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Robert Marett - Anthropology

R >> Robert Marett >> Anthropology




Lineage is the principle of reckoning descent along one or other of
two lines--namely, the mother's line or the father's. The former method
is termed matrilineal, the latter patrilineal. It sometimes, but by
no means invariably, happens, when descent is counted matrilineally,
that the wife stays with her people, and the husband has the status
of a mere visitor and alien. In such a case the marriage is called
matrilocal; otherwise it is patrilocal. Again, when the matrilocal
type of marriage prevails, as likewise often when it does not, the
wife and her people, rather than the father and his people, exercise
supreme authority over the children. This is known as the matripotestal,
as contrasted with the patripotestal, type of family. When the
matrilineal, matrilocal and matripotestal conditions are found
together, we have mother-right at its fullest and strongest. Where
we get only two out of the three, or merely the first by itself, most
authorities would still speak of mother-right; though it may be
questioned how far the word mother-right, or the corresponding, now
almost discarded, expression, "the matriarchate," can be safely used
without further explanation, since it tends to imply a right (in the
legal sense) and an authority, which in these circumstances is often
no more than nominal.

Totemism, in the specific form that has to do with kinship, means that
a social group depends for its identity on a certain intimate and
exclusive relation in which it stands towards an animal-kind, or a
plant-kind, or, more rarely, a class of inanimate objects, or, very
rarely, something that is individual and not a kind or class at all.
Such a totem, in the first place, normally provides the social group
with its name. (The Boy Scouts, who call themselves Foxes, Peewits,
and so on, according to their different patrols, have thus reverted
to a very ancient usage.) In the second place, this name tends to be
the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace that,
somehow flowing from the totem to the totemites, sanctifies their
communion. They are "all-one-flesh" with one another, as certain of
the Australians phrase it, because they are "all-one-flesh" with the
totem. Or, again, a man whose totem was _ngaui_, the sun, said that
his name was _ngaui_ and he "was" _ngaui_; though he was equally ready
to put it in another way, explaining that _ngaui_ "owned" him. If we
wish to express the matter comprehensively, and at the same time to
avoid language suggestive of a more advanced mysticism, we may perhaps
describe the totem as, from this point of view, the totemite's "luck."

There is considerable variation, however, to be found in the practices
and beliefs of a more or less religious kind that are associated with
this form of totemism; though almost always there are some. Sometimes
the totem is thought of as an ancestor, or as the common fund of life
out of which the totemites are born and into which they go back when
they die. Sometimes the totem is held to be a very present help in
time of trouble, as when a kangaroo, by hopping along in a special
way, warns the kangaroo-man of impending danger. Sometimes, on the
other hand, the kangaroo-man thinks of himself mainly as the helper
of the kangaroo, holding ceremonies in order that the kangaroos may
wax fat and multiply. Again, almost invariably the totemite shows some
respect towards his totem, refraining, for instance, from slaying and
eating the totem-animal, unless it be in some specially solemn and
sacramental way.

The upshot of these considerations is that if the totem is, on the
face of it, a name, the savage answers the question, "What's in a name?"
by finding in the name that makes him one with his brethren a wealth
of mystic meaning, such as deepens for him the feeling of social
solidarity to an extent that it takes a great effort on our part to
appreciate.

Having separately examined the three principles of exogamy, lineage
and totemism, we must now try to see how they work together.
Generalization in regard to these matters is extremely risky, not to
say rash; nevertheless, the following broad statements may serve the
reader as working hypotheses, that he can go on to test for himself
by looking into the facts. Firstly, exogamy and totemism, whether they
be in origin distinct or not, tend in practice to go pretty closely
together. Secondly, lineage, or the one-sided system of reckoning
descent, is more or less independent of the other two principles.[4]

[Footnote 4: That is to say, either mother-right or father-right in
any of their forms may exist in conjunction with exogamy and totemism.
It is certainly not the fact that, wherever totemism is in a state
of vigour, mother-right is regularly found. At most it may be urged
in favour of the priority of mother-right that, if there is change,
it is invariably from mother-right to father-right, and never the other
way about.]

