everything was kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all
belonged to all; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal.
Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat
this day by the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several
explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon "frith guild" and the
so-called "social" or "religious" guilds—all were frith guilds in the sense
above mentioned,(37) and all were religious in the sense in which a village
community or a city placed under the protection of a special saint is social
and religious. If the institution of the guild has taken such an immense
extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it has lived thousands of years,
reappearing again and again when similar conditions called it into
existence, it is because it was much more than an eating association, or an
association for going to church on a certain day, or a burial club. It
answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature; and it embodied all
the attributes which the State appropriated later on for its bureaucracy and
police, and much more than that. It was an association for mutual support in
all circumstances and in all accidents of life, "by deed and advise," and it
was an organization for maintaining justice—with this difference from the

State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was
introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential
characteristic of State interference. Even when appearing before the guild
tribunal, the guild-brother answered before men who knew him well and
had stood by him before in their daily work, at the common meal, in the
performance of their brotherly duties: men who were his equals and
brethren indeed, not theorists of law nor defenders of some one else's
interests.(38)

It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union,
without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow,
and fortify. The difficulty was only to find such form as would permit to
federate the unions of the guilds without interfering with the unions of the
village communities, and to federate all these into one harmonious whole.
And when this form of combination had been found, and a series of
favourable circumstances permitted the cities to affirm their independence,
they did so with a unity of thought which can but excite our admiration,
even in our century of railways, telegraphs, and printing. Hundreds of
charters in which the cities inscribed their liberation have reached us, and
through all of them—notwithstanding the infinite variety of details, which
depended upon the more or less greater fulness of emancipation—the same
leading ideas run. The city organized itself as a federation of both small
village communities and guilds.

"All those who belong to the friendship of the town"—so runs a charter
given in 1188 to the burghesses of Aire by Philip, Count of Flanders
—"have promised and confirmed by faith and oath that they will aid each
other as brethren, in whatever is useful and honest. That if one commits
against another an offence in words or in deeds, the one who has suffered
there from will not take revenge, either himself or his people … he will
lodge a complaint and the offender will make good for his offence,

according to what will be pronounced by twelve elected judges acting as
arbiters, And if the offender or the offended, after having been warned
thrice, does not submit to the decision of the arbiters, he will be excluded
from the friendship as a wicked man and a perjuror.(39)

"Each one of the men of the commune will be faithful to his con-juror,
and will give him aid and advice, according to what justice will dictate
him"—the Amiens and Abbeville charters say. "All will aid each other,
according to their powers, within the boundaries of the Commune, and will
not suffer that any one takes anything from any one of them, or makes one
pay contributions"—do we read in the charters of Soissons, Compiegne,
Senlis, and many others of the same type.(40) And so on with countless
variations on the same theme.

"The Commune," Guilbert de Nogent wrote, "is an oath of mutual aid
(mutui adjutorii conjuratio) … A new and detestable word. Through it the
serfs (capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they can only be
condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the law; through it,
they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs always used to pay."(41)

The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all
parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest towns. And
if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the first to free
themselves, we can assign no centre from which the movement would have
spread. Very often a small burg in central Europe took the lead for its
region, and big agglomerations accepted the little town's charter as a model
for their own. Thus, the charter of a small town, Lorris, was adopted by
eighty-three towns in south-west France, and that of Beaumont became the
model for over five hundred towns and cities in Belgium and France.
Special deputies were dispatched by the cities to their neighbours to obtain
a copy from their charter, and the constitution was framed upon that model.

However, they did not simply copy each other: they framed their own
charters in accordance with the concessions they had obtained from their
lords; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of
the medieval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic architecture of
their churches and cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them—the
cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city—and the
same infinitely rich variety of detail.

Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self-jurisdiction meant self-
administration. But the commune was not simply an "autonomous" part of
the State—such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that time—
it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of federation and
alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed
with no others. The supreme political power could be vested entirely in a
democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose vyeche sent and
received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and sent away princes,
or went on without them for dozens of years; or it was vested in, or usurped
by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds
of Italian and middle European cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained
the same: the city was a State and—what was perhaps still more remarkable
—when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or
even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life
did not disappear: they depended but little upon what may be called the
political form of the State.

The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a medieval city
was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its existence, the
city hardly could be named a State as regards its interior organization,
because the middle ages knew no more of the present centralization of
functions than of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its
share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four quarters, or into

five to seven sections radiating from a centre, each quarter or section
roughly corresponding to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it,
but nevertheless containing inhabitants of different social positions and
occupations—nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each
section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In Venice,
each island was an independent political community. It had its own
organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and
administration, its own forum; and the nomination of a doge by the city
changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.(42) In Cologne, we
see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften (viciniae),
i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian period. Each of
them had its judge (Burrichter) and the usual twelve elected sentence-
finders (Schoffen), its Vogt, and its greve or commander of the local militia.
(43) The story of early London before the Conquest—Mr. Green says—is
that "of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the area
within the walls, each growing up with its own life and institutions, guilds,
sokes, religious houses and the like, and only slowly drawing together into
a municipal union."(44) And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities,
Novgorod and Pskov, both of which are relatively rich in local details, we
find the section (konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each of
which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also
merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate
community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of
crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen
(ulichanskiye starosty), its own seal and, in case of need, its own forum; its
own militia, as also its self-elected priests and its, own collective life and
collective enterprise.(45)

The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all
householders united into small territorial unions—the street, the parish, the
section—and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their

professions; the former being a produce of the village-community origin of
the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new
conditions.

To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim of
the medieval city; and labour, as we shall presently see when speaking of
the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But "production" did not absorb
the whole attention of the medieval economist. With his practical mind, he
understood that "consumption" must be guaranteed in order to obtain
production; and therefore, to provide for "the common first food and
lodging of poor and rich alike" (gemeine notdurft und gemach armer und
richer(46)) was the fundamental principle in each city. The purchase of food
supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood, etc.) before they had
reached the market, or altogether in especially favourable conditions from
which others would be excluded—the preempcio, in a word—was entirely
prohibited. Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for
every one's purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then
only could the retailer buy the remainder, and even then his profit should be
an "honest profit" only.(47) Moreover, when corn was bought by a baker
wholesale after the close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim
part of the corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if
he did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and reciprocally, every
baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for re-selling it. In
the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the town mill to be ground
in its proper turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the four
banal, or communal oven.(48) In short, if a scarcity visited the city, all had
to suffer from it more or less; but apart from the calamities, so long as the
free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is
unhappily too often the case in our own times.

However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities' life,
while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to buy all food
supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents recently published by
Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and fully support his conclusion to
the effect that the cargoes of subsistences "were purchased by certain civic
officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the
merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port
unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem—she
adds—to have been quite a common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and
Scotland."(49) Even in the sixteenth century we find that common
purchases of corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things of
this…. Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and
Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"—as the Mayor wrote in
1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is well known to have
been in the hands of the city; the "quarters," on receiving the cereals from
the board which administrated the imports, being bound to send to every
citizen's house the quantity allotted to him.(51) In France, the city of
Amiens used to purchase salt and to distribute it to all citizens at cost price;
(52) and even now one sees in many French towns the halles which
formerly were municipal depots for corn and salt.(53) In Russia it was a
regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov.

The whole matter relative to the communal purchases for the use of the
citizens, and the manner in which they used to be made, seems not to have
yet received proper attention from the historians of the period; but there are
here and there some very interesting facts which throw a new light upon it.
Thus there is, among Mr. Gross's documents, a Kilkenny ordinance of the
year 1367, from which we learn how the prices of the goods were
established. "The merchants and the sailors," Mr. Gross writes, "were to
state on oath the first cost of the goods and the expenses of transportation.
Then the mayor of the town and two discreet men were to name the price at

which the wares were to be sold." The same rule held good in Thurso for
merchandise coming "by sea or land." This way of "naming the price" so
well answers to the very conceptions of trade which were current in
medieval times that it must have been all but universal. To have the price
established by a third person was a very old custom; and for all interchange
within the city it certainly was a widely-spread habit to leave the
establishment of prices to "discreet men"—to a third party—and not to the
vendor or the buyer. But this order of things takes us still further back in the
history of trade—namely, to a time when trade in staple produce was
carried on by the whole city, and the merchants were only the
commissioners, the trustees, of the city for selling the goods which it
exported. A Waterford ordinance, published also by Mr. Gross, says "that all
manere of marchandis what so ever kynde thei be of … shal be bought by
the Maire and balives which bene commene biers [common buyers, for the
town] for the time being, and to distribute the same on freemen of the citie
(the propre goods of free citisains and inhabitants only excepted)." This
ordinance can hardly be explained otherwise than by admitting that all the
exterior trade of the town was carried on by its agents. Moreover, we have
direct evidence of such having been the case for Novgorod and Pskov. It
was the Sovereign Novgorod and the Sovereign Pskov who sent their
caravans of merchants to distant lands.

We know also that in nearly all medieval cities of Middle and Western
Europe, the craft guilds used to buy, as a body, all necessary raw produce,
and to sell the produce of their work through their officials, and it is hardly
possible that the same should not have been done for exterior trade—the
more so as it is well known that up to the thirteenth century, not only all
merchants of a given city were considered abroad as responsible in a body
for debts contracted by any one of them, but the whole city as well was
responsible for the debts of each one of its merchants. Only in the twelfth
and thirteenth century the towns on the Rhine entered into special treaties

abolishing this responsibility.(54) And finally we have the remarkable
Ipswich document published by Mr. Gross, from which document we learn
that the merchant guild of this town was constituted by all who had the
freedom of the city, and who wished to pay their contribution ("their
hanse") to the guild, the whole community discussing all together how
better to maintain the merchant guild, and giving it certain privileges. The
merchant guild of Ipswich thus appears rather as a body of trustees of the
town than as a common private guild.

In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the more we see
that it was not simply a political organization for the protection of certain
political liberties. It was an attempt at organizing, on a much grander scale
than in a village community, a close union for mutual aid and support, for
consumption and production, and for social life altogether, without
imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving full liberty of
expression to the creative genius of each separate group of individuals in
art, crafts, science, commerce, and political organization. How far this
attempt has been successful will be best seen when we have analyzed in the
next chapter the organization of labour in the medieval city and the relations
of the cities with the surrounding peasant population.

NOTES:

1. W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen
Stamme, p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable area in
middle Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to the ninth
century. Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.)
shares the same opinion.

2. Leo and Botta, Histoire d'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i., p. 37.

3. The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15 solidii and
of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this subject Lamprecht's
Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch,
1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian law, the sword, the spear, and the
iron armour of a warrior attained the value of at least twenty-five cows, or
two years of a freeman's labour. A cuirass alone was valued in the Salic law
(Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six bushels of wheat.

4. The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in their
personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but chiefly in the
above way. On the origin of property see Inama Sternegg's Die Ausbildung
der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, in Schmoller's Forschungen,
Bd. I., 1878; F. Dahn's Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen
Volker, Berlin, 1881; Maurer's Dorfverfassung; Guizot's Essais sur l'histoire
de France; Maine's Village Community; Botta's Histoire d'Italie; Seebohm,
Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc.

5. See Sir Henry Maine's International Law, London, 1888.

6. Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit
international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq. Among the Ossetes the arbiters from
three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation (M. Kovalevsky's Modern
Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii. 217, Russian).

7. It is permissible to think that this conception (related to the conception
of tanistry) played an important part in the life of the period; but research
has not yet been directed that way.

8. It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the year 1002
that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished for crimes went for
the city walls. The same destination was given to the Ungeld in German

cities. At Pskov the cathedral was the bank for the fines, and from this fund
money was taken for the wails.

9. Sohm, Frankische Rechts-und Gerichtsverfassung, p. 23; also Nitzsch,
Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 78.

10. See the excellent remarks on this subject in Augustin Thierry's Lettres
sur l'histoire de France. 7th Letter. The barbarian translations of parts of the
Bible are extremely instructive on this point.

11. Thirty-six times more than a noble, according to the Anglo-Saxon
law. In the code of Rothari the slaying of a king is, however, punished by
death; but (apart from Roman influence) this new disposition was
introduced (in 646) in the Lombardian law—as remarked by Leo and Botta
—to cover the king from blood revenge. The king being at that time the
executioner of his own sentences (as the tribe formerly was of its own
sentences), he had to be protected by a special disposition, the more so as
several Lombardian kings before Rothari had been slain in succession (Leo
and Botta, l.c., i. 66-90).

12. Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte, Bd. I. "Die Germanen der Urzeit,"
p. 133.

