Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 104

The effect of it will clearly be to make acceptable those suggestions which come from the herd, and those only. It is of especial importance to note that this suggestibility is not general, and that it is only herd suggestions which are rendered acceptable by the action of instinct.

B. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES

1. The a.n.a.lysis of Blended Cultures[243]

In the a.n.a.lysis of any culture, a difficulty which soon meets the investigator is that he has to determine what is due to mere contact and what is due to intimate intermixture, such intermixture, for instance, as is produced by the permanent blending of one people with another, either through warlike invasion or peaceful settlement. The fundamental weakness of most of the attempts. .h.i.therto made to a.n.a.lyze existing cultures is that they have had their starting-point in the study of material objects, and the reason for this is obvious. Owing to the fact that material objects can be collected by anyone and subjected at leisure to prolonged study by experts, our knowledge of the distribution of material objects and of the technique of their manufacture has very far outrun that of the less material elements. What I wish now to point out is that in distinguis.h.i.+ng between the effects of mere contact and the intermixture of peoples, material objects are the least trustworthy of all the const.i.tuents of culture. Thus in Melanesia we have the clearest evidence that material objects and processes can spread by mere contact, without any true admixture of peoples and without influence on other features of the culture. While the distribution of material objects is of the utmost importance in suggesting at the outset community of culture, and while it is of equal importance in the final process of determining points of contact and in filling in the details of the mixture of cultures, it is the least satisfactory guide to the actual blending of peoples which must form the solid foundation of the ethnological a.n.a.lysis of culture. The case for the value of magico-religious inst.i.tutions is not much stronger. Here, again, in Melanesia there is little doubt that whole cults can pa.s.s from one people to another without any real intermixture of peoples. I do not wish to imply that such religious inst.i.tutions can pa.s.s from people to people with the ease of material objects, but to point out that there is evidence that they can and do so pa.s.s with very little, if any, admixture of peoples or of the deeper and more fundamental elements of the culture. Much more important is language; and if you will think over the actual conditions when one people either visit or settle among another, this greater importance will be obvious. Let us imagine a party of Melanesians visiting a Polynesian island, staying there for a few weeks, and then returning home (and here I am not taking a fict.i.tious occurrence, but one which really happens). We can readily understand that the visitors may take with them their betel-mixture, and thereby introduce the custom of betel-chewing into a new home; we can readily understand that they may introduce an ornament to be worn in the nose and another to be worn on the chest; that tales which they tell will be remembered, and dances they perform will be imitated. A few Milanesian words may pa.s.s into the language of the Polynesian island, especially as names for the objects or processes which the strangers have introduced; but it is incredible that the strangers should thus in a short visit produce any extensive change in the vocabulary, and still more that they should modify the structure of the language. Such changes can never be the result of mere contact or transient settlement but must always indicate a far more deeply seated and fundamental process of blending of peoples and cultures.

Few will perhaps hesitate to accept this position; but I expect my next proposition to meet with more skepticism, and yet I believe it to be widely, though not universally, true. This proposition is that the social structure, the framework of society, is still more fundamentally important and still less easily changed except as the result of the intimate blending of peoples, and for that reason furnishes by far the firmest foundation on which to base the process of a.n.a.lysis of culture.

I cannot hope to establish the truth of this proposition in the course of a brief address, and I propose to draw your attention to one line of evidence only.

At the present moment we have before our eyes an object-lesson in the spread of our own people over the earth's surface, and we are thus able to study how external influence affects different elements of culture.

What we find is that mere contact is able to transmit much in the way of material culture. A pa.s.sing vessel, which does not even anchor, may be able to transmit iron, while European weapons may be used by people who have never even seen a white man. Again, missionaries introduce the Christian religion among people who cannot speak a word of English or any language but their own or only use such European words as have been found necessary to express ideas or objects connected with the new religion. There is evidence how readily language may be affected, and here again the present day suggests a mechanism by which such a change takes place. English is now becoming the language of the Pacific and of other parts of the world through its use as a _lingua franca_, which enables natives who speak different languages to converse not only with Europeans but with one another, and I believe that this has often been the mechanism in the past; that, for instance, the introduction of what we now call the Melanesian structure of language was due to the fact that the language of an immigrant people who settled in a region of great linguistic diversity came to be used as a _lingua franca_, and thus gradually became the basis of the languages of the whole people.

