Folkways. William Graham Sumner
Читать онлайн книгу.
and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for the latter (see sec. 9).
7. All origins are lost in mystery. No objection can lie against this postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be raised. We go up the stream of history to the utmost point for which we have evidence of its course. Then we are forced to reach out into the darkness upon the line of direction marked by the remotest course of the historic stream. This is the way in which we have to act in regard to the origin of capital, language, the family, the state, religion, and rights. We never can hope to see the beginning of any one of these things. Use and wont are products and results. They had antecedents. We never can find or see the first member of the series. It is only by analysis and inference that we can form any conception of the "beginning" which we are always so eager to find.
8. Spencer on primitive custom. Spencer4 says that "guidance by custom, which we everywhere find amongst rude peoples, is the sole conceivable guidance at the outset." Custom is the product of concurrent action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem to begin because the mass wants to act together. The less they know what it is right and best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an incident in nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current doctrines of ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the action begins the men are never conscious of historical action, or of the historical importance of what they are doing. When they become conscious of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is already far behind.
9. Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness. There are in nature numerous antagonistic forces of growth or production and destruction. The interests of man are between the two and may be favored or ruined by either. Correct knowledge of both is required to get the advantages and escape the injuries. Until the knowledge becomes adequate the effects which are encountered appear to be accidents or cases of luck. There is no thrift in nature. There is rather waste. Human interests require thrift, selection, and preservation. Capital is the condition precedent of all gain in security and power, and capital is produced by selection and thrift. It is threatened by all which destroys material goods. Capital is therefore the essential means of man's power over nature, and it implies the purest concept of the power of intelligence to select and dispose of the processes of nature for human welfare. All the earliest efforts in this direction were blundering failures. Men selected things to be desired and preserved under impulses of vanity and superstition, and misconceived utility and interest. The errors entered into the folkways, formed a part of them, and were protected by them. Error, accident, and luck seem to be the only sense there is in primitive life. Knowledge alone limits their sway, and at least changes the range and form of their dominion. Primitive folkways are marked by improvidence, waste, and carelessness, out of which prudence, foresight, patience, and perseverance are developed slowly, by pain and loss, as experience is accumulated, and knowledge increases also, as better methods seem worth while. The consequences of error and the effects of luck were always mixed. As we have seen, the ills of life were connected with the displeasure of the ghosts. Per contra, conduct which conformed to the will of the ghosts was goodness, and was supposed to bring blessing and prosperity. Thus a correlation was established, in the faith of men, between goodness and happiness, and on that correlation an art of happiness was built. It consisted in a faithful performance of rites of respect towards superior powers and in the use of lucky times, places, words, etc., with avoidance of unlucky ones. All uncivilized men demand and expect a specific response. Inasmuch as they did not get it, and indeed the art of happiness always failed of results, the great question of world philosophy always has been, What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none. The whole strength of the notion that they are correlated is in the opposite experience which proves that no evil thing brings happiness. The oldest religious literature consists of formulas of worship and prayer by which devotion and obedience were to produce satisfaction of the gods, and win favor and prosperity for men.5 The words "ill" and "evil" have never yet thrown off the ambiguity between wickedness and calamity. The two ideas come down to us allied or combined. It was the rites which were the object of tradition, not the ideas which they embodied.6
10. Illustrations. The notions of blessing and curse are subsequent explanations by men of great cases of prosperity or calamity which came to their knowledge. Then the myth-building imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account for the prosperity or calamity.7 The Greek notion of the Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of Crœsus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Crœsus had done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was very pious and lived by the rules of religion. The story is told in different forms. "The people could not make up their minds that a prince who had been so liberal to the gods during his prosperity had been abandoned by them at the moment when he had the greatest need of their aid."8 They said that he expiated the crime of his ancestor Gyges, who usurped the throne; that is, they found it necessary to adduce some guilt to account for the facts, and they introduced the notion of hereditary responsibility. Another story was that he determined to sacrifice all his wealth to the gods. He built a funeral pyre of it all and mounted it himself, but rain extinguished it. The gods were satisfied. Crœsus afterwards enjoyed the friendship of Cyros, which was good fortune. Still others rejected the doctrines of correlation between goodness and happiness on account of the fate of Crœsus. In ancient religion "the benefits which were expected from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished, the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."9 Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.10 This is like the case of Œdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the mouths of prophets.11 Hezekiah expostulated with God because, although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had done what was right in His sight, he suffered calamity.12 In the seventy-third Psalm, the author is perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked, and the contrast of his own fortunes. "Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in innocency, for all day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning." He says that at last the wicked were cast down. He was brutish and ignorant not to see the solution. It is that the wicked prosper for a time only. He will cleave unto God. The book of Job is a discussion of the relation between goodness and happiness. The crusaders were greatly perplexed by the victories of the Mohammedans. It seemed to be proved untrue that God would defend