13. Dr. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker,
Berlin, 1881, Bd. I. 96.

14. If I thus follow the views long since advocated by Maurer
(Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland, Erlangen, 1869), it is
because he has fully proved the uninterrupted evolution from the village
community to the mediaeval city, and that his views alone can explain the
universality of the communal movement. Savigny and Eichhorn and their
followers have certainly proved that the traditions of the Roman municipia

had never totally disappeared. But they took no account of the village
community period which the barbarians lived through before they had any
cities. The fact is, that whenever mankind made a new start in civilization,
in Greece, Rome, or middle Europe, it passed through the same stages—the
tribe, the village community, the free city, the state—each one naturally
evolving out of the preceding stage. Of course, the experience of each
preceding civilization was never lost. Greece (itself influenced by Eastern
civilizations) influenced Rome, and Rome influenced our civilization; but
each of them begin from the same beginning—the tribe. And just as we
cannot say that our states are continuations of the Roman state, so also can
we not say that the mediaeval cities of Europe (including Scandinavia and
Russia) were a continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation
of the barbarian village community, influenced to a certain extent by the
traditions of the Roman towns.

15. M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia
(Ilchester Lectures, London, 1891, Lecture 4).

16. A considerable amount of research had to be done before this
character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly established by the
works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian History), Kostomaroff (The
Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia), and especially Professor Sergievich
(The Vyeche and the Prince). The English reader may find some
information about this period in the just-named work of M. Kovalevsky, in
Rambaud's History of Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article
"Russia" of the last edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia.

17. Ferrari, Histoire des revolutions d'Italie, i. 257; Kallsen, Die
deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891).

18. See the excellent remarks of Mr. G.L. Gomme as regards the
folkmote of London (The Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, p.

76). It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities the folkmote never
attained the independence which it assumed elsewhere. It is even certain
that Moscow and Paris were chosen by the kings and the Church as the
cradles of the future royal authority in the State, because they did not
possess the tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all
matters.

19. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises; also Kluckohn, Geschichte
des Gottesfrieden, 1857. L. Semichon (La paix et la treve de Dieu, 2 vols.,
Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the communal movement as issued from
that institution. In reality, the treuga Dei, like the league started under Louis
le Gros for the defence against both the robberies of the nobles and the
Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The only historian
who mentions this last league—that is, Vitalis—describes it as a "popular
community" ("Considerations sur l'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug.
Thierry's OEuvres, Paris, 1868, p. 191 and note).

20. Ferrari, i. 152, 263, etc.

21. Perrens, Histoire de Florence, i. 188; Ferrari, l.c., i. 283.

22. Aug. Thierry, Essai sur l'histoire du Tiers Etat, Paris, 1875, p. 414,
note.

23. F. Rocquain, "La Renaissance au XIIe siecle," in Etudes sur l'histoire
de France, Paris, 1875, pp. 55-117.

24. N. Kostomaroff, "The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in his
Monographies and Researches (Russian).

25. Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds will be
found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J. M. Lambert, Hull,

1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S. Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi
("Organization of Transcaucasian Amkari"), in Memoirs of the Caucasian
Geographical Society, xiv. 2, 1891.

26. J.D. Wunderer's "Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter Archiv, ii.
245; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 355.

27. Dr. Leonard Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, Historische Einleitung, Koln,
1871, pp. 46, 50.

28. See previous chapter.

29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang,
Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild.

30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's
introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the
Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the
following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the comyne assent of all the
bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde."

31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder.
Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying in a quarrel was
not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and to
repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still exist in
modern criminal law, especially in Russia.

32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost
sight of by later explorers.

33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were
therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the
ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter.

34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which
became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those times is
impressed with so much individuality that we distinguish, even now,
between the different schools of Padua, Bassano, Treviso, Verona, and so
on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this was due—J.
Paul Richter remarks—to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to
a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but leading a
separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is that of Verona, dating
from 1303, but evidently copied from some much older statute. "Fraternal
assistance in necessity of whatever kind," "hospitality towards strangers,
when passing through the town, as thus information may be obtained about
matters which one may like to learn," and "obligation of offering comfort in
case of debility" are among the obligations of the members (Nineteenth
Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug. 1892).

35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article "Russia" of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84.

36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by Toulmin
Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it appears
that the "generall and principall day" was the "eleccioun day;" or, Ch. M.
Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London,
1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jomsviking
saga, mentioned in Pappenheim's Altdanische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885,
p. 67. It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be prosecuted,
many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day only, or their pious
duties, and only alluded to the judicial function of the guild in vague words;
but this function did not disappear till a very much later time. The question,
"Who will be my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has
appropriated for its bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of
primordial importance in medieval times, the more so as self-jurisdiction

meant self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of
the Saxon and Danish "guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin convivii
must also have contributed to the above confusion.

37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green and Mrs.
Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp. 229-230.

38. None

39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562; quoted by
Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de France, p. 196, ed. 12mo.

40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46.

41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p. 14.

42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo and
Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i 500.

43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistadte, 1854,
Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229; also the
documents published by Ennen and Eckert.

44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453.

45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii.

46. W. Gramich, Verfassungs und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt
Wurzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34.

47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could only be
sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being entitled to no
more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold wholesale,
but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher,

or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London
(Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p. 161), and, in fact, everywhere.

48. See Fagniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la classe industrielle a Paris au
XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly need be added
that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled after careful
experiments as to the quantity of bread and beer which could be obtained
from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives contain the minutes of
such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London
(Ochenkowski, England's wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879,
p. 165).

49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His documents
prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148-150), Waterford in
Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr.
Gross's texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution, not
only among the merchant burgesses, but "upon all citsains and
commynalte" (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth
century runs, to "make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of
the said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same, according
to their necessitys and ability."

50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M.
Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix
which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546.

51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de Dante,
Paris, 1865, p. 44.

52. A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siecle dans le Nord de la
France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to
Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, "the inhabitants of Antwerp being

always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens"
(ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts).

53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880.

54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts.

CHAPTER VI

MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued)

Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The craftguilds: State-
attributes in each of them. Attitude of the city towards the peasants;
attempts to free them. The lords. Results achieved by the medieval city: in
arts, in learning. Causes of decay.

The medieval cities were not organized upon some preconceived plan in
obedience to the will of an outside legislator. Each of them was a natural
growth in the full sense of the word—an always varying result of struggle
between various forces which adjusted and re-adjusted themselves in
conformity with their relative energies, the chances of their conflicts, and
the support they found in their surroundings. Therefore, there are not two
cities whose inner organization and destinies would have been identical.
Each one, taken separately, varies from century to century. And yet, when
we cast a broad glance upon all the cities of Europe, the local and national
unlikenesses disappear, and we are struck to find among all of them a
wonderful resemblance, although each has developed for itself,
independently from the others, and in different conditions. A small town in
the north of Scotland, with its population of coarse labourers and fishermen;
a rich city of Flanders, with its world-wide commerce, luxury, love of
amusement and animated life; an Italian city enriched by its intercourse

with the East, and breeding within its walls a refined artistic taste and
civilization; and a poor, chiefly agricultural, city in the marsh and lake
district of Russia, seem to have little in common. And nevertheless, the
leading lines of their organization, and the spirit which animates them, are
imbued with a strong family likeness. Everywhere we see the same
federations of small communities and guilds, the same "sub-towns" round
the mother city, the same folkmote, and the same insigns of its
independence. The defensor of the city, under different names and in
different accoutrements, represents the same authority and interests; food
supplies, labour and commerce, are organized on closely similar lines; inner
and outer struggles are fought with like ambitions; nay, the very formulae
used in the struggles, as also in the annals, the ordinances, and the rolls, are
identical; and the architectural monuments, whether Gothic, Roman, or
Byzantine in style, express the same aspirations and the same ideals; they
are conceived and built in the same way. Many dissemblances are mere
differences of age, and those disparities between sister cities which are real
are repeated in different parts of Europe. The unity of the leading idea and
the identity of origin make up for differences of climate, geographical
situation, wealth, language and religion. This is why we can speak of the
medieval city as of a well-defined phase of civilization; and while every
research insisting upon local and individual differences is most welcome,
we may still indicate the chief lines of development which are common to
all cities.(1)

There is no doubt that the protection which used to be accorded to the
market-place from the earliest barbarian times has played an important,
though not an exclusive, part in the emancipation of the medieval city. The
early barbarians knew no trade within their village communities; they
traded with strangers only, at certain definite spots, on certain determined
days. And, in order that the stranger might come to the barter-place without
risk of being slain for some feud which might be running between two kins,

the market was always placed under the special protection of all kins. It was
inviolable, like the place of worship under the shadow of which it was held.
With the Kabyles it is still annaya, like the footpath along which women
carry water from the well; neither must be trodden upon in arms, even
during inter-tribal wars. In medieval times the market universally enjoyed
the same protection.(2) No feud could be prosecuted on the place whereto
people came to trade, nor within a certain radius from it; and if a quarrel
arose in the motley crowd of buyers and sellers, it had to be brought before
those under whose protection the market stood—the community's tribunal,
or the bishop's, the lord's, or the king's judge. A stranger who came to trade
was a guest, and he went on under this very name. Even the lord who had
no scruples about robbing a merchant on the high road, respected the
Weichbild, that is, the pole which stood in the market-place and bore either
the king's arms, or a glove, or the image of the local saint, or simply a cross,
according to whether the market was under the protection of the king, the
lord, the local church, or the folkmote—the vyeche.(3)

It is easy to understand how the self-jurisdiction of the city could develop
out of the special jurisdiction in the market-place, when this last right was
conceded, willingly or not, to the city itself. And such an origin of the city's
liberties, which can be traced in very many cases, necessarily laid a special
stamp upon their subsequent development. It gave a predominance to the
trading part of the community. The burghers who possessed a house in the
city at the time being, and were co-owners in the town-lands, constituted
very often a merchant guild which held in its hands the city's trade; and
although at the outset every burgher, rich and poor, could make part of the
merchant guild, and the trade itself seems to have been carried on for the
entire city by its trustees, the guild gradually became a sort of privileged
body. It jealously prevented the outsiders who soon began to flock into the
free cities from entering the guild, and kept the advantages resulting from
trade for the few "families" which had been burghers at the time of the

emancipation. There evidently was a danger of a merchant oligarchy being
thus constituted. But already in the tenth, and still more during the two next
centuries, the chief crafts, also organized in guilds, were powerful enough
to check the oligarchic tendencies of the merchants.

The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common
buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual
workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old
craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to
manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city.(4)
In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore,
on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village
community. Manual labour in a "mystery" was considered as a pious duty
towards the citizens: a public function (Amt), as honourable as any other.
An idea of "justice" to the community, of "right" towards both producer and
consumer, which would seem so extravagant now, penetrated production
and exchange. The tanner's, the cooper's, or the shoemaker's work must be
"just," fair, they wrote in those times. Wood, leather or thread which are
used by the artisan must be "right"; bread must be baked "in justice," and so
on. Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem affected
and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because the medieval
artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw his goods into an
unknown market. He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men
who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the
price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication
or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the guild, not the separate producer,
offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered
to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported,
and assumed responsibility for their quality. With such an organization, it
was the ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and
technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole

community, because, an ordinance says, "they would destroy public
confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the
control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the degraded
condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was living.

A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and
worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their
very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill,
not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after
having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice
became a master himself. And only much later, in the sixteenth century,
after the royal power had destroyed the city and the craft organization, was
it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth. But
this was also the time of a general decay in medieval industries and art.

There was not much room for hired work in the early flourishing periods
of the medieval cities, still less for individual hirelings. The work of the
weavers, the archers, the smiths, the bakers, and so on, was performed for
the craft and the city; and when craftsmen were hired in the building trades,
they worked as temporary corporations (as they still do in the Russian
artels), whose work was paid en bloc. Work for a master began to multiply
only later on; but even in this case the worker was paid better than he is
paid now, even in this country, and very much better than he used to be paid
all over Europe in the first half of this century. Thorold Rogers has
familiarized English readers with this idea; but the same is true for the
Continent as well, as is shown by the researches of Falke and Schonberg,
and by many occasional indications. Even in the fifteenth century a mason,
a carpenter, or a smith worker would be paid at Amiens four sols a day,
which corresponded to forty-eight pounds of bread, or to the eighth part of a
small ox (bouvard). In Saxony, the salary of the Geselle in the building
trade was such that, to put it in Falke's words, he could buy with his six

days' wages three sheep and one pair of shoes.(6) The donations of workers
(Geselle) to cathedrals also bear testimony of their relative well-being, to
say nothing of the glorious donations of certain craft guilds nor of what they
used to spend in festivities and pageants.(7) In fact, the more we learn about
the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labour
enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life
stood at its highest.

