Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

There is great danger in relying too closely upon conjecture. We shall be repeating in anthropology what the analytical jurists accomplished in law and jurisprudence, and it will then soon become necessary to do for anthropology what Sir Henry Maine did for comparative jurisprudence, namely, demonstrate that the analytical method does not take us back to human origins, but to highly developed systems of society. Law, in the hands of the analytical jurists, is merely one part of the machinery of modern government. Social beginnings in the hands of conjectural anthropologists are merely abstractions with the whole history of man put on one side. Mr. Lang in leading the way towards the analytical method in anthropology has avoided many of its pitfalls, but his disciples are not so successful. Thus, when Mr. Thomas declares that "custom which has among them [primitive peoples] far more power than law among us, determines whether a man is of kin to his mother and her relatives alone, or to his father and father's relatives, or whether both sets of relatives are alike of kin to them,"[309] he is neglecting the whole significance and range of custom. His statement is true analytically, but it is not true anthropologically until we have ascertained what this custom to which he refers really is, whence it is derived, how it has obtained its force, what is its range of action, how it operates in differentiating among the various groups of mankind—in a word, what is the human history associated with this custom.

We must, however, at certain points in anthropological inquiry have recourse to the conjectural method. Its value lies in the fact that it states, and states clearly, the issue which is before us, and it is always possible to take up the conjectural position and endeavour to ascertain whether the neglected facts of human history which it expresses can be recovered. Its danger lies in the neglect of certain anthropological principles which can only be noted from definite examples, and the significance of which can only be discovered by the handling of definite examples. I will refer to one or two of the principles which I have in mind. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between what is a practice and what is a rule. A practice precedes a rule. A practice incidental to one stage of society must not be confused with a rule, similar to the practice, obtaining in a different stage of society. Again, it must be borne in mind that identity of practice is no certain evidence of parallel stages of culture, and already it has been pointed out that identical practices do not always come from the same causes. Thirdly, it has to be borne in mind that primitive peoples specialise in certain directions to an extreme extent, and correspondingly cause neglect in other directions. The normal, therefore, has to give way to the special, and it is the degree of specialisation and the degree of neglect which are measuring factors of progress; in other words, it is the conscious adoption of certain rules of life with which we alone have to do.

These principles are apt to be wholly neglected, and, indeed, the last-mentioned element in the evolution of human society does not enter into the calculations of analytical anthropologists. They provide for the normal according to scientific ideas of what the normal is. They either neglect or openly reject what cannot be called abnormal, because it appears everywhere, but which they are inclined to treat as abnormal because it does not fit into their accepted lines of development. That which I have ventured to term specialisation and neglect is a great and important feature in anthropology. It obtains everywhere in more or less degree, and accounts for some of the apparently unaccountable facts in savage society, where we are frequently encountered by a comparatively high degree of culture associated with a cruel and debasing system of rites and practices which belong to the lowest savagery. Dr. Haddon has usefully suggested the term "differential evolution" for this phenomenon in the culture history of man,[310] and as I find myself in entire agreement with this distinguished anthropologist as to the facts[311] which call for a special terminology, I gladly adopt his valuable suggestion.

It is advisable to explain this phenomenon by reference to examples, and I will take the point of specialisation first. Even where industrial arts have advanced far beyond the primitive stage we are considering, we have the case of the Ahts, with whom "though living only a few miles apart, the tribes practise different arts and have apparently distinct tribal characteristics. One tribe is skilful in shaping canoes, another in painting boards for ornamental work, or making ornaments for the person, or instruments for hunting and fishing. Individuals as a rule keep to the arts for which their tribe has some repute, and do not care to acquire those arts in which other tribes excel. There seems to be among all the tribes in the island a sort of recognised tribal monopoly in certain articles produced, or that have been long manufactured in their own district. For instance, a tribe that does not grow potatoes, or make a particular kind of mat, will go a long way year after year to barter for those articles, which if they liked they themselves could easily produce or manufacture."[312] The remarkable case of the Todas specialising in cattle rearing and dairy farming is another example. Other people, both higher and lower in civilisation than the Todas, keep cattle and know the value of milk, but it is reserved for the Todas alone to have used this particular economic basis of their existence as the basis also of their social formation and their religious life.[313] The result is that they neglect other forms of social existence. They are not totemists, though perhaps they have the undeveloped germs of totemistic beliefs.[314] Their classificatory system of relationship makes their actual kinship scarcely recognisable; they "have very definite restrictions on the freedom of individuals to marry," and have a two-class endogamous division, but their marriage rite is merely the selection of nominal fathers for their children.[315] Throughout the careful study which we now possess, thanks to Dr. Rivers, of this people, there is the dominant note of dairy economy superimposing itself upon all else, and even religion seems to be in a state of decadence.[316] I do not know that anywhere else could be found a stronger example of the results of extreme specialisation upon the social and mental condition of a people. As a rule such specialisation does not extend to a whole people, but rather to sections, as, for instance, among the Gold Coast tribes of Africa who "transmit the secret of their skill from father to son and keep the corporation to which they belong up to a due degree of closeness by avoiding intermarriage with any of the more unskilled labourers,"[317] and Dr. Bucher, who has worked out many of the earliest conditions of primitive economics, concludes that it may be safely claimed that every "tribe displays some favourite form of industrial activity in which its members surpass the other tribes."[318] This rule extends to the lowest type of man, as, for instance, among the Australians. Each tribe of the Narrinyeri, says Taplin, have been accustomed to make those articles which their tract of country enabled them to produce most easily; one tribe will make weapons, another mats, and a third nets, and then they barter them one with another.[319]