But now let us turn to social structure. We find in Oceania islands where Europeans have been settled as missionaries or traders perhaps for fifty or a hundred years; we find the people wearing European clothes and European ornaments, using European utensils and even European weapons when they fight; we find them holding the beliefs and practicing the ritual of a European religion; we find them speaking a European language, often even among themselves, and yet investigation shows that much of their social structure remains thoroughly native and uninfluenced, not only in its general form, but often even in its minute details. The external influence has swept away the whole material culture, so that objects of native origin are manufactured only to sell to tourists; it has subst.i.tuted a wholly new religion and destroyed every material, if not every moral, vestige of the old; it has caused great modification and degeneration of the old language; and yet it may have left the social structure in the main untouched. And the reasons for this are clear. Most of the essential social structure of a people lies so below the surface, it is so literally the foundation of the whole life of the people, that it is not seen; it is not obvious, but can only be reached by patient and laborious exploration. I will give a few specific instances. In several islands of the Pacific, some of which have had European settlers on them for more than a century, a most important position in the community is occupied by the father's sister.

If any native of these islands were asked who is the most important person in the determination of his life-history, he would answer, "My father's sister"; and yet the place of this relative in the social structure has remained absolutely unrecorded, and, I believe, absolutely unknown, to the European settlers in those islands. Again, Europeans have settled in Fiji for more than a century, and yet it is only during this summer that I have heard from Mr. A. M. Hocart, who is working there at present, that there is the clearest evidence of what is known as the dual organization of society as a working social inst.i.tution at the present time. How un.o.btrusive such a fundamental fact of social structure may be comes home to me in this case very strongly, for it wholly eluded my own observation during a visit three years ago.

Lastly, the most striking example of the permanence of social structure which I have met is in the Hawaiian Islands. There the original native culture is reduced to the merest wreckage. So far as material objects are concerned, the people are like ourselves; the old religion has gone, though there probably still persists some of the ancient magic. The people themselves have so dwindled in number, and the political conditions are so altered, that the social structure has also necessarily been greatly modified, and yet I was able to ascertain that one of its elements, an element which I believe to form the deepest layer of the foundation, the very bedrock of social structure, the system of relations.h.i.+p, is still in use unchanged. I was able to obtain a full account of the system as actually used at the present time, and found it to be exactly the same as that recorded forty years ago by Morgan and Hyde, and I obtained evidence that the system is still deeply interwoven with the intimate mental life of the people.

If, then, social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated character, if it is the least easily changed, and only changed as the result either of actual blending of peoples or of the most profound political changes, the obvious inference is that it is with social structure that we must begin the attempt to a.n.a.lyze culture and to ascertain how far community of culture is due to the blending of peoples, how far to transmission through mere contact or transient settlement.

The considerations I have brought forward have, however, in my opinion an importance still more fundamental. If social inst.i.tutions have this relatively great degree of permanence, if they are so deeply seated and so closely interwoven with the deepest instincts and sentiments of a people that they can only gradually suffer change, will not the study of this change give us our surest criterion of what is early and what is late in any given culture, and thereby furnish a guide for the a.n.a.lysis of culture? Such criteria of early and late are necessary if we are to arrange the cultural elements reached by our a.n.a.lysis in order of time, and it is very doubtful whether mere geographical distribution itself will ever furnish a sufficient basis for this purpose. I may remind you here that before the importance of the complexity of Melanesian culture had forced itself on my mind, I had already succeeded in tracing out a course for the development of the structure of Melanesian society, and after the complexity of the culture had been established, I did not find it necessary to alter anything of essential importance in this scheme. I suggest, therefore, that while the ethnological a.n.a.lysis of cultures must furnish a necessary preliminary to any general evolutionary speculations, there is one element of culture which has so relatively high a degree of permanence that its course of development may furnish a guide to the order in time of the different elements into which it is possible to a.n.a.lyze a given complex.

If the development of social structure is thus to be taken as a guide to a.s.sist the process of a.n.a.lysis, it is evident that there will be involved a logical process of considerable complexity in which there will be the danger of arguing in a circle. If, however, the a.n.a.lysis of culture is to be the primary task of the anthropologist, it is evident that the logical methods of the science will attain a complexity far exceeding those hitherto in vogue. I believe that the only logical process which will in general be found possible will be the formulation of hypothetical working schemes into which the facts can be fitted, and that the test of such schemes will be their capacity to fit in with themselves, or, as we generally express it, "explain" new facts as they come to our knowledge. This is the method of other sciences which deal with conditions as complex as those of human society. In many other sciences these new facts are discovered by experiment. In our science they must be found by exploration, not only of the cultures still existent in living form, but also of the buried cultures of past ages.

2. The Extension of Roman Culture in Gaul[244]

The Roman conquest of Gaul was partially a feat of arms; but it was much more a triumph of Roman diplomacy and a genius for colonial government.

