Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/151

Rh "Social Types" will scarcely need reminding that in various parts of the world we find social groups without heads, as the Fuegians, some Australians, most Esquimaux, the Arafuras, the Land Dyaks of the Upper Sarawak River; others with headships that are but occasional, as Tasmanians, some Australians, some Caribs, some Uaupés; and many others with vague and unstable headships, as the Andamanese, Abipones, Snakes, Chippewyans, Chinooks, Chippeways, some Kamtchatdales, Guiana tribes, Mandans, Coroados, New Guinea people, Tannese. Though it is true that in some of these cases the communities are of the lowest, I see no adequate reason for excluding them from our conception of "the infancy of society." And even saying nothing of these, we cannot regard as lower than infantine in their stages those communities which, like the Upper Sarawak Dyaks, the Arafuras, the New Guinea people, carry on their peaceful lives without other government than that of public opinion and custom. Moreover, as has been pointed out, what headship exists in many simple groups is not patriarchal. Such chieftainship as arose among the Tasmanians in time of war was determined by personal fitness. So, too, according to Edwards, with the Caribs, and, according to Swan, with the Creeks. Then, still further showing that political authority does not always begin with patriarchal authority, we have the Iroquois, whose system of kinship negatives the genesis of patriarchs, and who yet have developed a complex republican government; and we have the Pueblos, who, living in well-organized communities under elected governors and councils, show no signs of patriarchal rule in the past.

Another component of the doctrine is that, originally, property is held by the family as a corporate body. According to Sir Henry Maine, "one peculiarity invariably distinguishing the infancy of society" is that "men are regarded and treated not as individuals but always as members of the particular group." The man was not "regarded as himself, as a distinct individual. This individuality was swallowed up in his family." And this alleged primitive submergence of the individual affects even the absolute ruler of the group. "Though the patriarch, for we must not yet call him the paterfamilias, had rights thus extensive, it is impossible to doubt that he lay under an equal amplitude of obligations. If he governed the family it was for its behoof. If he was lord of its possessions, he held them as trustee for his children and kindred . . . the family, in fact, was a corporation; and he was its representative." Here, after expressing the doubt whether there can exist in the primitive mind ideas so abstract as those of trusteeship and representation, I go on to remark that this hypothesis involves a conception difficult to frame. For while the patriarch is said to hold his possessions "in a representative rather than a proprietary character," he is said to have unqualified dominion over children, as over slaves, extending to life