Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/55

 SOCIOLOGY AND HOMER 41

been a modern, known to all, who wrote these poems, it would be hard to make out such a bias. Racial contrast certainly appears, but not in any very disconcerting or confusing form.

Caste bias remains ; and the forms in which it is wont to vitiate ancient evidence such as that of the epic are, in general, two : the sacerdotal and the military. These are perfectly nor- mal and natural, under primitive and ancient conditions, where the shaman and the chief (in a time of much violence) are the culmination of earthly power. Both are bulwarks in the struggle for existence in this life ; and the former even carries over his efficiency into the next. A chronicler of any early period is scarcely likely to be other than a religious or a military chroni- cler; if he is a shaman or warrior himself, he will, of course, exalt his specialty and profession ; if he is neither priest nor king, he must still range himself with one or the other, or with both in one if the political form is theocratic. Under any condi- tions the representation of the society which he gives is likely to be one-sided, and this is a grievous fault. It limits the field of information it renders imperative the liberal discounting of what is given. What sociologist would not wish to hear more of the intimate, commonplace life of the mediaeval Germans or Franks, or of the Chinese of the time of Confucius? Who would not trade a dozen volumes of accounts of pious monkish exercises for a few pages on the intimate life of the institution in which they were held?

Homer is first of all singularly free from the sacerdotal bias. The study of the poems reveals no specialized priesthood of any importance ; the sacerdotal function scarcely existed where men dealt directly with their gods. Nor does the narrative of Homer return with constant and anxious iteration to the demands of a gloomy and exacting cult. Though deeply religious, the people of Homer seem to have had time for something else in life. It is interesting to speculate as to whether the Hebrews would not be found to have enjoyed life more genially and generally than some of their latter-day imitators have fancied, had all their chroniclers been as free of religious bias as he of the Song of Songs. It is here, as it seems to me, that Homer surpasses the