Roman power in Gaul was centered in the larger cities and in their strongly fortified camps. There the laws and decrees of Rome were promulgated and the tribute of the conquered tribes received. There, too, the law courts were held and justice administered. Rome bent her efforts to the Latinizing of her newly acquired possessions. Gradually she forced the inhabitants of the larger cities to use the Latin tongue.

But this forcing was done in a diplomatic, though effective, manner.

Even in the days of Caesar, Latin was made the only medium for the administration of the law, the promulgation of decrees, the exercise of the functions of government, the administration of justice, and the performing of the offices of religion. It was the only medium of commerce and trade with the Romans, of literature and art, of the theater and of social relations. Above all, it was the only road to office under the Roman government and to political preferment. The Roman officials in Gaul encouraged and rewarded the mastery of the Latin tongue and the acquirement of Roman culture, customs, and manners.

Thanks to this well-defined policy of the Roman government, native Gauls were found in important offices even in Caesar's time. The number of these Gallo-Roman offices increased rapidly, and their influence was steadily exercised in favor of the acquirement, by the natives, of the Latin language. A greater inducement still was held out to the Gauls to acquire the ways and culture of their conquerors. This was the prospect of employment or political preference and honors in the imperial city of Rome itself. Under this pressure so diplomatically applied, the study of the Latin language, grammar, literature, and oratory became a pa.s.sion throughout the cities of Gaul, which were full of Roman merchants, traders, teachers, philosophers, lawyers, artists, sculptors, and seekers for political and other offices. Latin was the symbol of success in every avenue of life. Native Gauls became noted merchant princes, lawyers, soldiers, local potentates at home, and favorites of powerful political personages in Rome and even in the colonies outside Gaul.

Natives of Gaul, too, reached the highest offices in the land, becoming even members of the Senate; and later on a native Gaul became one of the most noted of the Roman emperors. The political policy of Rome made the imposition of the Latin language upon the cities of Gaul a comparatively easy matter, requiring only time to a.s.sure its accomplishment.

Everywhere throughout the populous cities of Gaul there sprang up schools that rivaled, in their efficacy and reputation, the most famous inst.i.tutions of Rome. Rich Romans sent their sons to these schools because of their excellence and the added advantage that they could acquire there a first-hand knowledge of the life and customs of the natives, whom they might be called upon in the future to govern or to have political or other relations with. Thus all urban Gaul traveled Rome-ward--"all roads led to Rome."

The influence of Roman culture extended itself much more slowly over the rural districts, the inhabitants of which, in addition to being much more conservative and pa.s.sionately attached to their native inst.i.tutions and language, lacked the incentive of ambition and of commercial and trade necessity. A powerful Druidical priesthood held the rural Celts together and set their faces against Roman culture and religion. But even in the rural districts Latin made its way slowly and in a mangled form, yet none the less surely. This was accomplished almost entirely through the natural pressure from without exercised by the growing power of the Latin tongue, which had greatly increased during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.). Claudius, who was born in Lyon and educated in Gaul, opened to the Gauls all the employments and dignities of the empire. On the construction of the many extensive public works he employed many inhabitants of Gaul in positions requiring faithfulness, honesty, and skill. These, in their turn, frequently drew laborers from the rural districts of Gaul. These latter, during their residence in Rome or other Italian cities, or in the populous centers of Gaul, acquired some knowledge of Latin. Thus, in time, through these and other agencies, a sort of _lingua franca_ sprang up throughout the rural districts of Gaul and served as a medium of communication between the Celtic-speaking population and the inhabitants of the cities and towns.

This consisted of a frame of Latin words stripped of most of their inflections and subjected to word-contractions and other modifications.

Into this frame were fitted many native words which had already become the property of trade and commerce and the other activities of life in the city, town, and country. Thus, as the influence of Latin became stronger in the cities, it continued to exercise greater pressure on the rural districts. This pressure soon began to react upon the centers of Latin culture. The uneducated cla.s.ses of Gaul everywhere, even in the cities, spoke very imperfect Latin, the genius of which is so different from that of the native tongues of Gaul. But while the cities afforded some correction for this universal tendency among the ma.s.ses to corrupt the Latin language, the life of the rural districts, where the native tongues were still universally spoken, made the disintegration of the highly inflected Roman speech unavoidable. As the ma.s.ses in the city and country became more Latinized, at the expense of their native tongues, the corrupted Latin spoken over immense districts of the country tended to pa.s.s current as the speech of the populace and to crowd out cla.s.sical or school Latin. As this corrupted local Latin varied greatly in different parts of the country, due to linguistic and other influences, there resulted numerous Roman dialects throughout Gaul, many of which are still in existence.