More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were
already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described now as
Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. We are laughed at when we
say that work must be pleasant, but—"every one must be pleased with his
work," a medieval Kuttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall, while
doing nothing (mit nichts thun), appropriate for himself what others have
produced by application and work, because laws must be a shield for
application and work."(8) And amidst all present talk about an eight hours'
day, it may be well to remember an ordinance of Ferdinand the First relative
to the Imperial coal mines, which settled the miner's day at eight hours, "as
it used to be of old" (wie vor Alters herkommen), and work on Saturday
afternoon was prohibited. Longer hours were very rare, we are told by
Janssen, while shorter hours were of common occurrence. In this country, in
the fifteenth century, Rogers says, "the workmen worked only forty-eight
hours a week."(9) The Saturday half-holiday, too, which we consider as a
modern conquest, was in reality an old medieval institution; it was bathing-
time for a great part of the community, while Wednesday afternoon was
bathing-time for the Geselle.(10) And although school meals did not exist—
probably because no children went hungry to school—a distribution of
bath-money to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it
was habitual in several places. As to Labour Congresses, they also were a
regular Feature of the middles ages. In some parts of Germany craftsmen of
the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come together

every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the years of
apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and in 1572, the
Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts to come together
at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions, so long as they were
not contrary to the cities' rolls, relative to the quality of goods. Such Labour
Congresses, partly international like the Hansa itself, are known to have
been held by bakers, founders, smiths, tanners, sword-makers and cask-
makers.(11)

The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the
craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for that
purpose. But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities lived their free
life, no complaints were heard about the supervision; while, after the State
had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their
independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became
simply countless.(12) On the other hand, the immensity of progress realized
in all arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system
was no hindrance to individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval
guild, like the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of
citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all
men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of
manufactured goods, and artisans—masters, "compaynes," and apprentices.
For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long
as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought
before the guild of the guilds—the city. But there was in it something more
than that. It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own
general assemblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence,
its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities: it had, in
a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the
vital functions. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a
separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns,

lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-
elected commanders. It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the
federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss
Confederation. So that, to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of
all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of
secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge
with a French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a
Russian town placed under Catherine the Second's municipal law. Both
have elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft corporations; but the
difference is—all the difference that exists between Florence and Fontenay-
les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a modern
mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prefet's clerk.

The medieval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence;
and, later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of
several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life
underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to
conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses,
organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a
growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new
era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in
blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris
in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such cases the city's liberties rapidly
fell into decay, and the city was gradually subdued by the central authority.
But the majority of the towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out
of the turmoil with a new life and vigour.(14) A new period of
rejuvenescence was their reward. New life was infused, and it found its
expression in splendid architectural monuments, in a new period of
prosperity, in a sudden progress of technics and invention, and in a new
intellectual movement leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation.

The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer
liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of burghers
had developed during those fierce contests; true, that love and worship of
the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that the grand things
achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct outcome of that love.
But the sacrifices which the communes had to sustain in the battle for
freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left deep traces of division on their
inner life as well. Very few cities had succeeded, under a concurrence of
favourable circumstances, in obtaining liberty at one stroke, and these few
mostly lost it equally easily; while the great number had to fight fifty or a
hundred years in succession, often more, before their rights to free life had
been recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm
basis—the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the stepping-
stones to freedom.(15) In reality, the mediaeval city was a fortified oasis
amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it had to make room
for itself by the force of its arms. In consequence of the causes briefly
alluded to in the preceding chapter, each village community had gradually
fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical lord. His house had grown to
be a castle, and his brothers-in-arms were now the scum of adventurers,
always ready to plunder the peasants. In addition to three days a week
which the peasants had to work for the lord, they had also to bear all sorts
of exactions for the right to sow and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to
marry, or to die. And, worst of all, they were continually plundered by the
armed robbers of some neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as
their master's kin, and to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops,
the revenge for a feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow,
every field, every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the
land was under some lord.

The hatred of the burghers towards the feudal barons has found a most
characteristic expression in the wording of the different charters which they

compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter granted to
Speier in 1111, that he frees the burghers from "the horrible and execrable
law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into deepest
poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze, welches
gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of Bayonne,
written about 1273, contains such passages as these: "The people is anterior
to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than all others, who, desirous
of peace, has made the lords for bridling and knocking down the powerful
ones," and so on (Giry, Etablissements de Rouen, i. 117, Quoted by
Luchaire, p. 24). A charter submitted for King Robert's signature is equally
characteristic. He is made to say in it: "I shall rob no oxen nor other
animals. I shall seize no merchants, nor take their moneys, nor impose
ransom. From Lady Day to the All Saints' Day I shall seize no horse, nor
mare, nor foals, in the meadows. I shall not burn the mills, nor rob the flour
… I shall offer no protection to thieves," etc. (Pfister has published that
document, reproduced by Luchaire). The charter "granted" by the Besancon
Archbishop Hugues, in which he has been compelled to enumerate all the
mischiefs due to his mortmain rights, is equally characteristic.(16) And so
on.

Freedom could not be maintained in such surroundings, and the cities
were compelled to carry on the war outside their walls. The burghers sent
out emissaries to lead revolt in the villages; they received villages into their
corporations, and they waged direct war against the nobles. It Italy, where
the land was thickly sprinkled with feudal castles, the war assumed heroic
proportions, and was fought with a stern acrimony on both sides. Florence
sustained for seventy-seven years a succession of bloody wars, in order to
free its contado from the nobles; but when the conquest had been
accomplished (in 1181) all had to begin anew. The nobles rallied; they
constituted their own leagues in opposition to the leagues of the towns, and,
receiving fresh support from either the Emperor or the Pope, they made the

war last for another 130 years. The same took place in Rome, in Lombardy,
all over Italy.

Prodigies of valour, audacity, and tenaciousness were displayed by the
citizens in these wars. But the bows and the hatchets of the arts and crafts
had not always the upper hand in their encounters with the armour-clad
knights, and many castles withstood the ingenious siege-machinery and the
perseverance of the citizens. Some cities, like Florence, Bologna, and many
towns in France, Germany, and Bohemia, succeeded in emancipating the
surrounding villages, and they were rewarded for their efforts by an
extraordinary prosperity and tranquillity. But even here, and still more in
the less strong or less impulsive towns, the merchants and artisans,
exhausted by war, and misunderstanding their own interests, bargained over
the peasants' heads. They compelled the lord to swear allegiance to the city;
his country castle was dismantled, and he agreed to build a house and to
reside in the city, of which he became a co-burgher (com-bourgeois, con-
cittadino); but he maintained in return most of his rights upon the peasants,
who only won a partial relief from their burdens. The burgher could not
understand that equal rights of citizenship might be granted to the peasant
upon whose food supplies he had to rely, and a deep rent was traced
between town and village. In some cases the peasants simply changed
owners, the city buying out the barons' rights and selling them in shares to
her own citizens.(17) Serfdom was maintained, and only much later on,
towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was the craft revolution which
undertook to put an end to it, and abolished personal servitude, but
dispossessed at the same time the serfs of the land.(18) It hardly need be
added that the fatal results of such policy were soon felt by the cities
themselves; the country became the city's enemy.

The war against the castles had another bad effect. It involved the cities
in a long succession of mutual wars, which have given origin to the theory,

till lately in vogue, namely, that the towns lost their independence through
their own jealousies and mutual fights. The imperialist historians have
especially supported this theory, which, however, is very much undermined
now by modern research. It is certain that in Italy cities fought each other
with a stubborn animosity, but nowhere else did such contests attain the
same proportions; and in Italy itself the city wars, especially those of the
earlier period, had their special causes. They were (as was already shown by
Sismondi and Ferrari) a mere continuation of the war against the castles—
the free municipal and federative principle unavoidably entering into a
fierce contest with feudalism, imperialism, and papacy. Many towns which
had but partially shaken off the yoke of the bishop, the lord, or the Emperor,
were simply driven against the free cities by the nobles, the Emperor, and
Church, whose policy was to divide the cities and to arm them against each
other. These special circumstances (partly reflected on to Germany also)
explain why the Italian towns, some of which sought support with the
Emperor to combat the Pope, while the others sought support from the
Church to resist the Emperor, were soon divided into a Gibelin and a Guelf
camp, and why the same division appeared in each separate city.(19)

The immense economical progress realized by most italian cities just at
the time when these wars were hottest,(20) and the alliances so easily
concluded between towns, still better characterize those struggles and
further undermine the above theory. Already in the years 1130-1150
powerful leagues came into existence; and a few years later, when Frederick
Barbarossa invaded Italy and, supported by the nobles and some retardatory
cities, marched against Milan, popular enthusiasm was roused in many
towns by popular preachers. Crema, Piacenza, Brescia, Tortona, etc., went
to the rescue; the banners of the guilds of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and
Trevisa floated side by side in the cities' camp against the banners of the
Emperor and the nobles. Next year the Lombardian League came into
existence, and sixty years later we see it reinforced by many other cities,

and forming a lasting organization which had half of its federal war-chest in
Genoa and the other half in Venice.(21) In Tuscany, Florence headed
another powerful league, to which Lucca, Bologna, Pistoia, etc., belonged,
and which played an important part in crushing down the nobles in middle
Italy, while smaller leagues were of common occurrence. It is thus certain
that although petty jealousies undoubtedly existed, and discord could be
easily sown, they did not prevent the towns from uniting together for the
common defence of liberty. Only later on, when separate cities became little
States, wars broke out between them, as always must be the case when
States struggle for supremacy or colonies.

Similar leagues were formed in Germany for the same purpose. When,
under the successors of Conrad, the land was the prey of interminable feuds
between the nobles, the Westphalian towns concluded a league against the
knights, one of the clauses of which was never to lend money to a knight
who would continue to conceal stolen goods.(22) When "the knights and
the nobles lived on plunder, and murdered whom they chose to murder," as
the Wormser Zorn complains, the cities on the Rhine (Mainz, Cologne,
Speier, Strasburg, and Basel) took the initiative of a league which soon
numbered sixty allied towns, repressed the robbers, and maintained peace.
Later on, the league of the towns of Suabia, divided into three "peace
districts" (Augsburg, Constance, and Ulm), had the same purpose. And even
when such leagues were broken,(23) they lived long enough to show that
while the supposed peacemakers—the kings, the emperors, and the Church-
fomented discord, and were themselves helpless against the robber knights,
it was from the cities that the impulse came for re-establishing peace and
union. The cities—not the emperors—were the real makers of the national
unity.(24)

Similar federations were organized for the same purpose among small
villages, and now that attention has been drawn to this subject by Luchaire

we may expect soon to learn much more about them. Villages joined into
small federations in the contado of Florence, so also in the dependencies of
Novgorod and Pskov. As to France, there is positive evidence of a
federation of seventeen peasant villages which has existed in the Laonnais
for nearly a hundred years (till 1256), and has fought hard for its
independence. Three more peasant republics, which had sworn charters
similar to those of Laon and Soissons, existed in the neighbourhood of
Laon, and, their territories being contiguous, they supported each other in
their liberation wars. Altogether, Luchaire is of the opinion that many such
federations must have come into existence in France in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, but that documents relative to them are mostly lost. Of
course, being unprotected by walls, they could easily be crushed down by
the kings and the lords; but in certain favourable circumstances, when they
found support in a league of towns and protection in their mountains, such
peasant republics became independent units of the Swiss Confederation.
(25)

As to unions between cities for peaceful purposes, they were of quite
common occurrence. The intercourse which had been established during the
period of liberation was not interrupted afterwards. Sometimes, when the
scabini of a German town, having to pronounce judgment in a new or
complicated case, declared that they knew not the sentence (des Urtheiles
nicht weise zu sein), they sent delegates to another city to get the sentence.
The same happened also in France;(26) while Forli and Ravenna are known
to have mutually naturalized their citizens and granted them full rights in
both cities. To submit a contest arisen between two towns, or within a city,
to another commune which was invited to act as arbiter, was also in the
spirit of the times.(27) As to commercial treaties between cities, they were
quite habitual.(28) Unions for regulating the production and the sizes of
casks which were used for the commerce in wine, "herring unions," and so
on, were mere precursors of the great commercial federations of the

Flemish Hansa, and, later on, of the great North German Hansa, the history
of which alone might contribute pages and pages to illustrate the federation
spirit which permeated men at that time. It hardly need be added, that
through the Hanseatic unions the medieval cities have contributed more to
the development of international intercourse, navigation, and maritime
discovery than all the States of the first seventeen centuries of our era.

In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among
men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and
federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very essence
of life and thought during that period. The first five of the second decade of
centuries of our era may thus be described as an immense attempt at
securing mutual aid and support on a grand scale, by means of the
principles of federation and association carried on through all
manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees. This attempt was
attended with success to a very great extent. It united men formerly divided;
it secured them a very great deal of freedom, and it tenfolded their forces.
At a time when particularism was bred by so many agencies, and the causes
of discord and jealousy might have been so numerous, it is gratifying to see
that cities scattered over a wide continent had so much in common, and
were so ready to confederate for the prosecution of so many common aims.
They succumbed in the long run before powerful enemies; not having
understood the mutual-aid principle widely enough, they themselves
committed fatal faults; but they did not perish through their own jealousies,
and their errors were not a want of federation spirit among themselves.

