Page:Man or the State.djvu/22

4 The fact is that all animals, save some beasts and birds of prey and a few species that are in course of extinction, live in societies. In the struggle for existence it is the sociable species that get the better of those that are not. In every class of animals the former occupy the top of the ladder, and there cannot be the least doubt that the first beings of human aspect already lived in societies. Man did not create society; society is anterior to man.

We also know to-day—anthropology has clearly demonstrated it—that the starting point of humanity was not the family but the clan, the tribe. The paternal family such as we have it, or such as it is depicted in Hebrew tradition, appeared only very much later. Men lived tens of thousands of years in the stage of clan or tribe, and during that first stage—let us call it primitive or savage tribe, if you will—man already developed a whole series of institutions, habits, and customs, far anterior to the paternal family institutions. In those tribes the separate family existed no more than it exists among so many other sociable mammalia. Divisions in the midst of the tribe itself were formed by generations; and since the earliest periods of tribal life limitations were established to hinder marriage relations between different generations, while they were freely practiced between members of the same generation. Traces of that period are still extant in certain contemporary tribes, and we find them again in the language, customs, and superstitions of nations who were far more advanced in civilisation.

The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and when they were satisfied they gave themselves up with passion to their dramatic dances. Nowadays we still find tribes very near to this primitive phase, driven back to the outskirts of the large continents, or in Alpine regions, the least accessible of our globe.

The accumulation of private property could not take place, because each thing that had been the personal property of a member of the tribe was destroyed or burned on the spot where his corpse was buried. This is done even now by