On the whole, however – for I have only quoted
these two instances to show the unscientific character of early philology
– we may say that this important instrument in recreating the history of the
past was not really used by the ancients as a means of historical criticism.
Nor did the ancients employ that other method, used to such advantage in our
own day, by which in the symbolism and formulas of an adavanced civilisation
we can detect the unconscious survival of ancient customs: for whereas in
the sham capture of the bride at a marriage feast, which was common in Wales
till a recent time, we can discern the lingering reminiscence of the barbarous
habit of exogamy, the ancient writers saw only the deliberate commemoration
of an historical event.
Aristotle does not tell us by what method he discovered that the Greeks used
to buy their wives in primitive times, but, judging by his general principles,
it was probably through some legend or myth on the subject which lasted to
his own day, and not, as we would do, by arguing back from the marriage presents
given to the bride and her relatives [the fictitious sale in the Roman marriage
per coemptionem].
The origin of the common proverb "worth so many beeves," in which
we discern the unconscious survival of a purely pastoral state of society
before the use of metals was known, is ascribed by Plutarch to the fact of
Theseus having coined money bearing a bull's head. Similarly, the Amathusian
festival, in which a young man imitated the labours of a woman in travail,
is regarded by him as a rite instituted in Ariadne's honour, and the Carian
adoration of asparagus as a simple commemoration of the adventure of the nymph
Perigune. In the first of these we discern the beginning of agnation and kinsmanship
through the father, which still lingers in the "couvee" of New Zealand
tribes: while the second is a relic of the totem and fetish worship of plants.
Now, in the entire opposition to this modern inductive principle of research
stands the philosophic Plato, whose account of primitive man is entirely speculative
and deductive.
The origin of society he ascribes to necessity, the mother of all inventions,
and imagines that individual man began deliberately to herd together on account
of the advantages of the principle of division of labour and the rendering
of mutual need.
It must, however, be borne in mind that Plato's object in this whole passage
of the Republic was, perhaps, not so much to analyse the conditions of early
society as to illustrate the importance of the division of labour, the shibboleth
of his political economy, by showing what a powerful factor it must have been
in the most primitive as well as in the most complex states of society; just
as in the Laws he almost rewrites entirely the history of the Peloponnesus
in order to prove the necessity of a balance of power. He surely, I mean,
must have recognised himself how essentially incomplete his theory was in
taking no account of the origin of family life, the position and influence
of women, and other social questions, as well as in disregarding those deeper
motives of religion, which are such important factors in early civilisation,
and whose influence Aristotle seems to have clearly apprehended, when he says
that the aim of primitive society was not merely life but the higher life,
and that in the origin of society utility is not the sole motive, but that
there is something spiritual in it if, at least, spiritual will bring out
the meaning of that complex expression to; kalovn [the good and beautiful].
Otherwise the whole account in the Republic of primitive man will always remain
as a warning against the intrusion of a priori speculation in the domain appropriate
to induction.
Now, Aristotle's theory of the origin of society, like his philosophy of ethics,
rests ultimately on the principle of final causes, not in the theological
meaning of an aim or tendency imposed from without, but in the scientific
sense of function corresponding to organ. "Nature maketh no thing in
vain" is the text of Aristotle in this as in other inquiries. Man being
the only animal possessed of the power of rational speech is, he asserts,
by nature intended to be social, more so than the bee or any other gregarious
animal.
He is fuvsei politikov" [by nature adapted to living in an orderly community],
and the national tendency towards higher forms of perfection brings the "armed
savage who used to sell his wife" to the free independence of a free
state, and to the ijsovth" tou' a[rcein kai; tou' a[rcesqai [the equality
of the governor and the governed], which was the test of true citizenship.
The stages passed through by humanity start with the family first as the ultimate
unit.
The conglomeration of families forms a village ruled by that patriarchal sway
which is the oldest form of government in the world, as is shown by the fact
that all men count it to be the constitution of heaven, and the villages are
merged into the state, and here the progression stops.
For Aristotle, like all Greek thinkers, found his ideal within te walls of
the povli" [city-state], yet perhaps in his remark that a united Greece
would rule the world we may discern some anticipation of that "federal
union of free states into one consolidated empire," which, more than
the povli" is to our eyes the ultimate perfect polity.
How far Aristotle was justified in regarding the family as the ultimate unit,
with the materials afforded to him by Greek literature, I have already noticed.
Besides, Aristotle, I may remark, had he reflected on the meaning of that
Athenian law which, while prohibiting marriage with a uterine sister, permitted
it with a sister-german, or on the common tradition in Athens that before
the time of Cecrops children bore their mothers' names, or on some of the
Spartan regulations, could hardly have failed to see the universality of kinsmanship
through women in early days, and the late appearance of monandry. Yet, while
he missed this point, in common, it must be ackowledged, with many modern
writers, such as Sir Henry Maine, it is essentially as an explorer of inductive
instances that we recognise his improvement on Plato. The treatise Peri; politeiw'n
[concerning forms of government], did it remain to us in its entirety, would
have been one of the most valuable landmarks in the progress of historical
criticism, and the first scientific treatise on the science of comparative
politics.