If, instead of consulting the evidence that is to hand about the savage
world as it exists to-day, you read some book crammed full with theories
about social origins, you probably come away with the impression that
totemic society is entirely an affair of clans. Some such notion as
the following is precipitated in your mind. You figure to yourself
two small food-groups, whose respective beats are, let us say, on each
side of a river. For some unknown reason they are totemic, one group
calling itself Cockatoo, the other calling itself Crow, whilst each
feels in consequence that its members are "all-one-flesh" in some
mysterious and moving sense. Again, for some unknown reason each is
exogamous, so that matrimonial alliances are bound to take place across
the river. Lastly, each has mother-right of the full-blown kind. The
Cockatoo-girls and the Crow-girls abide each on their own side of the
river, where they are visited by partners from across the water; who,
whether they tend to stay and make themselves useful, or are merely
intermittent in their attentions, remain outsiders from the totemic
point of view and are treated as such. The children, meanwhile, grow
up in the Cockatoo and Crow quarters respectively as little Cockatoos
or Crows. If they need to be chastised, a Cockatoo hand, not necessarily
the mother's, but perhaps her brother's--never the father's,
however--administers the slap. When they grow up, they take their
chances for better and worse with the mother's people; fighting when
they fight, though it be against the father's people; sharing in the
toils and the spoils of the chase; inheriting the weapons and any other
property that is handed on from one generation to another; and, last
but not least, taking part in the totemic mysteries that disclose to
the elect the inner meaning of being a Cockatoo or a Crow, as the case
may be.

Now such a picture of the original clan and of the original inter-clan
organization is very pretty and easy to keep in one's head. And when
one is simply guessing about the first beginnings of things, there
is something to be said for starting from some highly abstract and
simple concept, which is afterwards elaborated by additions and
qualifications until the developed notion comes near to matching the
complexity of the real facts. Such speculations, then, are quite
permissible and even necessary in their place. To do justice, however,
to the facts about totemic society, as known to us by actual observation,
it remains to note that the clan is by no means the only form of social
organization that it displays.

The clan, it is true, whether matrilineal or patrilineal, tends at
the totemic level of society to eclipse the family. The natural family,
of course--that is to say, the more or less permanent association of
father, mother and children, is always there in some shape and to some
extent. But, so long as the one-sided method of counting descent
prevails, and is reinforced by totemism, the family cannot attain to
the dignity of a formally recognized institution. On the other hand,
the totemic clan, of all the formally recognized groupings of society
to which an individual belongs in virtue of his birth and kinship,
is, so to speak, the most specific. As the Australian puts it, it makes
him what he "is." His social essence is to be a Cockatoo or a Crow.
Consequently his first duty is towards his clan and its members, human
and not-human. Wherever there are clans, and so long as there is any
totemism worthy of the name, this would seem to be the general law.

Besides the specific unity, however, provided by the clan, there are
wider, and, as it were, more generic unities into which a man is born,
in totemic society of the complex type that is found in the actual
world of to-day.

First, he belongs to a phratry. In Australia the tribe--a term to be
defined presently--is nearly always split up into two exogamous
divisions, which it is usual to call phratries.[5] Then, in some of
the Australian tribes, the phratry is subdivided into two, and, in
others, into four portions, between which exogamy takes place
according to a curious criss-cross scheme. These exogamous
subdivisions, which are peculiar to Australia, are known as
matrimonial classes. Dr. Frazer thinks that they are the result of
deliberate arrangement on the part of native statesmen; and certainly
he is right in his contention that there is an artificial and man-made
look about them. The system of phratries, on the other hand, whether
it carves up the tribe into two, or, as sometimes in North America
and elsewhere, into more than two primary divisions, under which the
clans tend to group themselves in a more or less orderly way, has all
the appearance of a natural development out of the clan-system. Thus,
to revert to the imaginary case of the Cockatoos and Crows practising
exogamy across the river, it seems easy to understand how the numbers
on both sides might increase until, whilst remaining Cockatoos and
Crows for cross-river purposes, they would find it necessary to adopt
among themselves subordinate distinctions; such as would be sure to
model themselves on the old Cockatoo-Crow principle of separate
totemic badges. But we must not wander off into questions of origin.
It is enough for our present purpose to have noted the fact that, within
the tribe, there are normally other forms of social grouping into which
a man is born, as well as the clan.

