Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/402

386 which are established still earlier in creatures lower than man, there are established certain modes of behavior expressing subjection.

After recognizing this fact, we shall be prepared to recognize the fact that daily intercourse among the lowest savages, whose small, loose groups, scarcely to be called social, are without political or religious regulation, is under a considerable amount of ceremonial regulation. No ruling agency, beyond that arising from personal superiority, characterizes the scattered hordes of Australians; but they have imperative ceremonies. Strangers meeting have to remain some time silent; a mile from an encampment approach must be heralded by loud "cooeys;" a green bough is used as an emblem of "peace; and brotherly feeling is indicated by exchange of names. So the Tasmanians, similarly without government save that implied by predominance of a leader during war, had settled ways of indicating peace and defiance. The Esquimaux, too, though without social ranks or anything like chieftainship, have understood usages for the treatment of guests.

Kindred evidence may be joined with this. Ceremonial control is highly developed in many places where the other forms of control are but rudimentary. The wild Comanche "exacts the observance of his rules of etiquette from strangers," and "is greatly offended" by any breach of them. When Araucanians meet, the inquiries, felicitations, and condolences, which custom demands are so elaborate, that "the formality occupies ten or fifteen minutes." Of the ungoverned Bedouins we read that "their manners are sometimes dashed with a strange ceremoniousness;" and the salutations of Arabs are such that the "compliments in a well-bred man never last less than ten minutes." "We were particularly struck," says Livingstone, "with the punctiliousness of manners shown by the Balonda." "The Malagasy have many different forms of salutation, of which they make liberal use. . . . Hence in their general intercourse there is much that is stiff, formal, and precise." A Samoan orator, when speaking in parliament, "is not contented with a mere word of salutation, such as 'gentlemen,' but he must, with great minuteness, go over the names and titles, and a host of ancestral references, of which they are proud."

That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues ever to be the most widely-diffused form of restraint, we are shown by such facts as that in all intercourse between societies, civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous, as well as in all intercourse between members of each society, the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this government of observances. The embassy may fail, negotiation may be brought to a close by war, coercion of one society by another may set up wider political rule with its peremptory commands; but there is habitually this more general and vague regulation of conduct preceding the more special and definite.