(d) The claim to property is instinctive in most animals—claim to a certain territory, or to a nest, or lair, or mate. Each early human pack probably claimed a certain hunting-range; and each family its lair, which it guarded, as our domestic dog guards the house. In Australia “every tribe has its own country, and its boundaries are well known; and they are respected by others”;[67] and the Bushmen, who retained the ancient hunting-life more perfectly than any other known people, are said to have been formerly divided into large tribes with well-defined hunting-grounds.[68] As weapons or other implements, charms, or ornaments came into use, the attitude toward the territory or lair will have been extended to include them; indeed, it seems to be instinctive even in lower Primates. “In the Zoological Gardens,” says Darwin, “a monkey, which had weak teeth, used to break open nuts with a stone; and I was assured by the keepers that, after using the stone, he hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have the idea of property.”[69] Among the half-wolf train-dogs of Canada, the claims of one to property seem to be recognised by others; for a dog will defend its cache of food against another that ordinarily it fears; and “the bigger dog rarely presses the point.”[70] The utility of keeping the peace within the tribe, no doubt, led to the growth of customs concerning property, and to their protection by the social sanction, and later by the taboo.[71] For taboo cannot be the origin of respect for property or for any custom: it implies a custom already existing, which it protects by the growth of a belief in some magical penalty that is effective even when there are no witnesses. The same utility of order must have established customs of dividing the kill of the pack: later also protected by taboo, as we still see in many savage tribes.
The attitude towards property is very variable amongst the tribes now known to us. Still, considering how early and strongly it is manifested by children, we may infer with some plausibility its antiquity in the race. The urgent desire of property, and tenacity in holding it, displayed by many individuals, though not an amiable, has been a highly useful trait, to which is due that accumulation of capital that has made possible the whole of our material and much of our spiritual civilisation. Amongst barbarians it may be a necessary condition of social order. Had not wealth been highly prized amongst our own ancestors, it is hard to see how revenge could ever have been appeased by the wergeld. The payment, indeed, was not the whole transaction; it implied an acknowledgment of guilt and of the obligation to make amends; but these things would not have mollified an enemy nurtured in the tradition of the blood-feud, if silver had not been dear to him. It is still accepted as compensation for injuries that seem difficult to measure by the ounce. Wealth gives rank, and gratifies not only the greed but also the emulative spirit of the pack. Acquisitiveness is an essential trait of aristocracy, and adhesiveness of its perpetuity. Homespun prudence belongs, in our ancestry, to a more recent stratum of motives; we see it as a blind instinct in squirrels and beavers, a quasi-instinctive propensity in dogs and wolves (who hide food that they cannot immediately devour); but it is not known in any anthropoid, and is acquired at some stage by some human races—not by all; for it is not found in many extant savages. The only occasion on which Australian tribes show prudential foresight as to food is on the approach of the season of magical rites, when they lay in a stock of food before giving themselves up for weeks or months body and soul to thaumaturgy.[72] Prudence is not, however, merely a function of foresight or intelligence, or else the Irish would be as prudent as the Scotch.
(e) The first wars, probably, were waged for hunting-grounds; and this may have been a revival, for the carnivorous anthropoid pack, of a state of affairs that existed amongst their ancestors at a much earlier date; for battles for a feeding-ground have been witnessed between troops of the lower Primates. Such a battle between two bands of langur (Semnopithecus entellus) has been described;[73] and Darwin relates after Brehm how “in Abyssinia, when baboons of one species (C. gelada) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter troops of another species (C. hamadryas), and then a fight ensues. The Geladas roll down great stones, which the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other.”[74] As packs of the wolf-ape increased in numbers and spread over the world, they no doubt generally came to regard one another as rivals upon the same footing as the great cats and packs of dogs, and every attempt at expansion or migration provoked a battle. Wars strengthened the internal sympathies and loyalties of the pack or tribe and its external antipathies, and extended the range and influence of the more virile and capable tribes.
It is true that neighbouring tribes of savages are not now always mutually hostile. In Australia, we are told, local groups and adjacent tribes are usually friendly;[75] but with them the age of expansion seems to have closed some time ago, and a sort of equilibrium has been established. On the other hand, it is a shallow sort of profundity that insists upon interpreting every war as a struggle for nutrition, an effort to solve the social problem. Aggressiveness and insatiable greed are characteristic of many tribes—passions always easily exploited by their leaders, as in the civilised world by dynasts and demagogues. Plethora is more insolent than poverty. Lust of power, of glory, of mere fighting is a stronger incentive than solicitude for the poor.
However, in the development of society nothing has been so influential as war: an immense subject, for the outlines of which I refer to Herbert Spencer’s Political Institutions.[76]
(f) Most of the amusements as well as the occupations of mankind depend for their zest upon the spirit of hunting and fighting, which they gratify and relieve, either directly or in a conventionalised and symbolical way, and at the same time keep alive. Sports and games involve the pursuit of some end by skill and strategy, often the seizing upon some sort of prey, or slaying outright, and they give scope to emulation. Emulation is a motive in the race for wealth, in every honourable career, even in addiction to science and learning: though here the main stress is upon an instinct older than the pack—curiosity, a general character of the Primates. That children at first play alone, later play together, and then “make up sides,” repeats the change from the comparatively solitary life of anthropoids to the social life and combined activities of the hunting-pack. From the interest of the chase and the aggressiveness that is involved in it must be derived all that we call “enterprise,” whether beneficent or injurious: a trait, certainly, which there is little reason to regard as inherited from the anthropoid stock.
(g) The great amusement and pastime of feeding has, no doubt, descended to us in unbroken tradition, through harvest and vintage festivals, from the unbridled indulgence that followed a successful hunt. And I offer the conjecture that the origin of laughter and the enjoyment of broad humour (so often discussed) may be traced to these occasions of riotous exhilaration and licence. We may suppose, indeed, that these conditions began to prevail not in the earliest days of the ravenous pack, but after some advance had been made in the customs of eating. Savages usually cram to repletion when possible, and with huge gusto, for there may not soon be another opportunity. If uproarious feasting was advantageous physically and socially (as till recently we all thought it was), addiction to the practice was a ground of survival; and laughter (a discharge of undirected energy, as Spencer says), being its natural expression and enhancement, shared in its perpetuation. This social origin agrees with the infectiousness of laughter, with its connection with triumph and cruelty, and with the quality of the jokes that still throughout the world excite most merriment—practical jokes and allusions to drunkenness, the indecorous, the obscene. Sir Robert Walpole preferred such humour as the most sociable; because in that everybody could take part. Many refinements have been introduced in polite circles; but it is in vain that one begins a theory of laughter with an analysis of the genius of Molière.
Similarly, I suppose that weeping, lamentation and the facial and bodily expressions of grief were developed by the social utility of common mourning in tribal defeat and bereavement.
§ 7. Moralisation of the Hunters