[Footnote 5: From a Greek word meaning "brotherhood," which was applied
to a very similar institution.]

Now we come to the tribe. This may be described as the political unit.
Its constitution tends to be lax and its functions vague. One way of
seizing its nature is to think of it as the social union within which
exogamy takes place. The intermarrying groups naturally hang together,
and are thus in their entirety endogamous, in the sense that marriage
with pure outsiders is disallowed by custom. Moreover, by mingling
in this way, they are likely to attain to the use of a common dialect,
and a common name, speaking of themselves, for instance, as "the men,"
and lumping the rest of humanity together as "foreigners." To act
together, however, as, for instance, in war, in order to repel
incursions on the part of the said foreigners, is not easy without
some definite organization. In Australia, where there is very little
war, this organization is mostly wanting. In North America, on the
other hand, amongst the more advanced and warlike tribes, we find
regular tribal officers, and some approach to a political constitution.
Yet in Australia there is at least one occasion when a sort of tribal
gathering takes place--namely, when their elaborate ceremonies for
the initiation of the youths is being held.

It would seem, however, that these ceremonies are, as often as not,
intertribal rather than tribal. So similar are the customs and beliefs
over wide areas, that groups with apparently little or nothing else
in common will assemble together, and take part in proceedings that
are something like a Pan-Anglican Congress and a World's Fair rolled
into one. To this indefinite type of intertribal association the term
"nation" is sometimes applied. Only when there is definite
organization, as never in Australia, and only occasionally in North
America, as amongst the Iroquois, can we venture to describe it as
a genuine "confederacy."

No doubt the reader's head is already in a whirl, though I have
perpetrated endless sins of omission and, I doubt not, of commission
as well, in order to simplify the glorious confusion of the subject
of the social organization prevailing in what is conveniently but
loosely lumped together as totemic society. Thus, I have omitted to
mention that sometimes the totems seem to have nothing to do at all
with the social organization; as, for example, amongst the famous
Arunta of central Australia, whom Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have so
carefully described. I have, again, refrained from pointing out that
sometimes there are exogamous divisions--some would call them moieties
to distinguish them from phratries--which have no clans grouped under
them, and, on the other hand, have themselves little or no resemblance
to totemic clans. These, and ever so many other exceptional cases,
I have simply passed by.

An even more serious kind of omission is the following. I have
throughout identified the social organization with the kinship
organization--namely, that into which a man is born in consequence
of the marriage laws and the system of reckoning descent. But there
are other secondary features of what can only be classed as social
organization, which have nothing to do with kinship. Sex, for instance,
has a direct bearing on social status. The men and the women often
form markedly distinct groups; so that we are almost reminded of the
way in which the male and the female linnets go about in separate flocks
as soon as the pairing season is over. Of course, disparity of
occupation has something to do with it. But, for the native mind, the
difference evidently goes far deeper than that. In some parts of
Australia there are actually sex-totems, signifying that each sex is
all-one-flesh, a mystic corporation. And, all the savage world over,
there is a feeling that woman is uncanny, a thing apart, which feeling
is probably responsible for most of the special disabilities--and the
special privileges--that are the lot of woman at the present day.

Again, age likewise has considerable influence on social status. It
is not merely a case of being graded as a youth until once for all
you legally "come of age," and are enrolled, amongst the men. The
grading of ages is frequently most elaborate, and each batch mounts
the social ladder step by step. Just as, at the university, each year
has apportioned to it by public opinion the things it may do and the
things it may not do, whilst, later on, the bachelor, the master, and
the doctor stand each a degree higher in respect of academic rank;
so in darkest Australia, from youth up to middle age at least, a man
will normally undergo a progressive initiation into the secrets of
life, accompanied by a steady widening in the sphere of his social
duties and rights.

