Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/790

770 action that failure and subjugation, will, other things equal, be likely to result. Hence the sentiment of patriotism will be established by the survival of societies the members of which are most characterized by it.

With this there needs to be united the instinct of obedience. The possibility of that united action by which, other things equal, war is made successful, depends on the readiness of individuals to subordinate their wills to the will of a commander or ruler. Loyalty is essential. In early stages the manifestation of it is but temporary, as among the Araucanians, who, ordinarily showing themselves "repugnant to all subordination, are then (when war is impending) prompt to obey, and submissive to the will of their military sovereign" appointed for the occasion. And with development of the militant type this sentiment becomes permanent. Thus, Erskine tells us that the Feejeeans are intensely loyal: men buried alive in the foundations of a king's house considered themsevesthemselves [sic] honored by being so sacrificed; and the people of a slave district "said it was their duty to become food and sacrifice for the chiefs." So in Dahomey there is felt for the king "a mixture of love and fear, little short of adoration." In ancient Egypt, again, where "blind obedience was the oil which caused the harmonious working of the machinery" of social life, the monuments on every side show with wearisome iteration the daily acts of subordination—of slaves and others to the dead man, of captives to the king, of the king to the gods. Though, for reasons already pointed out, chronic war did not generate in Sparta a supreme political head, to whom there could be shown implicit obedience, yet the obedience shown to the political agency which grew up was profound: individual wills were in all things subordinate to the public will expressed by the established authorities. In primitive Rome, too, in the absence of a divinely-descended king to whom submission could be shown, there was submission to an appointed king, qualified only by expressions of opinion on special occasions; and the principle of absolute obedience, slightly mitigated in the relations of the community as a whole to its ruling agency, was unmitigated within its component groups. And that throughout European history, alike on small and on large scales, we see the sentiment of loyalty dominant where the militant type of structure is pronounced, is a truth that will be admitted without detailed proof.

From these conspicuous traits of nature let us turn to certain consequent traits which are less conspicuous, and which have results of less manifest kinds. Along with loyalty naturally goes faith—the two being, indeed, scarcely separable. Readiness to obey the commander in war implies belief in his military abilities; and readiness to obey him during peace implies belief that his abilities extend to civil affairs also. Imposing on men's imaginations, each new conquest augments his authority. There come more frequent and more decided