The evidence for industrial evolution is full of cases such as these, and they are extremely important to note, because it is not the mere existence of particular customs or particular beliefs among different peoples which is the factor to take into account, but the use or non-use, and the extent of the use or non-use, to which the particular customs or beliefs are put in each case.[320] Let me turn from the phenomenon of over-specialisation to that of neglect, and for this purpose I will take the simple fact of blood kinship. Existing obviously everywhere through the mother, and not obviously but admittedly through the father among most primitive peoples, there are examples where both maternal kinship and paternal kinship are neglected factors in the construction of the social group. The Nahals of Khandesh, for instance, neglect kinship altogether, and exist perfectly wild among the mountains, subsisting chiefly on roots, fruits, and berries, though the children during infancy accompany the mother in her unattached freedom from male control,[321] just as Herodotos describes the condition of the Auseans "before the Hellenes were settled near them."[322] Similarly, among many primitive peoples, kinship with the mother is recognised while kinship with the father is purposely neglected as a social factor. Thus, among the Khasia Hill people, the husband visits his wife occasionally in her own home, where "he seems merely entertained to continue the family to which his wife belongs."[323] This statement, so peculiarly appropriate to my purpose, is not merely an accident of language. With the people allied to the Khasis, namely, the Syntengs and the people of Maoshai, "the husband does not go and live in his mother-in-law's house; he only visits her there. In Jowai, the husband came to his mother-in-law's house only after dark," and the explanation of the latest authority is that among these people "the man is nobody ... if he be a husband he is looked upon merely as u shong kha, a begetter."[324]

The neglect of maternal and paternal kinship respectively in these two cases is obvious. They are recognised physically. But they are not used as part of the fabric of social institutions. Physical motherhood or fatherhood is nothing to these people, and one must learn to understand that there is wide difference between the mere physical fact of having a mother and father, and the political fact of using this kinship for social organisation. Savages who have not learnt the political significance have but the scantiest appreciation of the physical fact. The Australians, for instance, have no term to express the relationship between mother and child. This is because the physical fact is of no significance, and not as Mr. Thomas thinks because of the meagreness of the language.[325] Our field anthropologists do not quite understand the savage in this respect. It is of no use preparing a genealogical tree on the basis of civilised knowledge of genealogy if such a document is beyond the ken of the people to whom it relates. The information for it may be correctly collected, but if the whole structure is not within the compass of savage thought it is a misleading anthropological document. It is of no use translating a native term as "father," if father did not mean to the savage what it means to us. It might mean something so very different. With us, fatherhood connotes a definite individual with all sorts of social, economical, and political associations, but what does it mean to the savage? It may mean physical fatherhood and nothing more, and physical fatherhood may be a fact of the veriest insignificance. It may mean social fatherhood, where all men of a certain status are fathers to all children of the complementary status, and social fatherhood thus becomes much more than we can understand by the term father.