Lastly, locality affects status, and increasingly as the wandering
life gives way to stable occupation. Amongst a few hundred people who
are never out of touch with each other, the forms of natal association
hold their own against any that local association is likely to suggest
in their place. According to natal grouping, therefore, in the broad
sense that includes sex and age no less than kinship, the members of
the tribe camp, fight, perform magical ceremonies, play games, are
initiated, are married, and are buried. But let the tribe increase
in numbers, and spread through a considerable area, over the face of
which communications are difficult and proportionately rare.
Instantly the local group tends to become all in all. Authority and
initiative must always rest with the men on the spot; and the old natal
combinations, weakened by inevitable absenteeism, at last cease to
represent the true framework of the social order. They tend to linger
on, of course, in the shape of subordinate institutions. For instance,
the totemic groups cease to have direct connection with the marriage
system, and, on the strength of the ceremonies associated with them,
develop into what are known as secret societies. Or, again, the clan
is gradually overshadowed by the family, so that kinship, with its
rights and duties, becomes practically limited to the nearer
blood-relations; who, moreover, begin to be treated for practical
purposes as kinsmen, even when they are on the side of the family which
lineage does not officially recognize. Thus the forms of natal
association no longer constitute the backbone of the body politic.
Their public importance has gone. Henceforward, the social unit is
the local group. The territorial principle comes more and more to
determine affinities and functions. Kinship has dethroned itself by
its very success. Thanks to the organizing power of kinship, primitive
society has grown, and by growing has stretched the birth-tie until
it snaps. Some relationships become distant in a local and territorial
sense, and thereupon they cease to count. My duty towards my kin passes
into my duty towards my neighbour.

* * * * *

Reasons of space make it impossible to survey the further developments
to which social organization is subject under the sway of locality.
It is, perhaps, less essential to insist on them here, because, whereas
totemic society is a thing which we civilized folk have the very
greatest difficulty in understanding, we all have direct insight into
the meaning of a territorial arrangement; since, from the village
community up to the modern state, the same fundamental type of social
structure obtains throughout.

Besides local contiguity, however, there is a second principle which
greatly helps to shape the social order, as soon as society is
sufficiently advanced in its arts and industries to have taken firm
root, so to speak, on the earth's surface. This is the principle of
private property, and especially of private property in land. The most
fundamental of class distinctions is that between rich and poor. That
between free and slave, in communities that have slavery, is not at
first sight strictly parallel, since there may be a class of poor
freemen intermediate between the nobles and the slaves; but it is
obvious that in this case, too, private property is really responsible
for the mode of grading. Or sometimes social position may seem to depend
primarily on industrial occupation, the Indian caste-system providing
an instance in point. Since, however, the most honourable occupations
in the long run coincide with those that pay best, we come back once
again to private property as the ultimate source of social rank, under
an economic system of the more developed kind.

In this brief sketch it has been impossible to do more than hint how
social organization is relative to numbers, which in their turn are
relative to the skill with which the food-quest is carried on. But
if, up to a certain point, it be true that the structure of society
depends on its mass in a more or less physical way, there is to be
borne in mind another aspect of the matter, which also has been hinted
at as we went rapidly along. A good deal of intelligence has throughout
helped towards the establishing of the social order. If social
organization is in part a natural result of the expansion of the
population, it is partly also, in the best sense of the word, an
artificial creation of the human mind, which has exerted itself to
devise modes of grouping whereby men might be enabled to work together
in larger and ever larger wholes.

Regarded, however, in the purely external way which a study of its
mere structure involves, society appears as a machine--that is to say,
appears as the work of intelligence indeed, but not as itself instinct
with intelligence. In what follows we shall set the social machine
moving. We shall then have a better chance of obtaining an inner view
of the driving power. We shall find that we have to abandon the notion
that society is a machine. It is more, even, than an organism. It is
a communion of souls--souls that, as so many independent, yet
interdependent, manifestations of the life-force, are pressing
forward in the search for individuality and freedom.