The results of that new move which mankind made in the medieval city
were immense. At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of
Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned but with low clumsy
churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the arts,
mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their infancy;

learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and fifty years
later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with
rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which were embellished by
towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals,
conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers
to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination
which we now vainly strive to attain. The crafts and arts had risen to a
degree of perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in
many directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior finish
of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of
the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern
Mediterranean; one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over
large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had
grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of
natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all
the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were
the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years.
And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free cities can
only be understood when we compare the seventeenth century with the
fourteenth or the thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly characterized
Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into
an abject state, the cities were depopulated, labour was brought into slavery,
art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying.(29)

If the medieval cities had bequeathed to us no written documents to
testify of their splendour, and left nothing behind but the monuments of
building art which we see now all over Europe, from Scotland to Italy, and
from Gerona in Spain to Breslau in Slavonian territory, we might yet
conclude that the times of independent city life were times of the greatest
development of human intellect during the Christian era down to the end of
the eighteenth century. On looking, for instance, at a medieval picture

representing Nuremberg with its scores of towers and lofty spires, each of
which bore the stamp of free creative art, we can hardly conceive that three
hundred years before the town was but a collection of miserable hovels.
And our admiration grows when we go into the details of the architecture
and decorations of each of the countless churches, bell-towers, gates, and
communal houses which are scattered all over Europe as far east as
Bohemia and the now dead towns of Polish Galicia. Not only Italy, that
mother of art, but all Europe is full of such monuments. The very fact that
of all arts architecture—a social art above all—had attained the highest
development, is significant in itself. To be what it was, it must have
originated from an eminently social life.

Medieval architecture attained its grandeur—not only because it was a
natural development of handicraft; not only because each building, each
architectural decoration, had been devised by men who knew through the
experience of their own hands what artistic effects can be obtained from
stone, iron, bronze, or even from simple logs and mortar; not only because,
each monument was a result of collective experience, accumulated in each
"mystery" or craft(30)—it was grand because it was born out of a grand
idea. Like Greek art, it sprang out of a conception of brotherhood and unity
fostered by the city. It had an audacity which could only be won by
audacious struggles and victories; it had that expression of vigour, because
vigour permeated all the life of the city. A cathedral or a communal house
symbolized the grandeur of an organism of which every mason and stone-
cutter was the builder, and a medieval building appears—not as a solitary
effort to which thousands of slaves would have contributed the share
assigned them by one man's imagination; all the city contributed to it. The
lofty bell-tower rose upon a structure, grand in itself, in which the life of the
city was throbbing—not upon a meaningless scaffold like the Paris iron
tower, not as a sham structure in stone intended to conceal the ugliness of
an iron frame, as has been done in the Tower Bridge. Like the Acropolis of

Athens, the cathedral of a medieval city was intended to glorify the
grandeur of the victorious city, to symbolize the union of its crafts, to
express the glory of each citizen in a city of his own creation. After having
achieved its craft revolution, the city often began a new cathedral in order
to express the new, wider, and broader union which had been called into
life.

The means at hand for these grand undertakings were disproportionately
small. Cologne Cathedral was begun with a yearly outlay of but 500 marks;
a gift of 100 marks was inscribed as a grand donation;(31) and even when
the work approached completion, and gifts poured in in proportion, the
yearly outlay in money stood at about 5,000 marks, and never exceeded
14,000. The cathedral of Basel was built with equally small means. But
each corporation contributed its part of stone, work, and decorative genius
to their common monument. Each guild expressed in it its political
conceptions, telling in stone or in bronze the history of the city, glorifying
the principles of "Liberty, equality, and fraternity,"(32) praising the city's
allies, and sending to eternal fire its enemies. And each guild bestowed its
love upon the communal monument by richly decorating it with stained
windows, paintings, "gates, worthy to be the gates of Paradise," as Michel
Angelo said, or stone decorations of each minutest corner of the building.
(33) Small cities, even small parishes,(34) vied with the big agglomerations
in this work, and the cathedrals of Laon and St. Ouen hardly stand behind
that of Rheims, or the Communal House of Bremen, or the folkmote's bell-
tower of Breslau. "No works must be begun by the commune but such as
are conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of
the hearts of all citizens, united in one common will"—such were the words
of the Council of Florence; and this spirit appears in all communal works of
common utility, such as the canals, terraces, vineyards, and fruit gardens
around Florence, or the irrigation canals which intersected the plains of

Lombardy, or the port and aqueduct of Genoa, or, in fact, any works of the
kind which were achieved by almost every city.(35)

All arts had progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of
our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that
time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine woollen
cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to 100,000 panni of woollen
stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden florins.(36) The chiselling of
precious metals, the art of casting, the fine forging of iron, were creations of
the mediaeval "mysteries" which had succeeded in attaining in their own
domains all that could be made by the hand, without the use of a powerful
prime motor. By the hand and by invention, because, to use Whewell's
words:

"Parchment and paper, printing and engraving, improved glass and steel,
gunpowder, clocks, telescopes, the mariner's compass, the reformed
calendar, the decimal notation; algebra, trigonometry, chemistry,
counterpoint (an invention equivalent to a new creation of music); these are
all possessions which we inherit from that which has so disparagingly been
termed the Stationary Period" (History of Inductive Sciences, i. 252).

True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these discoveries, as
Whewell said; but medieval science had done something more than the
actual discovery of new principles. It had prepared the discovery of all the
new principles which we know at the present time in mechanical sciences:
it had accustomed the explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It
was inductive science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the
importance and the powers of induction; and it laid the foundations of both
mechanics and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Copernicus
were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a Michael Scot, as the

steam engine was a direct product of the researches carried on in the Italian
universities on the weight of the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and
technical learning which characterized Nuremberg.

But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science
and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the cathedrals in the
domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the poem of Dante in the
domain of thought, to give at once the measure of what the medieval city
created during the four centuries it lived?

The medieval cities have undoubtedly rendered an immense service to
European civilization. They have prevented it from being drifted into the
theocracies and despotical states of old; they have endowed it with the
variety, the self-reliance, the force of initiative, and the immense intellectual
and material energies it now possesses, which are the best pledge for its
being able to resist any new invasion of the East. But why did these centres
of civilization, which attempted to answer to deeply-seated needs of human
nature, and were so full of life, not live further on? Why were they seized
with senile debility in the sixteenth century? and, after having repulsed so
many assaults from without, and only borrowed new vigour from their
interior struggles, why did they finally succumb to both?

Various causes contributed to this effect, some of them having their roots
in the remote past, while others originated in the mistakes committed by the
cities themselves. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, mighty States,
reconstructed on the old Roman pattern, were already coming into
existence. In each country and each region some feudal lord, more cunning,
more given to hoarding, and often less scrupulous than his neighbours, had
succeeded in appropriating to himself richer personal domains, more
peasants on his lands, more knights in his following, more treasures in his
chest. He had chosen for his seat a group of happily-situated villages, not

yet trained into free municipal life—Paris, Madrid, or Moscow—and with
the labour of his serfs he had made of them royal fortified cities, whereto he
attracted war companions by a free distribution of villages, and merchants
by the protection he offered to trade. The germ of a future State, which
began gradually to absorb other similar centres, was thus laid. Lawyers,
versed in the study of Roman law, flocked into such centres; a tenacious
and ambitious race of men issued from among the burgesses, who equally
hated the naughtiness of the lords and what they called the lawlessness of
the peasants. The very forms of the village community, unknown to their
code, the very principles of federalism were repulsive to them as
"barbarian" inheritances. Caesarism, supported by the fiction of popular
consent and by the force of arms, was their ideal, and they worked hard for
those who promised to realize it.(37)

The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally,
worked in the same direction. The attempt at constituting the theocratic
Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and
ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon
for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors of
Constantinople. The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her sanctity,
she crowned them as God's representatives on earth, she brought to their
service the learning and the statesmanship of her ministers, her blessings
and maledictions, her riches, and the sympathies she had retained among
the poor. The peasants, whom the cities had failed or refused to free, on
seeing the burghers impotent to put an end to the interminable wars between
the knights—which wars they had so dearly to pay for—now set their hopes
upon the King, the Emperor, or the Great Prince; and while aiding them to
crush down the mighty feudal owners, they aided them to constitute the
centralized State. And finally, the invasions of the Mongols and the Turks,
the holy war against the Maures in Spain, as well as the terrible wars which
soon broke out between the growing centres of sovereignty—Ile de France

and Burgundy, Scotland and England, England and France, Lithuania and
Poland, Moscow and Tver, and so on—contributed to the same end. Mighty
States made their appearance; and the cities had now to resist not only loose
federations of lords, but strongly-organized centres, which had armies of
serfs at their disposal.

The worst was, that the growing autocracies found support in the
divisions which had grown within the cities themselves. The fundamental
idea of the medieval city was grand, but it was not wide enough. Mutual aid
and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must spread to its
surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the association. And in
this respect the medieval citizen had committed a formidable mistake at the
outset. Instead of looking upon the peasants and artisans who gathered
under the protection of his walls as upon so many aids who would
contribute their part to the making of the city—as they really did—a sharp
division was traced between the "families" of old burghers and the
newcomers. For the former, all benefits from communal trade and
communal lands were reserved, and nothing was left for the latter but the
right of freely using the skill of their own hands. The city thus became
divided into "the burghers" or "the commonalty," and "the inhabitants."(38)
The trade, which was formerly communal, now became the privilege of the
merchant and artisan "families," and the next step—that of becoming
individual, or the privilege of oppressive trusts—was unavoidable.

The same division took place between the city proper and the
surrounding villages. The commune had well tried to free the peasants, but
her wars against the lords became, as already mentioned, wars for freeing
the city itself from the lords, rather than for freeing the peasants. She left to
the lord his rights over the villeins, on condition that he would molest the
city no more and would become co-burgher. But the nobles "adopted" by
the city, and now residing within its walls, simply carried on the old war

within the very precincts of the city. They disliked to submit to a tribunal of
simple artisans and merchants, and fought their old feuds in the streets.
Each city had now its Colonnas and Orsinis, its Overstolzes and Wises.
Drawing large incomes from the estates they had still retained, they
surrounded themselves with numerous clients and feudalized the customs
and habits of the city itself. And when discontent began to be felt in the
artisan classes of the town, they offered their sword and their followers to
settle the differences by a free fight, instead of letting the discontent find
out the channels which it did not fail to secure itself in olden times.

The greatest and the most fatal error of most cities was to base their
wealth upon commerce and industry, to the neglect of agriculture. They thus
repeated the error which had once been committed by the cities of antique
Greece, and they fell through it into the same crimes.(39) The estrangement
of so many cities from the land necessarily drew them into a policy hostile
to the land, which became more and more evident in the times of Edward
the Third,(40) the French Jacqueries, the Hussite wars, and the Peasant War
in Germany. On the other hand, a commercial policy involved them in
distant enterprises. Colonies were founded by the Italians in the south-east,
by German cities in the east, by Slavonian cities in the far northeast.
Mercenary armies began to be kept for colonial wars, and soon for local
defence as well. Loans were contacted to such an extent as to totally
demoralize the citizens; and internal contests grew worse and worse at each
election, during which the colonial politics in the interest of a few families
was at stake. The division into rich and poor grew deeper, and in the
sixteenth century, in each city, the royal authority found ready allies and
support among the poor.

And there is yet another cause of the decay of communal institutions,
which stands higher and lies deeper than all the above. The history of the
medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the power of

ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the quite
opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of leading
ideas has taken place. Self-reliance and federalism, the sovereignty of each
group, and the construction of the political body from the simple to the
composite, were the leading ideas in the eleventh century. But since that
time the conceptions had entirely changed. The students of Roman law and
the prelates of the Church, closely bound together since the time of
Innocent the Third, had succeeded in paralyzing the idea—the antique
Greek idea—which presided at the foundation of the cities. For two or three
hundred years they taught from the pulpit, the University chair, and the
judges' bench, that salvation must be sought for in a strongly-centralized
State, placed under a semi-divine authority;(41) that one man can and must
be the saviour of society, and that in the name of public salvation he can
commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish
under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most abject
misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect on a grand
scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's sword and the
Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these teachings and
examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public attention, the very
minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new mould. They began to find
no authority too extensive, no killing by degrees too cruel, once it was "for
public safety." And, with this new direction of mind and this new belief in
one man's power, the old federalist principle faded away, and the very
creative genius of the masses died out. The Roman idea was victorious, and
in such circumstances the centralized State had in the cities a ready prey.

Florence in the fifteenth century is typical of this change. Formerly a
popular revolution was the signal of a new departure. Now, when the
people, brought to despair, insurged, it had constructive ideas no more; no
fresh idea came out of the movement. A thousand representatives were put
into the Communal Council instead of 400; 100 men entered the signoria

instead of 80. But a revolution of figures could be of no avail. The people's
discontent was growing up, and new revolts followed. A saviour—the
"tyran"—was appealed to; he massacred the rebels, but the disintegration of
the communal body continued worse than ever. And when, after a new
revolt, the people of Florence appealed to their most popular man,
Gieronimo Savonarola, for advice, the monk's answer was:—"Oh, people
mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs … purify thy soul, and
if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest thy city, then, people of
Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the reform in all Italy!" Carnival
masks and vicious books were burned, a law of charity and another against
usurers were passed—and the democracy of Florence remained where it
was. The old spirit had gone. By too much trusting to government, they had
ceased to trust to themselves; they were unable to open new issues. The
State had only to step in and to crush down their last liberties.

