The inner life of a given ethnical group comprises economic or property organisation, and social organisation properly so called (administration and politics). Ideas of morals, right, and justice depend much on the forms which these organisations have taken, as well as on usages and customs; and the latter in their turn are derived principally from family organisation and religious ideas.
The international life of peoples manifests itself in three different ways: either in hostile relations (war), in pacific neutral relations (commerce), or in sympathetic relations (exchange of ideas and feelings, feasts, congresses, etc.).
Inner Life of a People—Economic Organisation.—The system by which property is held depends on the mode of production, for the distribution and consumption of wealth are in intimate relation with the mode of procuring it. Among savage hunters it is often necessary for several to combine to catch big game; thus Australians hunt the kangaroo in bands of several dozen individuals; the Eskimo gather quite a flotilla of kayaks for whale-fishing. The captured kangaroos, the whale brought to shore, are considered common property; each eats of the spoil according to his hunger. The territory of each tribe among the Australians and Red Indians is considered collective property; every one hunts on it in his own way, on condition that he does not encroach on the territory of neighbouring tribes. But in the midst of this common property certain objects used solely by the individual, his garments, his weapons, etc., are considered personal property, while the tent with its furniture, etc., belongs to the family; as the canoe which is used for whale fishing, holding five or six persons, belongs to these persons in common.
Thus in the same society three sorts of property, collective, family, and individual, may exist simultaneously side by side. What decides its category is the character of the labour expended, the mode of production. I have made a flint implement with my own hands, it is mine; with the assistance of my wife and children I have built the hut, it belongs to the family; I have hunted with the people of my tribe, the beasts slain belong to us all in common. The animals which I have killed by myself on the territory of the tribe are mine, and if by chance the animal wounded by me escapes and is killed by another, it belongs to both of us and the skin is his who gave the finishing stroke. For this reason each arrow bears the mark of its owner.
It is thus that matters are arranged among the Tunguses and North American Indians. Among the latter, rules have been strictly laid down in regard to bison-hunting from the point of view of individual property.[287]
But since the introduction of fire-arms, the balls bearing no distinctive marks, the slain bisons are divided equally; they are considered as common property. This example shows plainly how closely are related production and the system by which property is held. Common and private property do not lead among savages to monopoly, for the products of the chase cannot be kept for long without getting spoilt; so after having taken what he wants for himself, the hunter gives the remainder to his relatives, his family, or the tribe. It is this which partly explains the carelessness of savages and the absence among them of the spirit of thrift and thought for the future.
Family Property.—With the introduction of agriculture, most of the objects of personal property become family property; the transformation frequently coincides with the appearance of the patriarchal form of family life; the land still remains for some time common property, but soon it likewise becomes family property. The members of the same family group enjoy in common the products of the soil, which common labour has fertilised. This mode of property existed in Russia before the sixteenth century, that is to say, before the establishment of the communal ownership of the soil still in vogue to-day. It is found in England from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century (Seebohm), and in certain parts of France (in the Nivernais, according to the statement of Guy Coquille) in the form of “porçonneries” having “pot and fire” in common, working in the same fields and accumulating their savings in the same box.[288] With the growth of population, this family joint-ownership developed into an agricultural commune, the true “village community” of English authors, with the alienation of holdings and the admission of strangers into its midst, with periodic distributions of the various strips of land. The best type of this kind of community is the Russian “mir.” In India it is met with side by side with the family commune among the Dravidian and Aryan peoples, and in Western Europe numerous traces of it are found.[289] But these are only traces and survivals, for communal property has been destroyed here as in the Mussulman world, often by means of force, with the establishment of the feudal system, which gave birth to the different modes of land tenure which we find to-day. In Russia and in India the dissolution of the communal system is still taking place under our eyes, but from intrinsically different causes, especially the rapid increase of population and diminution of the size of holdings.
Social Organisation.—The constitution of society is modelled on that of property. In the simplest cases the family organisation is at the same time the social organisation. Under the régime of group marriage, and even after its partial replacement by individual marriage, tribes are divided into a certain number of clans, each of which, with the majority of peoples, has its totem. The totem is a class of material objects (never an isolated object, thus differing from the fetish) for which uncivilised man professes a superstitious veneration, believing in a sort of mysterious connection between himself and each representative of the class of objects. Most frequently the totem is some species of animal or vegetable which the members of the clan regard as their ancestor, and also as the patron and protector of the whole clan. The Iroquoian legends relate circumstantially how the tortoise, their totem and ancestor, got rid of its shell and gradually developed into man. The totem is represented on different objects belonging to the clan. Our blazons and armorial bearings are derived from the totem, as well as marks of ownership. The totemistic divisions are independent of the territorial divisions of the tribe; the connection is, rather, a moral one. The inhabitants of a territorial district may belong to several clans, and, on the other hand, the members of one and the same “totem” may inhabit places distant from each other.
Nearly always the totem is subject to taboo[290] (page [252]). The social organisation of clans and “phratries” (groups of clans of which the members are intermarriable) joined to totemism is widespread among North American Indians, Australians, Melanesians of the Solomon Islands, the Tshi-speaking tribes of the Gold Coast, etc. It exists side by side with other social organisations among the Kirghis, the Kevsurs of the Caucasus (Kovalewsky), the Mandingoes (Binger), etc. Under this primitive régime there are no permanent chiefs, but intermittent councils, formed of the “old men” in each clan. If several clans are united into a tribe, an elective chief sometimes appears, but always invested with only a temporary and very limited power.
Family Organisation.—With the change from the hunting to the agricultural mode of life, with the establishment of affiliation by blood and the patriarchal family, with the constitution of family ownership, the social organisation is also transformed. All the members of the family gathered under the same roof (often in the literal sense of the word; for example, among the Indonesians and the Pueblo Indians) constitute the social unit. Such is the origin of the commune in China and Japan, of the “fine” in Ireland, etc. The chief of the race, the living “ancestor,” becomes the chief of the society, and his power tends to become hereditary.[291]