We cannot ignore the evidence which over-specialisation in one direction and neglect in other directions supply to anthropology. It shows us that human societies cannot always be measured in the scale of culture by the most apparent of the social elements contained in them. The cannibalism of the Fijians, the art products of the Maori, the totemism of the Australian blacks, do not express all that makes up the culture of these people, although it too often happens that they are made to do duty for the several estimates of culture progress. It follows that a survey of the different human societies might reveal examples of the possible lowest in the scale as well as various advances from the lowest; or in lieu of whole societies in the lowest scale, there might be revealed unexceptional examples of the possible lowest elements of culture within societies not wholly in the lowest scale. It will be seen how valuable an asset this must be in anthropological research. It justifies those who assert that existing savagery or existing survival will supply evidence of man at the very earliest stages of existence. It is the root idea of Dr. Tylor's method of research, and it is an essential feature in the science of folklore.

Evidence of this nature, however, needs to be exhaustively collected, and to be subjected to the most careful examination, as otherwise it may be used for the merest a priori argument of the most mischievous and inconclusive description. It involves consideration of whole human groups rather than of particular sections of each human group, of the whole corpus of social, religious, and economical elements residing in each human group rather than of the separated items. Each human group, having its specialised and dormant elements, must be treated as an organism and not as a bundle of separable items, each one of which the student may use or let alone as he desires. That which is anthropological evidence is the indivisible organism, and whenever, for convenience of treatment and considerations of space, particular elements only are used in evidence, they must be qualified, and the use to which they are provisionally put for scientific purposes must be checked, by the associated elements with which the particular elements are connected.

The human groups thus called upon to surrender their contributions to the history of man are of various formations, and consist of various kinds of social units. There is no one term which can properly be applied to all, and it will have been noted that I have carefully avoided giving the human groups hitherto dealt with any particular name, and only under protest have I admitted the terms used by the authorities I have quoted. I think the term "tribe" is not applicable to savage society, for it is used to denote peoples in all degrees of social evolution, and merely stands for the group which is known by a given name, or roams over a given district. But the use of this term is not so productive of harm as the use of the term "family," because of the universal application of this term to the smallest social unit of the civilised world, and because of the fundamental difference of structure of the units which roughly answer to the definition of family in various parts of the world. It is no use in scientific matters to use terms of inexact reference. As much as almost anything else it has led to false conclusions as to the evolution of the family, conclusions which seem to entangle even the best authorities in a mass of contradictions. I cannot think of a family group in savagery with father, mother, sons, and daughters, all delightfully known to each other, in terms which also belong to the civilised family, and still less can I think of these terms being used to take in the extended grouping of local kinships. One of our greatest difficulties, indeed, is the indiscriminate use of kinship terms by our descriptive authorities. We are never quite sure whether the physical relationships included in them convey anything whatever to the savage. If he knows of the physical fact, he does not use it politically, for blood kinship as a political force is late, not early, and the early tie was dependent upon quite other circumstances. Over and over again it will be found stated by established authorities that the family was the primal unit, the grouped families forming the larger clan, the grouped clans forming the larger tribe. This is Sir Henry Maine's famous formula, and it is the basis of his investigation into early law and custom.[326] It is founded upon the false conception of the family in early history, and upon a too narrow interpretation of the stages of evolution. When we are dealing with savage society, the terms family and tribe do not connote the same institution as when we are dealing with higher forms of civilisation. There is something roughly corresponding to these groupings in both systems, but they do not actually equate. When we pass to the Semitic and the Aryan-speaking peoples, both the family and tribe have assumed a definite place in the polity of the races which is not to be found outside these peoples.

So strongly has the family impressed itself upon the thought of the age that students of man in his earliest ages are found stating that "the family is the most ancient and the most sacred of human institutions."[327] This proposition, however, is not only denied by other authorities, as, for instance, Mr. Jevons, who affirms that "the family is a comparatively late institution in the history of society,"[328] but it rests upon the merely analytical basis of research, separated entirely from those facts of man's history which are discoverable by the means just now suggested. One is, of course, quite prepared to find the family among civilisations older than the Indo-European, and yet to find that it is a comparatively late institution among Indo-European peoples. As a matter of fact, this is the case; for the two kinds of family, the family as seen in savage society and the family as it appears among the antiquities of the Indo-European people, are totally distinct in origin, in compass, and in force; while welded between the two kinds of family is the whole institution of the tribe. It is no use introducing the theory adopted by Grote, Niebuhr, Mommsen, Thirlwall, Maine, and other authorities who have studied the legal antiquities of classical times, that the tribe is the aggregate of original family units. Later on I shall show that this cannot be the case. The larger kinship of the tribe is a primary unit of ancient society, which thrusts itself between the savage family and the civilised family, showing that the two types are separated by a long period of history during which the family did not exist.