And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die out in the
masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat. It rose up again with a
formidable force, in answer to the communist appeals of the first
propagandists of the reform, and it continued to exist even after the masses,
having failed to realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate under the
inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions of an autocratic
power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its way to find out a new
expression which would not be the State, nor the medieval city, nor the
village community of the barbarians, nor the savage clan, but would
proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in its wider and more
deeply humane conceptions.

NOTES:

1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet which
treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the French Communes,

Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations sur l'histoire de France still
remain classical, and Luchaire's Communes francaises is an excellent
addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the great work of
Sismondi (Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age, Paris, 1826, 16
vols.), Leo and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's Revolutions d'Italie, and
Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Italien, are the chief sources of
general information. For Germany we have Maurer's Stadteverfassung,
Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen Stadte, and, of recent works, Hegel's
Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr.
Otto Kallsen's Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as
also Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us
hope, will soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For
Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3
vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's, Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works. And
finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider
region in Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols.
London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local histories,
and several excellent works of general or economical history which I have
so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The richness of
literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes admirable,
researches into the history of separate cities, especially Italian and German;
the guilds; the land question; the economical principles of the time; the
economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between, cities (the
Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of information is contained
in works of this second category, of which only some of the more important
are named in these pages.

2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für
Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to
Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade
between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their territory.

A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as
arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI.

3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the
Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl, Alterthumer des
deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above
explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be tested
by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the
"mercet cross" could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction,
but we find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote was
sovereign.

4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's exhaustive work,
The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green's remarks in
Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren's
review of the subject in Schmoller's Forschungen, vol. xii. If the
considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade
was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be permissible
to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild merchant was a body
entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole city, and only
gradually became a guild of merchants trading for themselves; while the
merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod povolniki (free
colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati, would be those to
whom it was left to open new markets and new branches of commerce for
themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the mediaeval
city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of many agencies
in different degrees.

5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's
Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances.

6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66; quoted in
Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et depenses de la
construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes to a
similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99 and
Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the
medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see G.
Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for 1891,
and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England, Stockholm, 1895.

7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in
Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers
(Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a
screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12
guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best
valuations, ten times its present value.

8. Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343.

9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303.

10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV
und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the
day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen
hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to nine
hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on
Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jours de commun de vile
foire) at four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there was
no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the medieval worker worked
less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon,
Histoire des corporations, p. 121).

11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe im
XIV und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter, Jahrgang 1886,
p. 121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zunfte; also, partly,
Roscher.

12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation of
the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English Guilds. In France the
same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds' jurisdiction was begun
from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52-54).

13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were
condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the
trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their
hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State interference into the
same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild
ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously
studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known course of
Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse
discussions of the above type went on for economical "science."

14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270-82,
and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence, Paris,
1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della repubblica di
Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on
the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402,
the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their
own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock
the same movement took place in 1313; in Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363;
in Braunschweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84;
and so on. See Schmoller's Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and
Strassburg's Bluthe; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols.,

Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887,
pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles
in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century, ii. 190-217; also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact,
the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the
crafts' struggles, expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the
History and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds
remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and
again confirmed by subsequent research.

15. To give but one example—Cambrai made its first revolution in 907,
and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This
charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in
1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to
independence. Lyons—from 1195 to 1320.

16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal … en Franche-Comte," in
Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129 seq.

17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern
bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf.

18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca,
Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are
best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff
University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der
Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter
concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much
more study than has hitherto been done.

19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always correct;
but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based

upon a wide range of authenticated facts.

20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like
Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the
barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress.

21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432.

22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa Als Deutsche See-und Handelsmacht, Berlin,
1863, pp. 31, 55.

23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of
these two cities—one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the
gates.

24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133
seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc.

25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's
researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was
confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the
early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die
landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte,
neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249.

26. Luchaire, p. 149.

27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political
contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville,
Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so on.

28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p. 114.

29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages,
quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's Deutsches
wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his Jahrbuch,
Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The
dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their
prosperity.

30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on
this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to
Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out the
beauty of the mechanical relations in medieval buildings. "A new
decorative construction was matured," he writes, "not thwarting and
controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical
construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of
weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the
consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of
the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate
parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be
better characterized.

31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und Anstaltung,
Koln, 1871.

32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre Dame de
Paris.

33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops
which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a
statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper place
in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a whole, and it
contributed to give unity to the impression produced by the whole.

34. Cf. J. T. Ennett's "Second Essay," p. 36.

35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which
brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the conquest
of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On the
subsequent decay, see xvi. 355.

36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools,
1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600
students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained
over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249
seq.). It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers that
education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally
supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg.

37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman
Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also Sismondi's
remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the constitution of royal
authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris, 1826, viii. 85-99. The popular hatred
against these "weise Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks" broke out
with full force in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of
the early Reform movement.

38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between the
"old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the village
communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village
communities.

39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in
the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it are found
also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitu e del
servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian

Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Izvestia of
the Kieff University, 1885.

40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455.

41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the
Congress of Roncaglia in 1158.

CHAPTER VII

MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES

Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. Mutual Aid
institutions of the present time. The village community; its struggles for
resisting its abolition by the State. Habits derived from the village-
community life, retained in our modern villages. Switzerland, France,
Germany, Russia.

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply
interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been
maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all
vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and
prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men—when whole
countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated
by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny—the same tendency
continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns;
it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those
ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as
sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social
organization, adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive
genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure
from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and social

institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the masses, new ethical
systems, and new religions, all have originated from the same source, and
the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a
gradual extension of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always
larger and larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the
whole of mankind, without respect to its divers creeds, languages, and
races.

After having passed through the savage tribe, and next through the
village community, the Europeans came to work out in medieval times a
new form of organization, which had the advantage of allowing great
latitude for individual initiative, while it largely responded at the same time
to man's need of mutual support. A federation of village communities,
covered by a network of guilds and fraternities, was called into existence in
the medieval cities. The immense results achieved under this new form of
union—in well-being for all, in industries, art, science, and commerce—
were discussed at some length in two preceding chapters, and an attempt
was also made to show why, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the
medieval republics—surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable
to free the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of
Roman Caesarism—were doomed to become a prey to the growing military
States.

However, before submitting for three centuries to come, to the all-
absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the people made a
formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the old basis of mutual aid
and support. It is well known by this time that the great movement of the
reform was not a mere revolt against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It
had its constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free, brotherly
communities. Those of the early writings and sermons of the period which
found most response with the masses were imbued with ideas of the

economical and social brotherhood of mankind. The "Twelve Articles" and
similar professions of faith, which were circulated among the German and
Swiss peasants and artisans, maintained not only every one's right to
interpret the Bible according to his own understanding, but also included
the demand of communal lands being restored to the village communities
and feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always alluded to the "true"
faith—a faith of brotherhood. At the same time scores of thousands of men
and women joined the communist fraternities of Moravia, giving them all
their fortune and living in numerous and prosperous settlements constructed
upon the principles of communism.(1) Only wholesale massacres by the
thousand could put a stop to this widely-spread popular movement, and it
was by the sword, the fire, and the rack that the young States secured their
first and decisive victory over the masses of the people.(2)

For the next three centuries the States, both on the Continent and in these
islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which the mutual-aid
tendency had formerly found its expression. The village communities were
bereft of their folkmotes, their courts and independent administration; their
lands were confiscated. The guilds were spoliated of their possessions and
liberties, and placed under the control, the fancy, and the bribery of the
State's official. The cities were divested of their sovereignty, and the very
springs of their inner life—the folkmote, the elected justices and
administration, the sovereign parish and the sovereign guild—were
annihilated; the State's functionary took possession of every link of what
formerly was an organic whole. Under that fatal policy and the wars it
engendered, whole regions, once populous and wealthy, were laid bare; rich
cities became insignificant boroughs; the very roads which connected them
with other cities became impracticable. Industry, art, and knowledge fell
into decay. Political education, science, and law were rendered subservient
to the idea of State centralization. It was taught in the Universities and from
the pulpit that the institutions in which men formerly used to embody their

needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized
State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union between its
subjects; that federalism and "particularism" were the enemies of progress,
and the State was the only proper initiator of further development. By the
end of the last century the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these
isles, and the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at
war with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions between
citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour and death were the
only suitable punishments to workers who dared to enter into "coalitions."
"No state within the State!" The State alone, and the State's Church, must
take care of matters of general interest, while the subjects must represent
loose aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds, bound
to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a common need. Up to
the middle of this century this was the theory and practice in Europe. Even
commercial and industrial societies were looked at with suspicion. As to the
workers, their unions were treated as unlawful almost within our own
lifetime in this country and within the last twenty years on the Continent.
The whole system of our State education was such that up to the present
time, even in this country, a notable portion of society would treat as a
revolutionary measure the concession of such rights as every one, freeman
or serf, exercised five hundred years ago in the village folkmote, the guild,
the parish, and the city.

The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured
the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In
proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens
were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other. In the
guild—and in medieval times every man belonged to some guild or
fraternity two "brothers" were bound to watch in turns a brother who had
fallen ill; it would be sufficient now to give one's neighbour the address of
the next paupers' hospital. In barbarian society, to assist at a fight between

two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent it from taking a fatal
issue, meant to be oneself treated as a murderer; but under the theory of the
all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's
business to interfere, or not. And while in a savage land, among the
Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out
thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a
respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the
starving starve. The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can,
and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is
now triumphant all round in law, in science, in religion. It is the religion of
the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian. Science
loudly proclaims that the struggle of each against all is the leading principle
of nature, and of human societies as well. To that struggle Biology ascribes
the progressive evolution of the animal world. History takes the same line
of argument; and political economists, in their naive ignorance, trace all
progress of modern industry and machinery to the "wonderful" effects of
the same principle. The very religion of the pulpit is a religion of
individualism, slightly mitigated by more or less charitable relations to
one's neighbours, chiefly on Sundays. "Practical" men and theorists, men of
science and religious preachers, lawyers and politicians, all agree upon one
thing—that individualism may be more or less softened in its harshest
effects by charity, but that it is the only secure basis for the maintenance of
society and its ulterior progress.

It seems, therefore, hopeless to look for mutual-aid institutions and
practices in modern society. What could remain of them? And yet, as soon
as we try to ascertain how the millions of human beings live, and begin to
study their everyday relations, we are struck with the immense part which
the mutual-aid and mutual-support principles play even now-a-days in
human life. Although the destruction of mutual-aid institutions has been
going on in practice and theory, for full three or four hundred years,

hundreds of millions of men continue to live under such institutions; they
piously maintain them and endeavour to reconstitute them where they have
ceased to exist. In our mutual relations every one of us has his moments of
revolt against the fashionable individualistic creed of the day, and actions in
which men are guided by their mutual aid inclinations constitute so great a
part of our daily intercourse that if a stop to such actions could be put all
further ethical progress would be stopped at once. Human society itself
could not be maintained for even so much as the lifetime of one single
generation. These facts, mostly neglected by sociologists and yet of the first
importance for the life and further elevation of mankind, we are now going
to analyze, beginning with the standing institutions of mutual support, and
passing next to those acts of mutual aid which have their origin in personal
or social sympathies.

When we cast a broad glance on the present constitution of European
society we are struck at once with the fact that, although so much has been
done to get rid of the village community, this form of union continues to
exist to the extent we shall presently see, and that many attempts are now
made either to reconstitute it in some shape or another or to find some
substitute for it. The current theory as regards the village community is, that
in Western Europe it has died out by a natural death, because the communal
possession of the soil was found inconsistent with the modern requirements
of agriculture. But the truth is that nowhere did the village community
disappear of its own accord; everywhere, on the contrary, it took the ruling
classes several centuries of persistent but not always successful efforts to
abolish it and to confiscate the communal lands.

In France, the village communities began to be deprived of their
independence, and their lands began to be plundered, as early as the
sixteenth century. However, it was only in the next century, when the mass
of the peasants was brought, by exactions and wars, to the state of

subjection and misery which is vividly depicted by all historians, that the
plundering of their lands became easy and attained scandalous proportions.
"Every one has taken of them according to his powers … imaginary debts
have been claimed, in order to seize upon their lands;" so we read in an
edict promulgated by Louis the Fourteenth in 1667.(3) Of course the State's
remedy for such evils was to render the communes still more subservient to
the State, and to plunder them itself. In fact, two years later all money
revenue of the communes was confiscated by the King. As to the
appropriation of communal lands, it grew worse and worse, and in the next
century the nobles and the clergy had already taken possession of immense
tracts of land—one-half of the cultivated area, according to certain
estimates—mostly to let it go out of culture.(4) But the peasants still
maintained their communal institutions, and until the year 1787 the village
folkmotes, composed of all householders, used to come together in the
shadow of the bell-tower or a tree, to allot and re-allot what they had
retained of their fields, to assess the taxes, and to elect their executive, just
as the Russian mir does at the present time. This is what Babeau's
researches have proved to demonstration.(5)

The Government found, however, the folkmotes "too noisy," too
disobedient, and in 1787, elected councils, composed of a mayor and three
to six syndics, chosen from among the wealthier peasants, were introduced
instead. Two years later the Revolutionary Assemblee Constituante, which
was on this point at one with the old regime, fully confirmed this law (on
the 14th of December, 1789), and the bourgeois du village had now their
turn for the plunder of communal lands, which continued all through the
Revolutionary period. Only on the 16th of August, 1792, the Convention,
under the pressure of the peasants' insurrections, decided to return the
enclosed lands to the communes;(6) but it ordered at the same time that they
should be divided in equal parts among the wealthier peasants only—a
measure which provoked new insurrections and was abrogated next year, in

1793, when the order came to divide the communal lands among all
commoners, rich and poor alike, "active" and "inactive."