The introduction of Christianity gave additional impulse to the study of Latin, which soon became the official language of the Christian church; and it was taught everywhere by the priests to the middle and upper cla.s.ses, and they also encouraged the ma.s.ses to learn it. It seemed as if this was destined to maintain the prestige of Latin as the official language of the country. But in reality it hastened its downfall by making it more and more the language of the illiterate ma.s.ses. Soon the rural districts furnished priests who spoke their own Roman tongue; and the struggle to rehabilitate the literary Latin among the ma.s.ses was abandoned. The numerous French dialects of Latin had already begun to a.s.sume shape when the decline of the Roman Empire brought the Germanic tribes down upon Gaul and introduced a new element into the Romanic speech, which had already worked its will upon the tongue of the Caesars. Under its influence the loose Latin construction disappeared; articles and prepositions took the place of the inflectional terminations brought to a high state of artificial perfection in Latin; and the wholesale suppression of unaccented syllables had so contracted the Latin words that they were often scarcely recognizable. The modification of vowel sounds increased the efficacy of the disguise a.s.sumed by Latin words masquerading in the Romanic dialects throughout Gaul; and the Celtic and other native words in current use to designate the interests and occupations of the ma.s.ses helped to differentiate the popular speech from the cla.s.sical Latin. Already Celtic, as a spoken tongue, had almost entirely disappeared from the cities; and even in the rural districts it had fallen into a certain amount of neglect, as the _lingua franca_ of the first centuries of Roman occupation, reaching out in every direction, became the ever-increasing popular speech.

3. The Compet.i.tion of the Cultural Languages[245]

Some time ago a typewriter firm, in advertising a machine with Arabic characters, made the statement that the Arabic alphabet is used by more people than any other. A professor of Semitic languages was asked: "How big a lie is that?" He answered: "It is true."

In a certain sense, it is true; the total population of all the countries whose inhabitants use the Arabic alphabet (if they use any) is slightly larger than that of those who use the Latin alphabet and its slight variations, or the Chinese characters (which of course are not an alphabet), or the Russian alphabet. If, however, the question is how many people can actually use any alphabet or system of writing, the Arabic stands lowest of the four.

The question of the relative importance of a language as a literary medium is a question of how many people want to read it. There are two cla.s.ses of these: those to whom it is vernacular, and those who learn it in addition to their own language. The latter cla.s.s is of the greater importance in proportion to its numbers; a man who has education enough to acquire a foreign language is pretty sure to use it, while many of the former cla.s.s, who can read, really do read very little. Those who count in this matter are those who can get information from a printed page as easily as by listening to someone talking. A fair index of the relative number of these in a country is the newspaper circulation there.

A language must have a recognized literary standard and all the people in its territory must learn to use it as such before its influence goes far abroad. English, French, and German, and they alone, have reached this point. French and German have no new country, and practically the whole of their country is now literate; their relative share in the world's reading can only increase as their population increases. Spanish and Russian, on the other hand, have both new country and room for a much higher percentage of literacy.

It is probable that all the countries in temperate zones will have universal literacy by the end of the century. In this case, even if no one read English outside its vernacular countries, it would still hold its own as the leading literary language. German and French are bound to fall off relatively as vernaculars, and this implies a falling off of their importance as culture languages; but the importance of English in this respect is bound to grow. The first place among foreign languages has been given to it in the schools of many European and South American countries; Mexico and j.a.pan make it compulsory in all schools of upper grades; and China is to follow j.a.pan in this respect as soon as the work can be organized.

The number of people who can actually read, or will learn if now too young, for the various languages of the world appears to be as follows:

Number in Millions Per Cent

English 136 27.2 German 82 16.4 Chinese[A] 70 14.0 French 28 9.6 Russian 30 6.0 Arabic 25 5.0 Italian 18 4.6 Spanish 12 2.6 Scandinavian 11 2.2 Dutch and Flemish 9 1.9 Minor European[B] 34 6.8 Minor Asiatic[B] 16 3.2 Minor African and Polynesian[B] 2+ 0.5

Total 473+ 100.0

Notes: [A] Not a spoken language, but a system of writing.

[B] None representing as much as 1 per cent of total.

English, therefore, now leads all other languages in the number of its readers. Three-fourths of the world's mail matter is addressed in English. More than half of the world's newspapers are printed in English, and, as they have a larger circulation than those in other languages, probably three-fourths of the world's newspaper reading is done in English.

The languages next in importance, French and German, cannot maintain their relative positions because English has more than half of the new land in the temperate zone and they have none. The languages which have the rest of the new territory, Spanish and Russian, are not established as culture languages, as English is. No other language, not even French or German, has a vernacular so uniform and well established, and with so few variations from the literary language. English is spoken in the United States by more than fifty million people with so slight variations that no foreigner would ever notice them. No other language whatever can show more than a fraction of this number of persons who speak so nearly alike.

