(c) Whilst none of the great anthropoids has advanced socially beyond family life, man is everywhere (with few and doubtful exceptions) gregarious—living at the lowest grade in tribes or bands of about fifty; and the gregarious life is one of the most important conditions of his peculiar development. Possibly, he may originally have been more gregarious than any extant anthropoid, in spite of his not needing society for defence, and of its seeming to be for so large a frugivorous animal inconvenient in relation to nutrition. Moreover, if the great anthropoids and our own ancestors were descended from some stock of the lower monkeys, such as always go in troops, the gregarious instinct may have remained with them as a latent character. Still, it is my conjecture that man became gregarious, or recovered the social habit, because of the utility of co-operative hunting; so that he became at first a sort of wolf-ape. This will be discussed in the next section. I observe here, however, that the hypothesis helps us to understand why man is still imperfectly sociable; the purpose of the hunting-pack, each wolf-ape seeking prey, was unfavourable to social life in other relations. That in human life group-consciousness preceded self-consciousness is a groundless and fantastic notion: all known savages are fully self-conscious, as their sentiments and behaviour imply; and even the higher brutes are (in my judgment) self-conscious in their relations with others. Current speculations about fashion, imitation, tradition, crowd-psychology, are in danger of exaggeration, and overlook the patent facts of individualism, as shown by the hypocrite, the criminal, the vagrant, the contra-suggestible, the hermit, the sceptic, the saint. Some people—without being in any way morbid—find that a good deal of solitude is necessary to the complete life: by nature the student and the pioneer escape from the crowd.
(d) The later stages of human development have been considerably modified by certain imaginary conditions peculiar to Man; for he—we know not at what date—invented them. These may be summed up under the names of Magic and Animism; and in subsequent chapters they will be discussed, with their astonishing vagaries and still more astonishing reactions upon human life.
The chief conditions, then, to which man has been adapted, and thereby differentiated in body and mind from the anthropoid stock, I take to be four: the hunting life; geographical circumstances; social life; and his own imaginations.
§ 3. Primal Society
In looking for the probable form of the earliest human or (rather) prehuman society, one naturally makes a survey of other mammalian societies; and the task is soon accomplished. It is surprising how few and simple the types of them are, in contrast with the elaborate polities of some hymenoptera and of the termites: these have much greater superficial resemblance to modern human societies; but, in fact, they are families rather than societies; their interesting activities will one day probably be traced to relatively simple mechanisms; and in every way they are too remote from us for any useful comparison. As for mammalian societies, even using the term to include families, they may be classified under four or five types:
(1) Families: (a) Monogamous: of which the best examples seem to be found in some monkeys. Many of the cats are believed to pair monogamously; but it is doubtful whether, or in what measure, the male takes part in the rearing of the whelps.
(b) Polygamous: characteristic of many species of deer;—after the breeding-season, the stags often wander away by themselves.
(2) Associations of families without apparent structure or organisation, such as those of the vizcacha and the beaver. They have no leaders, and make no attempt at mutual defence; but their inco-ordinated activities, in making their burrows, dams, etc., have results which, especially in the case of the beavers, look as if the animals had worked upon a common, premeditated plan. Gregariousness exists widely in the animal kingdom without any utility in attack or defence, but merely for convenience of breeding, or for the advantage of signalling the approach of danger, from any direction, to the whole flock.
(3) Troops or herds, comprising several families. This type is common amongst monkeys: generally the families are monogamous, and both parents care for the offspring; they have leaders, and combine in mutual defence. This is especially effective with the baboons—who, however, are polygamous. A very similar type is characteristic of cattle; who also have leaders as the result of battle between the bulls, each trying to control and keep together as many cows as he can; and they often combine their forces against beasts of prey.
(4) Hunting-packs—most noticeable with wolves and wild dogs: they have leaders, and probably an order of precedence determined by battle. In the breeding-season (February to August) a pack of wolves breaks up into pairs; but whether their pairing is for life or merely seasonal is disputed; and it is also doubtful whether the male takes any share in caring for the puppies; such habits may vary in different localities.[32] The numbers of the pack depend on circumstances, and are now much smaller in Canada than in Russia.
Was our own primitive society, then, like any of these? Since direct evidence cannot be obtained, we must be guided in forming our hypothesis by two considerations: (a) what type of society gives the best explanation of human nature as we now find it? and (b) for which type can we give the best reason why it should have been adopted? So I point out (a) that man, in character, is more like a wolf or dog than he is like any other animal; and (b) that for the forming of a pack there was a clear ground in the advantage to be obtained by co-operative hunting.[33]
It must be admitted that Darwin, discussing sexual selection in man, suggests a different hypothesis. He says: “Looking far enough back in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the gorilla; for all the natives ‘agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community.’ The younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close inter-breeding within the limits of the same family.”[34] The information concerning the polygamy of the gorilla, quoted here from Dr. Savage, who wrote in 1845, has not since (I believe) been confirmed, except by Prof. Garner.[35]
Naturally, the above passage has attracted the attention of anthropologists; and I am sorry to expose myself to the charge of immodesty in venturing to put forward a different view. Atkinson in his essay on Primal Law, edited with qualified approval by Andrew Lang, starts from Darwin’s hypothesis, and merely modifies it by urging that the young males, when driven off by their father, did not wander away, but kept near the family, always on the watch to murder their father. This amendment he makes, because he had observed the same habits in cattle and horses. Then, through a row of hypotheses with little evidence or rational connection, he arrives at an explanation of certain savage laws of avoidance, exogamy, etc. More recently, Prof. Freud has produced a most ingenious and entertaining essay on Totem und Tabu, in which he builds upon the same foundations. You easily see how the “Œdipus complex” emerges from such a primitive state of things, but will hardly, without reading the work, imagine the wealth of speculation it contains or its literary attractiveness. Atkinson probably relied upon the supposed parallel case of wild cattle and horses, because those animals resemble the apes in being vegetarian: though the diets are, in fact, very different. But even if such a comparison indicates a possible social state of our original ape-like stock, what is there in such a state that can be supposed to have introduced the changes that