These two laws, however, ran so much against the conceptions of the
peasants that they were not obeyed, and wherever the peasants had retaken
possession of part of their lands they kept them undivided. But then came
the long years of wars, and the communal lands were simply confiscated by
the State (in 1794) as a mortgage for State loans, put up for sale, and
plundered as such; then returned again to the communes and confiscated
again (in 1813); and only in 1816 what remained of them, i.e. about
15,000,000 acres of the least productive land, was restored to the village
communities.(7) Still this was not yet the end of the troubles of the
communes. Every new regime saw in the communal lands a means for
gratifying its supporters, and three laws (the first in 1837 and the last under
Napoleon the Third) were passed to induce the village communities to
divide their estates. Three times these laws had to be repealed, in
consequence of the opposition they met with in the villages; but something
was snapped up each time, and Napoleon the Third, under the pretext of
encouraging perfected methods of agriculture, granted large estates out of
the communal lands to some of his favourites.

As to the autonomy of the village communities, what could be retained of
it after so many blows? The mayor and the syndics were simply looked
upon as unpaid functionaries of the State machinery. Even now, under the
Third Republic, very little can be done in a village community without the
huge State machinery, up to the prefet and the ministries, being set in
motion. It is hardly credible, and yet it is true, that when, for instance, a
peasant intends to pay in money his share in the repair of a communal road,
instead of himself breaking the necessary amount of stones, no fewer than
twelve different functionaries of the State must give their approval, and an
aggregate of fifty-two different acts must be performed by them, and

exchanged between them, before the peasant is permitted to pay that money
to the communal council. All the remainder bears the same character.(8)

What took place in France took place everywhere in Western and Middle
Europe. Even the chief dates of the great assaults upon the peasant lands are
the same. For England the only difference is that the spoliation was
accomplished by separate acts rather than by general sweeping measures—
with less haste but more thoroughly than in France. The seizure of the
communal lands by the lords also began in the fifteenth century, after the
defeat of the peasant insurrection of 1380—as seen from Rossus's Historia
and from a statute of Henry the Seventh, in which these seizures are spoken
of under the heading of "enormitees and myschefes as be hurtfull … to the
common wele."(9) Later on the Great Inquest, under Henry the Eighth, was
begun, as is known, in order to put a stop to the enclosure of communal
lands, but it ended in a sanction of what had been done.(10) The communal
lands continued to be preyed upon, and the peasants were driven from the
land. But it was especially since the middle of the eighteenth century that,
in England as everywhere else, it became part of a systematic policy to
simply weed out all traces of communal ownership; and the wonder is not
that it has disappeared, but that it could be maintained, even in England, so
as to be "generally prevalent so late as the grandfathers of this generation."
(11) The very object of the Enclosure Acts, as shown by Mr. Seebohm, was
to remove this system,(12) and it was so well removed by the nearly four
thousand Acts passed between 1760 and 1844 that only faint traces of it
remain now. The land of the village communities was taken by the lords,
and the appropriation was sanctioned by Parliament in each separate case.

In Germany, in Austria, in Belgium the village community was also
destroyed by the State. Instances of commoners themselves dividing their
lands were rare,(13) while everywhere the States coerced them to enforce
the division, or simply favoured the private appropriation of their lands. The

last blow to communal ownership in Middle Europe also dates from the
middle of the eighteenth century. In Austria sheer force was used by the
Government, in 1768, to compel the communes to divide their lands—a
special commission being nominated two years later for that purpose. In
Prussia Frederick the Second, in several of his ordinances (in 1752, 1763,
1765, and 1769), recommended to the Justizcollegien to enforce the
division. In Silesia a special resolution was issued to serve that aim in 1771.
The same took place in Belgium, and, as the communes did not obey, a law
was issued in 1847 empowering the Government to buy communal
meadows in order to sell them in retail, and to make a forced sale of the
communal land when there was a would-be buyer for it.(14)

In short, to speak of the natural death of the village communities in virtue
of economical laws is as grim a joke as to speak of the natural death of
soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was simply this: The village
communities had lived for over a thousand years; and where and when the
peasants were not ruined by wars and exactions they steadily improved their
methods of culture. But as the value of land was increasing, in consequence
of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State
organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system, it
took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to
destroy the communal institutions.

However, the village-community institutions so well respond to the needs
and conceptions of the tillers of the soil that, in spite of all, Europe is up to
this date covered with living survivals of the village communities, and
European country life is permeated with customs and habits dating from the
community period. Even in England, notwithstanding all the drastic
measures taken against the old order of things, it prevailed as late as the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Mr. Gomme—one of the very few
English scholars who have paid attention to the subject—shows in his work

that many traces of the communal possession of the soil are found in
Scotland, "runrig" tenancy having been maintained in Forfarshire up to
1813, while in certain villages of Inverness the custom was, up to 1801, to
plough the land for the whole community, without leaving any boundaries,
and to allot it after the ploughing was done. In Kilmorie the allotment and
re-allotment of the fields was in full vigour "till the last twenty-five years,"
and the Crofters' Commission found it still in vigour in certain islands.(15)
In Ireland the system prevailed up to the great famine; and as to England,
Marshall's works, which passed unnoticed until Nasse and Sir Henry Maine
drew attention to them, leave no doubt as to the village-community system
having been widely spread, in nearly all English counties, at the beginning
of the nineteenth century.(16) No more than twenty years ago Sir Henry
Maine was "greatly surprised at the number of instances of abnormal
property rights, necessarily implying the former existence of collective
ownership and joint cultivation," which a comparatively brief inquiry
brought under his notice.(17) And, communal institutions having persisted
so late as that, a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs would
undoubtedly be discovered in English villages if the writers of this country
only paid attention to village life.(18)

As to the Continent, we find the communal institutions fully alive in
many parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian lands,
and Spain, to say nothing of Eastern Europe; the village life in these
countries is permeated with communal habits and customs; and almost
every year the Continental literature is enriched by serious works dealing
with this and connected subjects. I must, therefore, limit my illustrations to
the most typical instances. Switzerland is undoubtedly one of them. Not
only the five republics of Uri, Schwytz, Appenzell, Glarus, and
Unterwalden hold their lands as undivided estates, and are governed by
their popular folkmotes, but in all other cantons too the village communities
remain in possession of a wide self-government, and own large parts of the

Federal territory.(19) Two-thirds of all the Alpine meadows and two-thirds
of all the forests of Switzerland are until now communal land; and a
considerable number of fields, orchards, vineyards, peat bogs, quarries, and
so on, are owned in common. In the Vaud, where all the householders
continue to take part in the deliberations of their elected communal
councils, the communal spirit is especially alive. Towards the end of the
winter all the young men of each village go to stay a few days in the woods,
to fell timber and to bring it down the steep slopes tobogganing way, the
timber and the fuel wood being divided among all households or sold for
their benefit. These excursions are real fetes of manly labour. On the banks
of Lake Leman part of the work required to keep up the terraces of the
vineyards is still done in common; and in the spring, when the thermometer
threatens to fall below zero before sunrise, the watchman wakes up all
householders, who light fires of straw and dung and protect their vine-trees
from the frost by an artificial cloud. In nearly all cantons the village
communities possess so-called. Burgernutzen—that is, they hold in
common a number of cows, in order to supply each family with butter; or
they keep communal fields or vineyards, of which the produce is divided
between the burghers, or they rent their land for the benefit of the
community.(20)

It may be taken as a rule that where the communes have retained a wide
sphere of functions, so as to be living parts of the national organism, and
where they have not been reduced to sheer misery, they never fail to take
good care of their lands. Accordingly the communal estates in Switzerland
strikingly contrast with the miserable state of "commons" in this country.
The communal forests in the Vaud and the Valais are admirably managed, in
conformity with the rules of modern forestry. Elsewhere the "strips" of
communal fields, which change owners under the system of re-allotment,
are very well manured, especially as there is no lack of meadows and cattle.
The high level meadows are well kept as a rule, and the rural roads are

excellent.(21) And when we admire the Swiss chalet, the mountain road, the
peasants' cattle, the terraces of vineyards, or the school-house in Switzer
land, we must keep in mind that without the timber for the chalet being
taken from the communal woods and the stone from the communal
quarries, without the cows being kept on the communal meadows, and the
roads being made and the school-houses built by communal work, there
would be little to admire.

It hardly need be said that a great number of mutual-aid habits and
customs continue to persist in the Swiss villages. The evening gatherings
for shelling walnuts, which take place in turns in each household; the
evening parties for sewing the dowry of the girl who is going to marry; the
calling of "aids" for building the houses and taking in the crops, as well as
for all sorts of work which may be required by one of the commoners; the
custom of exchanging children from one canton to the other, in order to
make them learn two languages, French and German; and so on—all these
are quite habitual;(22) while, on the other side, divers modern requirements
are met in the same spirit. Thus in Glarus most of the Alpine meadows have
been sold during a time of calamity; but the communes still continue to buy
field land, and after the newly-bought fields have been left in the possession
of separate commoners for ten, twenty, or thirty years, as the case might be,
they return to the common stock, which is re-allotted according to the needs
of all. A great number of small associations are formed to produce some of
the necessaries for life—bread, cheese, and wine—by common work, be it
only on a limited scale; and agricultural co-operation altogether spreads in
Switzerland with the greatest ease. Associations formed between ten to
thirty peasants, who buy meadows and fields in common, and cultivate
them as co-owners, are of common occurrence; while dairy associations for
the sale of milk, butter, and cheese are organized everywhere. In fact,
Switzerland was the birthplace of that form of co-operation. It offers,
moreover, an immense field for the study of all sorts of small and large

societies, formed for the satisfaction of all sorts of modern wants. In certain
parts of Switzerland one finds in almost every village a number of
associations—for protection from fire, for boating, for maintaining the
quays on the shores of a lake, for the supply of water, and so on; and the
country is covered with societies of archers, sharpshooters, topographers,
footpath explorers, and the like, originated from modern militarism.

Switzerland is, however, by no means an exception in Europe, because
the same institutions and habits are found in the villages of France, of Italy,
of Germany, of Denmark, and so on. We have just seen what has been done
by the rulers of France in order to destroy the village community and to get
hold of its lands; but notwithstanding all that one-tenth part of the whole
territory available for culture, i.e. 13,500,000 acres, including one-half of
all the natural meadows and nearly a fifth part of all the forests of the
country, remain in communal possession. The woods supply the communers
with fuel, and the timber wood is cut, mostly by communal work, with all
desirable regularity; the grazing lands are free for the commoners' cattle;
and what remains of communal fields is allotted and re-allotted in certain
parts Ardennes—in the usual of France—namely, in the way.(23)

These additional sources of supply, which aid the poorer peasants to pass
through a year of bad crops without parting with their small plots of land
and without running into irredeemable debts, have certainly their
importance for both the agricultural labourers and the nearly three millions
of small peasant proprietors. It is even doubtful whether small peasant
proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources. But
the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is
still greater than their economical value. They maintain in village life a
nucleus of customs and habits of mutual aid which undoubtedly acts as a
mighty check upon the development of reckless individualism and
greediness, which small land-ownership is only too prone to develop.

Mutual aid in all possible circumstances of village life is part of the routine
life in all parts of the country. Everywhere we meet, under different names,
with the charroi, i.e. the free aid of the neighbours for taking in a crop, for
vintage, or for building a house; everywhere we find the same evening
gatherings as have just been mentioned in Switzerland; and everywhere the
commoners associate for all sorts of work. Such habits are mentioned by
nearly all those who have written upon French village life. But it will
perhaps be better to give in this place some abstracts from letters which I
have just received from a friend of mine whom I have asked to
communicate to me his observations on this subject. They come from an
aged man who for years has been the mayor of his commune in South
France (in Ariege); the facts he mentions are known to him from long years
of personal observation, and they have the advantage of coming from one
neighbourhood instead of being skimmed from a large area. Some of them
may seem trifling, but as a whole they depict quite a little world of village
life.

"In several communes in our neighbourhood," my friend writes, "the old
custom of l'emprount is in vigour. When many hands are required in a
metairie for rapidly making some work—dig out potatoes or mow the grass
—the youth of the neighbourhood is convoked; young men and girls come
in numbers, make it gaily and for nothing; and in the evening, after a gay
meal, they dance.

