The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

the supply of edible plants in the neighbourhood

would be exhausted, and starvation suggested the idea of sowing

and transplanting. Agriculture was probably a female invention;

it was certainly at first a female occupation. The bush was

burnt down to clear a place for the crop, and the women, being

too idle to remove the ashes from the soil, cast the seed upon

them. The ashes acting as manure, garden varieties of the

eating plants appeared. Among the pastoral people, the seed-bearing grasses were also cultivated into large-grained corn.

But as long as the tribes could migrate from one region to

another, agriculture was merely a secondary occupation, and was

left, for the most part, in female hands. It was when a tribe

was imprisoned in a valley with mountains or deserts all around

that agriculture be came their main pursuit, as breeding was

that of the shepherd wanderers, and fishing that of the people

on the shore.

 

The pastoral tribes had a surplus supply of meat, milk, wool,

and the rude products of the ancient loom. The marine tribes

had salt and smoked fish. The agricultural tribes had garden-roots and grain. Here, then, a division of labour had arisen

among the tribes; and if only they could be blended together, a

complete nation would be formed. But the butcher tribes, the

fishmonger tribes, and the baker tribes lived apart from one

another; they were timid, ferocious, and distrustful; their

languages were entirely distinct. They did not dare to

communicate with one another, except to carry on dumb barter,

as it is called. A certain tribe, for example, who desired salt

approached the frontier of the seacoast people, lighted a fire

as a signal, and laid down some meat or flour. They then

retired; the coast tribe came up, laid down salt, and also

retired. The meat or flour tribe again went to the spot; and if

the salt was sufficient, they took it away; if not, they left

it untouched, to indicate that they required more; and so they

chaffered a considerable time, each bid consisting of a

promenade.

 

It is evident that such a system of trade might go on for ages

without the respective tribes becoming better acquainted with

each other. It is only by means of war and of religion that the

tribes can be compressed into the nation. The shepherd tribes

had a natural aptitude for war. They lived almost entirely on

horseback; they attacked wild beasts in hand-to-hand conflict

on the open plain, and they often fought with one another for a

pasture or a well. They were attracted by the crops of the

agricultural people, whom they conquered with facility. Usually

they preferred their roaming life, and merely exacted a tribute

of corn. But sometimes a people worsted in war, exiled from

their pastures, wandering homeless through the sandy deserts,

discovered a fruitful river plain, in which they settled down,

giving up their nomad habits, but keeping their flocks and

herds. They reduced the aborigines to slavery; made some of

them labourers in the fields; others were appointed to tend the

flocks; others were sent to the river or the coast to fish;

others were taught the arts of the distaff and the loom; others

were made to work as carpenters and smiths. The wives of the

shepherd conquerors were no longer obliged to milk the cows and

camels, and to weave clothes and tents; they became ladies, and

were attended by domestic slaves. Their husbands became either

military nobles or learned priests; the commander-in-chief or

patriarch became the king. Foreign wars led to foreign

commerce, and the priest developed the resources of the

country. The simple fabrics of the old tent life were refined

in texture and beautified with dyes; the potter’s clay was

converted into fine porcelain and glass, the blacksmith’s shop

became a manufactory of ornamented arms; ingenious machines

were devised for the irrigation of the soil the arts and

sciences were adopted by the government, and employed in the

service of the state.

 

Here then we have a nation manufactured by means of war.

Religion is afterwards useful as a means of keeping the

conquered people in subjection; but in this case it plays only

a secondary part. In another class of nationalities, however,

religion operates as the prime agent.

 

When the human herd first wandered through the gloomy and

gigantic forest, sleeping on reed platforms in the trees, or

burrowing in holes, there was no government but that of force.

The strongest man was the leader, and ceased to be the leader

when he ceased to he the strongest. But as the minds of men

became developed, the ruler was elected by the members of the

clan, who combined to depose him if he exceeded his rightful

powers; and chiefs were chosen not only for their strength, but

also sometimes for their beauty, and sometimes on account of

their intelligence. These chiefs possessed but little power;

they merely expressed and executed the voice of the majority.

But when it was believed that the soul was immortal, or, in

other words, that there were ghosts; when it was believed that

the bodies of men were merely garments, and that the true

inmates were spirits, whom death stripped bare of flesh and

blood, but whom death was powerless to kill; when it was

believed that these souls or ghosts dwelt among the graves,

haunted their old homes, hovered round the scenes in which they

had passed their lives, and even took a part in human affairs,

a theory arose that the ghost of the departed chief was still

the ruler of the clan, and that in his spiritual state he could

inflict terrible punishments on those by whom he was offended,

and could also bestow upon them good fortune in hunting, in

harvests, and in war. So then homage and gifts were rendered to

him at his grave. A child of his house became the master of the

clan, and professed to receive the commands of the deceased.