CHAPTER VII
LAW


The general plan of this little book being to start from the influences
that determine man's destiny in a physical, external, necessary sort
of way, and to work up gradually to the spiritual, internal, voluntary
factors in human nature--that strange "compound of clay and flame"--it
seems advisable to consider law before religion, and religion before
morality, whether in its collective or individual aspect, for the
following reason. There is more sheer constraint to be discerned in
law than in religion, whilst religion, in the historical sense which
identifies it with organized cult, is more coercive in its mode of
regulating life than the moral reason, which compels by force of
persuasion.

To one who lives under civilized conditions the phrase "the strong
arm of the law" inevitably suggests the policeman. Apart from policemen,
magistrates, and the soldiers who in the last resort must be called
out to enforce the decrees of the community, it might appear that law
could not exist. And certainly it is hard to admit that what is known
as mob-law is any law at all. For historical purposes, however, we
must be prepared to use the expression "law" rather widely. We must
be ready to say that there is law wherever there is punishment on the
part of a human society, whether acting in the mass, or through its
representatives. Punishment means the infliction of pain on one who
is judged to have broken a social rule. Conversely, then, a law is
any social rule to the infringement of which punishment is by usage
attached. So long as it is recognized that a man breaks a social rule
at the risk of pain, and that it is the business of everybody, or of
somebody armed with the common authority, to make that risk a reality
for the offender, there is law within the meaning of the term as it
exists for anthropology.

Punishment, however, is by its very nature an exceptional measure.
It is only because the majority are content to follow a social rule,
that law and punishment are possible at all. If, again, every one
habitually obeys the social rules, law ceases to exist, because it
is unnecessary. Now, one reason why it is hard to find any law in
primitive society is because, in a general way of speaking, no one
dreams of breaking the social rules.

Custom is king, nay tyrant, in primitive society. When Captain Cook
asked the chiefs of Tahiti why they ate apart and alone, they simply
replied, "Because it is right." And so it always is with the ruder
peoples. "'Tis the custom, and there's an end on't" is their notion
of a sufficient reason in politics and ethics alike. Now that way lies
a rigid conservatism. In the chapter on morality we shall try to
discover its inner springs, its psychological conditions. For the
present, we may be content to regard custom from the outside, as the
social habit of conserving all traditional practices for their own
sake and regardless of consequences. Of course, changes are bound to
occur, and do occur. But they are not supposed to occur. In theory,
the social rules of primitive society are like "the law of the Medes
and Persians which altereth not."

This absolute respect for custom has its good and its bad sides. On
the one hand, it supplies the element of discipline; without which
any society is bound soon to fall to pieces. We are apt to think of
the savage as a freakish creature, all moods--at one moment a friend,
at the next moment a fiend. So he might be, if it were not for the
social drill imposed by his customs. So he is, if you destroy his
customs, and expect him nevertheless to behave as an educated and
reasonable being. Given, then, a primitive society in a healthy and
uncontaminated condition, its members will invariably be found to be
on the average more law-abiding, as judged from the standpoint of their
own law, than is the case any civilized state.

But now we come to the bad side of custom. Its conserving influence
extends to all traditional practices, however unreasonable or
perverted. In that amber any fly is apt to be enclosed. Hence the
whimsicalities of savage custom. In _Primitive Culture_ Dr. Tylor
tells a good story about the Dyaks of Borneo. The white man's way of
chopping down a tree by notching out V-shaped cuts was not according
to Dyak custom. Hence, any Dyak caught imitating the European fashion
was punished by a fine. And yet so well aware were they that this method
was an improvement on their own that, when they could trust each other
not to tell, they would surreptitiously use it. These same Dyaks, it
may be added, are, according to Mr. A.R. Wallace, the best of observers,
"among the most pleasing of savages." They are good-natured, mild,
and by no means bloodthirsty in the ordinary relations of life. Yet
they are well known to be addicted to the horrid practice of
head-hunting. "It was a custom," Mr. Wallace explains, "and as a custom
was observed, but it did not imply any extraordinary barbarism or moral
delinquency."

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