"In the same communes, when a girl is going to marry, the girls of the
neighbourhood come to aid in sewing the dowry. In several communes the
women still continue to spin a good deal. When the winding off has to be
done in a family it is done in one evening—all friends being convoked for
that work. In many communes of the Ariege and other parts of the south-
west the shelling of the Indian corn-sheaves is also done by all the
neighbours. They are treated with chestnuts and wine, and the young people
dance after the work has been done. The same custom is practised for
making nut oil and crushing hemp. In the commune of L. the same is done
for bringing in the corn crops. These days of hard work become fete days,
as the owner stakes his honour on serving a good meal. No remuneration is
given; all do it for each other.(24)

"In the commune of S. the common grazing-land is every year increased,
so that nearly the whole of the land of the commune is now kept in
common. The shepherds are elected by all owners of the cattle, including
women. The bulls are communal.

"In the commune of M. the forty to fifty small sheep flocks of the
commoners are brought together and divided into three or four flocks before
being sent to the higher meadows. Each owner goes for a week to serve as
shepherd.

"In the hamlet of C. a threshing machine has been bought in common by
several households; the fifteen to twenty persons required to serve the
machine being supplied by all the families. Three other threshing machines
have been bought and are rented out by their owners, but the work is
performed by outside helpers, invited in the usual way.

"In our commune of R. we had to raise the wall of the cemetery. Half of
the money which was required for buying lime and for the wages of the

skilled workers was supplied by the county council, and the other half by
subscription. As to the work of carrying sand and water, making mortar, and
serving the masons, it was done entirely by volunteers [just as in the Kabyle
djemmaa]. The rural roads were repaired in the same way, by volunteer
days of work given by the commoners. Other communes have built in the
same way their fountains. The wine-press and other smaller appliances are
frequently kept by the commune."

Two residents of the same neighbourhood, questioned by my friend, add
the following:—

"At O. a few years ago there was no mill. The commune has built one,
levying a tax upon the commoners. As to the miller, they decided, in order
to avoid frauds and partiality, that he should be paid two francs for each
bread-eater, and the corn be ground free.

"At St. G. few peasants are insured against fire. When a conflagration has
taken place—so it was lately—all give something to the family which has
suffered from it—a chaldron, a bed-cloth, a chair, and so on—and a modest
household is thus reconstituted. All the neighbours aid to build the house,
and in the meantime the family is lodged free by the neighbours."

Such habits of mutual support—of which many more examples could be
given—undoubtedly account for the easiness with which the French
peasants associate for using, in turn, the plough with its team of horses, the
wine-press, and the threshing machine, when they are kept in the village by
one of them only, as well as for the performance of all sorts of rural work in
common. Canals were maintained, forests were cleared, trees were planted,
and marshes were drained by the village communities from time
immemorial; and the same continues still. Quite lately, in La Borne of
Lozere barren hills were turned into rich gardens by communal work. "The
soil was brought on men's backs; terraces were made and planted with

chestnut trees, peach trees, and orchards, and water was brought for
irrigation in canals two or three miles long." Just now they have dug a new
canal, eleven miles in length.(25)

To the same spirit is also due the remarkable success lately obtained by
the syndicats agricoles, or peasants' and farmers' associations. It was not
until 1884 that associations of more than nineteen persons were permitted in
France, and I need not say that when this "dangerous experiment" was
ventured upon—so it was styled in the Chambers—all due "precautions"
which functionaries can invent were taken. Notwithstanding all that, France
begins to be covered with syndicates. At the outset they were only formed
for buying manures and seeds, falsification having attained colossal
proportions in these two branches;(26) but gradually they extended their
functions in various directions, including the sale of agricultural produce
and permanent improvements of the land. In South France the ravages of
the phylloxera have called into existence a great number of wine-growers'
associations. Ten to thirty growers form a syndicate, buy a steam-engine for
pumping water, and make the necessary arrangements for inundating their
vineyards in turn.(27) New associations for protecting the land from
inundations, for irrigation purposes, and for maintaining canals are
continually formed, and the unanimity of all peasants of a neighbourhood,
which is required by law, is no obstacle. Elsewhere we have the fruitieres,
or dairy associations, in some of which all butter and cheese is divided in
equal parts, irrespective of the yield of each cow. In the Ariege we find an
association of eight separate communes for the common culture of their
lands, which they have put together; syndicates for free medical aid have
been formed in 172 communes out of 337 in the same department;
associations of consumers arise in connection with the syndicates; and so
on.(28) "Quite a revolution is going on in our villages," Alfred Baudrillart
writes, "through these associations, which take in each region their own
special characters."

Very much the same must be said of Germany. Wherever the peasants
could resist the plunder of their lands, they have retained them in communal
ownership, which largely prevails in Wurttemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern,
and in the Hessian province of Starkenberg.(29) The communal forests are
kept, as a rule, in an excellent state, and in thousands of communes timber
and fuel wood are divided every year among all inhabitants; even the old
custom of the Lesholztag is widely spread: at the ringing of the village bell
all go to the forest to take as much fuel wood as they can carry.(30) In
Westphalia one finds communes in which all the land is cultivated as one
common estate, in accordance with all requirements of modern agronomy.
As to the old communal customs and habits, they are in vigour in most parts
of Germany. The calling in of aids, which are real fetes of labour, is known
to be quite habitual in Westphalia, Hesse, and Nassau. In well-timbered
regions the timber for a new house is usually taken from the communal
forest, and all the neighbours join in building the house. Even in the suburbs
of Frankfort it is a regular custom among the gardeners that in case of one
of them being ill all come on Sunday to cultivate his garden.(31)

In Germany, as in France, as soon as the rulers of the people repealed
their laws against the peasant associations—that was only in 1884-1888—
these unions began to develop with a wonderful rapidity, notwithstanding
all legal obstacles which were put in their way(32) "It is a fact,"
Buchenberger says, "that in thousands of village communities, in which no
sort of chemical manure or rational fodder was ever known, both have
become of everyday use, to a quite unforeseen extent, owing to these
associations" (vol. ii. p. 507). All sorts of labour-saving implements and
agricultural machinery, and better breeds of cattle, are bought through the
associations, and various arrangements for improving the quality of the
produce begin to be introduced. Unions for the sale of agricultural produce
are also formed, as well as for permanent improvements of the land.(33)

From the point of view of social economics all these efforts of the
peasants certainly are of little importance. They cannot substantially, and
still less permanently, alleviate the misery to which the tillers of the soil are
doomed all over Europe. But from the ethical point of view, which we are
now considering, their importance cannot be overrated. They prove that
even under the system of reckless individualism which now prevails the
agricultural masses piously maintain their mutual-support inheritance; and
as soon as the States relax the iron laws by means of which they have
broken all bonds between men, these bonds are at once reconstituted,
notwithstanding the difficulties, political, economical, and social, which are
many, and in such forms as best answer to the modern requirements of
production. They indicate in which direction and in which form further
progress must be expected.

I might easily multiply such illustrations, taking them from Italy, Spain,
Denmark, and so on, and pointing out some interesting features which are
proper to each of these countries. The Slavonian populations of Austria and
the Balkan peninsula, among whom the "compound family," or "undivided
household," is found in existence, ought also to be mentioned.(34) But I
hasten to pass on to Russia, where the same mutual-support tendency takes
certain new and unforeseen forms. Moreover, in dealing with the village
community in Russia we have the advantage: of possessing an immense
mass of materials, collected during the colossal house-to-house inquest
which was lately made by several zemstvos (county councils), and which
embraces a population of nearly 20,000,000 peasants in different parts of
the country.(35)

Two important conclusions may be drawn from the bulk of evidence
collected by the Russian inquests. In Middle Russia, where fully one-third
of the peasants have been brought to utter ruin (by heavy taxation, small
allotments of unproductive land, rack rents, and very severe tax-collecting

after total failures of crops), there was, during the first five-and-twenty
years after the emancipation of the serfs, a decided tendency towards the
constitution of individual property in land within the village communities.
Many impoverished "horseless" peasants abandoned their allotments, and
this land often became the property of those richer peasants, who borrow
additional incomes from trade, or of outside traders, who buy land chiefly
for exacting rack rents from the peasants. It must also be added that a flaw
in the land redemption law of 1861 offered great facilities for buying
peasants' lands at a very small expense,(36) and that the State officials
mostly used their weighty influence in favour of individual as against
communal ownership. However, for the last twenty years a strong wind of
opposition to the individual appropriation of the land blows again through
the Middle Russian villages, and strenuous efforts are being made by the
bulk of those peasants who stand between the rich and the very poor to
uphold the village community. As to the fertile steppes of the South, which
are now the most populous and the richest part of European Russia, they
were mostly colonized, during the present century, under the system of
individual ownership or occupation, sanctioned in that form by the State.
But since improved methods of agriculture with the aid of machinery have
been introduced in the region, the peasant owners have gradually begun
themselves to transform their individual ownership into communal
possession, and one finds now, in that granary of Russia, a very great
number of spontaneously formed village communities of recent origin.(37)

The Crimea and the part of the mainland which lies to the north of it (the
province of Taurida), for which we have detailed data, offer an excellent
illustration of that movement. This territory began to be colonized, after its
annexation in 1783, by Great, Little, and White Russians—Cossacks,
freemen, and runaway serfs—who came individually or in small groups
from all corners of Russia. They took first to cattle-breeding, and when they
began later on to till the soil, each one tilled as much as he could afford to.

But when—immigration continuing, and perfected ploughs being
introduced—land stood in great demand, bitter disputes arose among the
settlers. They lasted for years, until these men, previously tied by no mutual
bonds, gradually came to the idea that an end must be put to disputes by
introducing village-community ownership. They passed decisions to the
effect that the land which they owned individually should henceforward be
their common property, and they began to allot and to re-allot it in
accordance with the usual village-community rules. The movement
gradually took a great extension, and on a small territory, the Taurida
statisticians found 161 villages in which communal ownership had been
introduced by the peasant proprietors themselves, chiefly in the years 1855-
1885, in lieu of individual ownership. Quite a variety of village-community
types has been freely worked out in this way by the settlers.(38) What adds
to the interest of this transformation is that it took place, not only among the
Great Russians, who are used to village-community life, but also among
Little Russians, who have long since forgotten it under Polish rule, among
Greeks and Bulgarians, and even among Germans, who have long since
worked out in their prosperous and half-industrial Volga colonies their own
type of village community.(39) It is evident that the Mussulman Tartars of
Taurida hold their land under the Mussulman customary law, which is
limited personal occupation; but even with them the European village
community has been introduced in a few cases. As to other nationalities in
Taurida, individual ownership has been abolished in six Esthonian, two
Greek, two Bulgarian, one Czech, and one German village. This movement
is characteristic for the whole of the fertile steppe region of the south. But
separate instances of it are also found in Little Russia. Thus in a number of
villages of the province of Chernigov the peasants were formerly individual
owners of their plots; they had separate legal documents for their plots and
used to rent and to sell their land at will. But in the fifties of the nineteenth
century a movement began among them in favour of communal possession,

the chief argument being the growing number of pauper families. The
initiative of the reform was taken in one village, and the others followed
suit, the last case on record dating from 1882. Of course there were
struggles between the poor, who usually claim for communal possession,
and the rich, who usually prefer individual ownership; and the struggles
often lasted for years. In certain places the unanimity required then by the
law being impossible to obtain, the village divided into two villages, one
under individual ownership and the other under communal possession; and
so they remained until the two coalesced into one community, or else they
remained divided still. As to Middle Russia, its a fact that in many villages
which were drifting towards individual ownership there began since 1880 a
mass movement in favour of re-establishing the village community. Even
peasant proprietors who had lived for years under the individualist system
returned en masse to the communal institutions. Thus, there is a
considerable number of ex-serfs who have received one-fourth part only of
the regulation allotments, but they have received them free of redemption
and in individual ownership. There was in 1890 a wide-spread movement
among them (in Kursk, Ryazan, Tambov, Orel, etc.) towards putting their
allotments together and introducing the village community. The "free
agriculturists" (volnyie khlebopashtsy), who were liberated from serfdom
under the law of 1803, and had bought their allotments—each family
separately—are now nearly all under the village-community system, which
they have introduced themselves. All these movements are of recent origin,
and non-Russians too join them. Thus the Bulgares in the district of
Tiraspol, after having remained for sixty years under the personal-property
system, introduced the village community in the years 1876-1882. The
German Mennonites of Berdyansk fought in 1890 for introducing the
village community, and the small peasant proprietors
(Kleinwirthschaftliche) among the German Baptists were agitating in their
villages in the same direction. One instance more: In the province of

Samara the Russian government created in the forties, by way of
experiment, 103 villages on the system of individual ownership. Each
household received a splendid property of 105 acres. In 1890, out of the 103
villages the peasants in 72 had already notified the desire of introducing the
village community. I take all these facts from the excellent work of V.V.,
who simply gives, in a classified form, the facts recorded in the above-
mentioned house-to-house inquest.