For the first time the chiefs were able to exercise power

without employing force; but this power had also its limits.

 

In the first place the chief feared he would be punished by the

ghost if he injured the people over whom he ruled, and there

were always prophets or seers who could see visions and dream

dreams when the mind of the people was excited against the

chief. By means therefore of religion, which at first consisted

only in the fear of ghosts, the government of the clan was

improved; savage liberty or licence was restrained; the young

trembled before the old, whom previously they had eaten as soon

as they were useless. Religion was also of service in uniting

separated clans. In the forest, food was scanty; as soon as a

clan expanded it was forced to divide, and the separated part

pursued an orbit of its own. Savage dialects change almost day

by day; the old people can always speak a language which their

grandchildren do not understand, and so, in the course of a

single generation, the two clans become foreigners and foes to

one another. But when ghost-worship had been established, the

members of the divided clans resorted to the holy graves at

certain seasons of the year to unite with the members of the

parent clan in sacrificing to the ancestral shades; the season

of the pilgrimage was made a Truce of God; a fair was held, at

which trade and competitive amusements were carried on. Yet

still the clans or tribes had little connection with one

another, excepting at that single period of the year. It was

for war to continue the work which religion had begun. Some

times the tribes uniting invaded a foreign country, and founded

an empire of the kind which has already been described; then

the army became a nation, and the camp a town. In other cases

the tribes, being weaker than their neighbours, were compelled

for their mutual protection to draw together into towns, and to

fortify themselves with walls.

 

In its original condition the town was a federation. Each

family was a little kingdom in itself, inhabiting a fortified

cluster of dwellings, having its own domestic religion,

governed by its own laws. The paterfamilias was king and

priest; he could put to death any member of his family. There

was little distinction between the wives, the sons, and the

daughters, on the one hand, and the slaves, the oxen, and the

sheep on the other. These family fathers assembled in council,

and passed laws for their mutual convenience and protection.

Yet these laws were not national; they resembled treaties

between foreign states; and two houses would frequently go to

war and fight pitched battles in the streets without any

interference from the commonwealth at large. If the town

progressed in power and intelligence, the advantages of

centralisation were perceived by all; the fathers were induced

to emancipate their children, and to delegate their royal power

to a senate or a king; each man was responsible for his own

actions, and for them alone; individualism was established.

This important revolution, which, as we have elsewhere shown,

tends to produce the religious theory of rewards and

punishments in a future state, was itself in part produced by

the influence and teaching of the priests.

 

Besides the worship of the ancestral shades the ancient people

adored the great deities of nature who governed the woods and

the waters, the earth and the sky. When men died, it was

supposed that they had been killed by the gods; it was

therefore believed that those who lived to a good old age were

special favourites of the divine beings. Many people asked them

by what means they had obtained the good graces of the gods.

With savages nothing is done gratis; the old men were paid for

their advice; and in course of time the oracle system was

established. The old men consulted the gods they at first

advised, they next commanded what gifts should be offered on

the altar. They collected taxes, they issued orders on the

divine behalf. In the city of federated families the priests

formed a section entirely apart; they belonged not to this house,

or to that house, but to all; it was to their interest that the

families should be at peace; that a national religion should be

established; that the household gods or ancestral ghosts should

be degraded, that the despotism of the hearth should be

destroyed. They acted as peacemakers and arbitrators of

disputes. They united the tribes in the national sacrifice and

the solemn dance. They preached the power and grandeur of the

gods. They became the tutors of the people; they rendered

splendid service to mankind. We are accustomed to look only at

the dark side of those ancient faiths; their frivolous and

sanguinary laws, their abominable offerings, their grotesque

rites. Yet even the pure and lofty religions of Confucius and

Zoroaster; of Moses, and Jesus, and Mohammed; of the Brahmins

and the Buddhists, have not done so much for man as those

barbarous religions of the early days. They established a

tyranny, and tyranny was useful in the childhood of mankind.

The chiefs could only enact those laws which were indispensable

for the life of the community. But the priests were supposed to

utter the commands of invisible beings whose strange tempers

could clearly be read in the violent outbreaks and changing

aspects of the sky. The more irrational the laws of the priests

appeared, the more evident it was that they were not of man.

Terror generated piety; wild savages were tamed into obedience;

they became the slaves of the unseen; they humbled themselves

before the priests, and implicitly followed their commands that

they might escape sickness, calamity, and sudden death; their

minds were subjected to a useful discipline; they acquired the

habit of