A few fragments still remain to us, in one of which we find Aristotle appealing
to the authority of an ancient inscription on the "Disk of Iphitus",
one of the most celebrated Greek antiquities, to corroborate his theory of
the Lycurgean revival of the Olympian festival; while his enormous research
is evinced in the elaborate explanation he gives of the historical origin
of proverbs such as oujdei;" mevga" kako;" ijcqu'" [no
big fish is bad], of religious songs like the ijw'men ej" jAqhvna"
[let us go to Athens] of the Botticean virgins, or the praises of love and
war.
And, finally, it is to be observed how much wider than Plato's his theory
of the origin of society is. They both rest on a psychological basis, but
Aristotle's recognition of the capacity for progress and the tendency towards
a higher life, shows how much deeper his knowledge of human nature was.
In imitation of these two philosophers, Polybios gives an account of the origin
of society in the opening to his philosophy of history. Somewhat in the spirit
of Plato, he imagines that after one of the cyclic deluges which sweep off
mankind at stated periods and annihilate all pre-existing civilisation, the
few surviving members of humanity coalesce for mutual protection, and, as
in the case with ordinary animals, the one and most remarkable for physical
strength is elected king. In a short time, owing to the workings of sympathy
and the desire of approbation, the moral qualities begin to make their appearance,
and intellectual instead of bodily excellence becomes the qualification for
sovereignty.
Other points, as the rise of law and the like, are dwelt on in a somewhat
modern spirit, and although Polybios seems not to have employed the inductive
method of research in this question, or rather, I should say, of the hierarchical
order of the rational progress of ideas in life, he is not far removed from
what the laborious investigations of modern travellers have given us.
And, indeed, as regards the working of the speculative faculty in the creation
of history, it is in all respects marvellous how that the most truthful accounts
of the passage from barbarism to civilisation in ancient literature come from
the works of poets. The elaborate researches of Mr. Taylor and Sir John Lubbock
have done little more than verify the theories put forward in the Prometheus
Bound and the De Natura Rerum; yet neither Aeschylus nor Lucretius followed
in the modern path, but rather attained to truth by a certain almost mystic
power of creative imagination, such as we now seek to banish from science
as a dangerous power, though to it science seems to owe many of its splendid
generalities. Notably, of course, in the case of heat and its laws.
Leaving then the question of the origin of society as treated by the ancients,
I shall now turn to the other and the more important question of how far they
may be said to have attained to what we call the philosophy of history.
Now at the outset we must note that, while the conceptions of law and order
have been universally received as the governing principles of the phenomena
of nature in the sphere of physical science, yet their intrusion into the
domain of history and the life of man has always been met with a strong opposition,
on the human action, a certain causeless spontaneity which men call free will,
and the extra-natural interference which they attribute as a constant attribute
to God.
Now that there is a science of the apparently variable phenomena of history
is a conception which we have perhaps only recently begun to appreciate; yet,
like all other great thoughts, it seems to have come to the Greek mind spontaneously,
through a certain splendour of imagination, in the morning tide of their civilisation,
before inductive research had armed them with the instruments of verification.
For I think it is possible to discern in some of the mystic speculations of
the early Greek thinkers that desire to discover what is that "invariable
existence of which there are variable states." and to incorporate it
in some one formula of law which may serve to explain the different manifestations
of all organic bodies, man included, which is the germ of the philosophy of
history; the germ indeed of an idea of which it is not too much to say that
on it any kind of historical criticism, worthy of the name, must ultimately
rest.
For the very first requisite for any scientific conception of history is the
doctrine of uniform sequence; in other words, that certain events having happened,
certain other events corresponding to them will happen also; that the past
is the key of the future.
Now at the birth of this great conception science, it is true, presided, yet
religion it was which at the ouset clothed it in its own garb and familiarised
men with it by appealing to their hearts and then to their intellects; knowing
that at the beginning of things it is through the moral nature, and not through
the intellectual, that great truths are spread.
So in Herodotus, who may be taken as a representative of the orthodox tone
of thought, the idea of the uniform sequence of cause and effect appears under
the theological aspect of Nemesis and Providence, which is really the scientific
conception of law, only it is viewed from an ethical standpoint.
Now in Thucydides the philosophy of history rests on the probability, which
the uniformity of human nature affords us, that the future will in the course
of human things resemble the past, if not reproduce it. He appears to contemplate
a recurrence of the phenomena of history as equally certain with a return
of the epidemic of the Great Plague.
TO BE CONTINUED