This movement in favour of communal possession runs badly against the
current economical theories, according to which intensive culture is
incompatible with the village community. But the most charitable thing that
can be said of these theories is that they have never been submitted to the
test of experiment: they belong to the domain of political metaphysics. The
facts which we have before us show, on the contrary, that wherever the
Russian peasants, owing to a concurrence of favourable circumstances, are
less miserable than they are on the average, and wherever they find men of
knowledge and initiative among their neighbours, the village community
becomes the very means for introducing various improvements in
agriculture and village life altogether. Here, as elsewhere, mutual aid is a
better leader to progress than the war of each against all, as may be seen
from the following facts.

Under Nicholas the First's rule many Crown officials and serf-owners
used to compel the peasants to introduce the communal culture of small
plots of the village lands, in order to refill the communal storehouses after
loans of grain had been granted to the poorest commoners. Such cultures,
connected in the peasants' minds with the worst reminiscences of serfdom,
were abandoned as soon as serfdom was abolished but now the peasants
begin to reintroduce them on their own account. In one district
(Ostrogozhsk, in Kursk) the initiative of one person was sufficient to call
them to life in four-fifths of all the villages. The same is met with in several

other localities. On a given day the commoners come out, the richer ones
with a plough or a cart and the poorer ones single-handed, and no attempt is
made to discriminate one's share in the work. The crop is afterwards used
for loans to the poorer commoners, mostly free grants, or for the orphans
and widows, or for the village church, or for the school, or for repaying a
communal debt.(40)

That all sorts of work which enters, so to say, in the routine of village life
(repair of roads and bridges, dams, drainage, supply of water for irrigation,
cutting of wood, planting of trees, etc.) are made by whole communes, and
that land is rented and meadows are mown by whole communes—the work
being accomplished by old and young, men and women, in the way
described by Tolstoi—is only what one may expect from people living
under the village-community system.(41) They are of everyday occurrence
all over the country. But the village community is also by no means averse
to modern agricultural improvements, when it can stand the expense, and
when knowledge, hitherto kept for the rich only, finds its way into the
peasant's house.

It has just been said that perfected ploughs rapidly spread in South
Russia, and in many cases the village communities were instrumental in
spreading their use. A plough was bought by the community, experimented
upon on a portion of the communal land, and the necessary improvements
were indicated to the makers, whom the communes often aided in starting
the manufacture of cheap ploughs as a village industry. In the district of
Moscow, where 1,560 ploughs were lately bought by the peasants during
five years, the impulse came from those communes which rented lands as a
body for the special purpose of improved culture.

In the north-east (Vyatka) small associations of peasants, who travel with
their winnowing machines (manufactured as a village industry in one of the

iron districts), have spread the use of such machines in the neighbouring
governments. The very wide spread of threshing machines in Samara,
Saratov, and Kherson is due to the peasant associations, which can afford to
buy a costly engine, while the individual peasant cannot. And while we read
in nearly all economical treatises that the village community was doomed to
disappear when the three-fields system had to be substituted by the rotation
of crops system, we see in Russia many village communities taking the
initiative of introducing the rotation of crops. Before accepting it the
peasants usually set apart a portion of the communal fields for an
experiment in artificial meadows, and the commune buys the seeds.(42) If
the experiment proves successful they find no difficulty whatever in re-
dividing their fields, so as to suit the five or six fields system.

This system is now in use in hundreds of villages of Moscow, Tver,
Smolensk, Vyatka, and Pskov.(43) And where land can be spared the
communities give also a portion of their domain to allotments for fruit-
growing. Finally, the sudden extension lately taken in Russia by the little
model farms, orchards, kitchen gardens, and silkworm-culture grounds—
which are started at the village school-houses, under the conduct of the
school-master, or of a village volunteer—is also due to the support they
found with the village communities.

Moreover, such permanent improvements as drainage and irrigation are
of frequent occurrence. For instance, in three districts of the province of
Moscow—industrial to a great extent—drainage works have been
accomplished within the last ten years on a large scale in no less than 180 to
200 different villages—the commoners working themselves with the spade.
At another extremity of Russia, in the dry Steppes of Novouzen, over a
thousand dams for ponds were built and several hundreds of deep wells
were sunk by the communes; while in a wealthy German colony of the
south-east the commoners worked, men and women alike, for five weeks in

succession, to erect a dam, two miles long, for irrigation purposes. What
could isolated men do in that struggle against the dry climate? What could
they obtain through individual effort when South Russia was struck with the
marmot plague, and all people living on the land, rich and poor, commoners
and individualists, had to work with their hands in order to conjure the
plague? To call in the policeman would have been of no use; to associate
was the only possible remedy.

And now, after having said so much about mutual aid and support which
are practised by the tillers of the soil in "civilized" countries, I see that I
might fill an octavo volume with illustrations taken from the life of the
hundreds of millions of men who also live under the tutorship of more or
less centralized States, but are out of touch with modern civilization and
modern ideas. I might describe the inner life of a Turkish village and its
network of admirable mutual-aid customs and habits. On turning over my
leaflets covered with illustrations from peasant life in Caucasia, I come
across touching facts of mutual support. I trace the same customs in the
Arab djemmaa and the Afghan purra, in the villages of Persia, India, and
Java, in the undivided family of the Chinese, in the encampments of the
semi-nomads of Central Asia and the nomads of the far North. On
consulting notes taken at random in the literature of Africa, I find them
replete with similar facts—of aids convoked to take in the crops, of houses
built by all inhabitants of the village—sometimes to repair the havoc done
by civilized filibusters—of people aiding each other in case of accident,
protecting the traveller, and so on. And when I peruse such works as Post's
compendium of African customary law I understand why, notwithstanding
all tyranny, oppression, robberies and raids, tribal wars, glutton kings,
deceiving witches and priests, slave-hunters, and the like, these populations
have not gone astray in the woods; why they have maintained a certain
civilization, and have remained men, instead of dropping to the level of
straggling families of decaying orang-outans. The fact is, that the slave-

hunters, the ivory robbers, the fighting kings, the Matabele and the
Madagascar "heroes" pass away, leaving their traces marked with blood and
fire; but the nucleus of mutual-aid institutions, habits, and customs, grown
up in the tribe and the village community, remains; and it keeps men united
in societies, open to the progress of civilization, and ready to receive it
when the day comes that they shall receive civilization instead of bullets.

The same applies to our civilized world. The natural and social calamities
pass away. Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or
starvation; the very springs of life are crushed out of millions of men,
reduced to city pauperism; the understanding and the feelings of the
millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in the interest of the few. All
this is certainly a part of our existence. But the nucleus of mutual-support
institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with the millions; it keeps
them together; and they prefer to cling to their customs, beliefs, and
traditions rather than to accept the teachings of a war of each against all,
which are offered to them under the title of science, but are no science at
all.

NOTES:

1. A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected subject,
is now growing in Germany. Keller's works, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer
and Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, Cornelius's Geschichte des munsterischen
Aufruhrs, and Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes may be named as
the leading sources. The first attempt at familiarizing English readers with
the results of the wide researches made in Germany in this direction has
been made in an excellent little work by Richard Heath—"Anabaptism from
its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster, 1521-1536," London, 1895
(Baptist Manuals, vol. i.)—where the leading features of the movement are
well indicated, and full bibliographical information is given. Also K.

Kautsky's Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation,
London, 1897.

2. Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement
and the means by which it was suppressed. But those who wrote
immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to
150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in
Germany. See Zimmermann's Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen
Bauernkrieges. For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the
Netherlands see Richard Heath's Anabaptism.

3. "Chacun s'en est accommode selon sa bienseance … on les a partages..
pour depouiller les communes, on s'est servi de dettes simulees" (Edict of
Louis the Fourteenth, of 1667, quoted by several authors. Eight years before
that date the communes had been taken under State management).

4. "On a great landlord's estate, even if he has millions of revenue, you
are sure to find the land uncultivated" (Arthur Young). "One-fourth part of
the soil went out of culture;" "for the last hundred years the land has
returned to a savage state;" "the formerly flourishing Sologne is now a big
marsh;" and so on (Theron de Montauge, quoted by Taine in Origines de la
France Contemporaine, tome i. p. 441).

5. A. Babeau, Le Village sous l'Ancien Regime, 3e edition. Paris, 1892.

6. In Eastern France the law only confirmed what the peasants had
already done themselves. See my work, The Great French Revolution,
chaps. xlvii and xlviii, London (Heinemann), 1909.

7. After the triumph of the middle-class reaction the communal lands
were declared (August 24, 1794) the States domains, and, together with the
lands confiscated from the nobility, were put up for sale, and pilfered by the

bandes noires of the small bourgeoisie. True that a stop to this pilfering was
put next year (law of 2 Prairial, An V), and the preceding law was
abrogated; but then the village Communities were simply abolished, and
cantonal councils were introduced instead. Only seven years later (9
Prairial, An XII), i.e. in 1801, the village communities were reintroduced,
but not until after having been deprived of all their rights, the mayor and
syndics being nominated by the Government in the 36,000 communes of
France! This system was maintained till after the revolution of 1830, when
elected communal councils were reintroduced under the law of 1787. As to
the communal lands, they were again seized upon by the State in 1813,
plundered as such, and only partly restored to the communes in 1816. See
the classical collection of French laws, by Dalloz, Repertoire de
Jurisprudence; also the works of Doniol, Dareste, Bonnemere, Babeau, and
many others.

8. This procedure is so absurd that one would not believe it possible if the
fifty-two different acts were not enumerated in full by a quite authoritative
writer in the Journal des Economistes (1893, April, p. 94), and several
similar examples were not given by the same author.

9. Dr. Ochenkowski, Englands wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im
Ausgange des Mittelalters (Jena, 1879), pp. 35 seq., where the whole
question is discussed with full knowledge of the texts.

10. Nasse, Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft und die
Einhegungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts in England (Bonn, 1869), pp. 4, 5;
Vinogradov, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892).

11. Fr. Seebohm, The English Village Community, 3rd ed., 1884, pp. 13-
15.

12. "An examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear
the point that the system as above described [communal ownership] is the
system which it was the object of the Enclosure Act to remove" (Seebohm,
l.c. p. 13). And further on, "They were generally drawn in the same form,
commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed
in small pieces, intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated; that
divers persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on
them … and that it is desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a
specific share being let out and allowed to each owner" (p. 14). Porter's list
contained 3867 such Acts, of which the greatest numbers fall upon the
decades of 1770-1780 and 1800-1820, as in France.

13. In Switzerland we see a number of communes, ruined by wars, which
have sold part of their lands, and now endeavour to buy them back.

14. A. Buchenberger, "Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik," in A. Wagner's
Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie, 1892, Band i. pp. 280 seq.

15. G.L. Gomme, "The Village Community, with special reference to its
Origin and Forms of Survival in Great Britain" (Contemporary Science
Series), London, 1890, pp. 141-143; also his Primitive Folkmoots
(London, 1880), pp. 98 seq.

16. "In almost all parts of the country, in the Midland and Eastern
counties particularly, but also in the west—in Wiltshire, for example—in
the south, as in Surrey, in the north, as in Yorkshire,—there are extensive
open and common fields. Out of 316 parishes of Northamptonshire 89 are
in this condition; more than 100 in Oxfordshire; about 50,000 acres in
Warwickshire; in Berkshire half the county; more than half of Wiltshire; in
Huntingdonshire out of a total area of 240,000 acres 130,000 were
commonable meadows, commons, and fields" (Marshall, quoted in Sir
Henry Maine's Village Communities in the East and West, New York

edition, 1876, pp. 88, 89). See also Dr. G. Slater's The English Peasantry
and the Enclosure of Common Fields, London, 1907.

17. Ibid. p. 88; also Fifth Lecture.

18. In quite a number of books dealing with English country life which I
have consulted I have found charming descriptions of country scenery and
the like, but almost nothing about the daily life and customs of the
labourers.

19. In Switzerland the peasants in the open land also fell under the
dominion of lords, and large parts of their estates were appropriated by the
lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (cf. A. Miaskowski, in
Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. ii. 1879, pp. 12 seq.) But the peasant war in
Switzerland did not end in such a crushing defeat of the peasants as it did in
other countries, and a great deal of the communal rights and lands was
retained. The self-government of the communes is, in fact, the very
foundation of the Swiss liberties. (cf. K. Burtli, Der Ursprung der
Eidgenossenschaft aus der Markgenossenschaft, Zurich, 1891.)

20. Dr. Reichesberg, Handworterbuch des Schweiz. Volkswirthschaft,
Bern, 1903.

21. See on this subject a series of works, summed up in one of the
excellent and suggestive chapters (not yet translated into English) which K.
Bucher has added to the German translation of Laveleye's Primitive
Ownership. Also Meitzen, "Das Agrar-und Forst-Wesen, die Allmenden und
die Landgemeinden der Deutschen Schweiz," in Jahrbuch für
Staatswissenschaft, 1880, iv. (analysis of Miaskowsky's works); O'Brien,
"Notes in a Swiss village," in Macmillan's Magazine, October 1885.