It is then probable that, within the century, English will be the vernacular of a quarter instead of a tenth of the people of the world, and be read by a half instead of a quarter of the people who can read.

4. The a.s.similation of Races[246]

The race problem has sometimes been described as a problem in a.s.similation. It is not always clear, however, what a.s.similation means.

Historically the word has had two distinct significations. According to earlier usage it meant "to compare" or "to make like." According to later usage it signifies "to take up and incorporate."

There is a process that goes on in society by which individuals spontaneously acquire one another's language, characteristic att.i.tudes, habits, and modes of behavior. There is also a process by which individuals and groups of individuals are taken over and incorporated into larger groups. Both processes have been concerned in the formation of modern nationalities. The modern Italian, Frenchman, and German is a composite of the broken fragments of several different racial groups.

Interbreeding has broken up the ancient stocks, and interaction and imitation have created new national types which exhibit definite uniformities in language, manners, and formal behavior.

It has sometimes been a.s.sumed that the creation of a national type is the specific function of a.s.similation and that national solidarity is based upon national h.o.m.ogeneity and "like-mindedness." The extent and importance of the kind of h.o.m.ogeneity that individuals of the same nationality exhibit have been greatly exaggerated. Neither interbreeding nor interaction has created, in what the French term "nationals," a more than superficial likeness or like-mindedness. Racial differences have, to be sure, disappeared or been obscured, but individual differences remain. Individual differences, again, have been intensified by education, personal compet.i.tion, and the division of labor, until individual members of cosmopolitan groups probably represent greater variations in disposition, temperament, and mental capacity than those which distinguished the more h.o.m.ogeneous races and peoples of an earlier civilization.

What then, precisely, is the nature of the h.o.m.ogeneity which characterizes cosmopolitan groups?

The growth of modern states exhibits the progressive merging of smaller, mutually exclusive, into larger and more inclusive, social groups. This result has been achieved in various ways, but it has usually been followed or accompanied by a more or less complete adoption by the members of the smaller groups of the language, technique, and mores of the larger and more inclusive ones. The immigrant readily takes over the language, manners, the social ritual, and outward forms of his adopted country. In America it has become proverbial that a Pole, Lithuanian, or Norwegian cannot be distinguished, in the second generation, from an American born of native parents.

There is no reason to a.s.sume that this a.s.similation of alien groups to native standards has modified to any great extent fundamental racial characteristics. It has, however, erased the external signs which formerly distinguished the members of one race from those of another.

On the other hand, the breaking up of the isolation of smaller groups has had the effect of emanc.i.p.ating the individual man, giving him room and freedom for the expansion and development of his individual apt.i.tudes.

What one actually finds in cosmopolitan groups, then, is a superficial uniformity, a h.o.m.ogeneity in manners and fas.h.i.+on, a.s.sociated with relatively profound differences in individual opinions, sentiments, and beliefs. This is just the reverse of what one meets among primitive peoples, where diversity in external forms, as between different groups, is accompanied by a monotonous sameness in the mental att.i.tudes of individuals. There is a striking similarity in the sentiments and mental att.i.tudes of peasant peoples in all parts of the world, although the external differences are often great. In the Black Forest, in Baden, Germany, almost every valley shows a different style of costume, a different type of architecture, although in each separate valley every house is like every other and the costume, as well as the religion, is for every member of each separate community absolutely after the same pattern. On the other hand, a German, Russian, or Negro peasant of the southern states, different as each is in some respects, are all very much alike in certain habitual att.i.tudes and sentiments.

What, then, is the role of h.o.m.ogeneity and like-mindedness, such as we find them to be, in cosmopolitan states? So far as it makes each individual look like every other--no matter how different under the skin--h.o.m.ogeneity mobilizes the individual man. It removes the social taboo, permits the individual to move into strange groups, and thus facilitates new and adventurous contacts. In obliterating the external signs, which in secondary groups seem to be the sole basis of caste and cla.s.s distinctions, it realizes, for the individual, the principle of _laissez faire_, _laissez aller_. Its ultimate economic effect is to subst.i.tute personal for racial compet.i.tion, and to give free play to forces that tend to relegate every individual, irrespective of race or status, to the position he or she is best fitted to fill.

As a matter of fact, the ease and rapidity with which aliens, under existing conditions in the United States, have been able to a.s.similate themselves to the customs and manners of American life have enabled this country to swallow and digest every sort of normal human difference, except the purely external ones, like the color of the skin.