“Scarcely has the infant mind begun to think, ere this perpetual priestess lights the fires of reverence and keeps them ever burning, like a faithful vestal” (112. 12).
Though women and mothers have often been excluded from the public or the secret ceremonials and observations of religion, the household in primitive and in modern times has been the temple, of whose _penetralia_ they alone have been the ministers.
_Imitation._
Tarde, in his monograph on the “Laws of Imitation,” has shown the great influence exerted among peoples of all races, of all grades and forms of culture, by imitation, conscious or unconscious,–a factor of the highest importance even at the present day and among those communities of men most advanced and progressive. Speaking a little too broadly, perhaps, he says (541. 15):–
“All the resemblances, of social origin, noticed in the social world are the direct or indirect result of imitation in all its forms,–custom, fashion, sympathy, obedience, instruction, education, naive or deliberate imitation. Hence the excellence of that modern method which explains doctrines or institutions by their history. This tendency can only be generalized. Great inventors and great geniuses do sometimes stumble upon the same thing together, but these coincidences are very rare. And when they do really occur, they always have their origin in a fund of common instruction upon which, independent of one another, the two authors of the same invention have drawn; and this fund consists of a mass of traditions of the past, of experiments, rude or more or less arranged, and transmitted imitatively by language, the great vehicle of all imitations.”
In her interesting article on “Imitation in Children,” Miss Haskell observes: “That the imitative faculty is what makes the human being educable, that it is what has made progressive civilization possible, has always been known by philosophical educators. The energy of the child must pass from potentiality to actuality, and it does so by the path of _imitation_ because this path offers the least resistance or the greatest attraction, or perhaps because there is no other road. Whatever new and striking things he sees in the movements or condition of objects about him, provided he already has the experience necessary to apperceive this particular thing, he imitates” (260. 31).
In the pedagogy of primitive peoples imitation has an extensive _role_ to play. Of the Twana Indians, of the State of Washington, Rev. Mr. Eells observes: “Children are taught continually, from youth until grown, to mimic the occupations of their elders.” They have games of ball, jumping and running races, and formerly “the boys played at shooting with bows and arrows at a mark, and with spears, throwing at a mark, with an equal number of children on each side, and sometimes the older ones joined in.” Now, however, “the’boys mimic their seniors in the noise and singing and gambling, but without the gambling.” The girls play with dolls, and sometimes “the girls and boys both play in canoes, and stand on half of a small log, six feet long and a foot wide, and paddle around in the water with a small stick an inch in thickness; and, in fact, play at most things which they see their seniors do, both whites and Indians” (437. 90, 91). Concerning the Seminoles of Florida, we are told: “The baby, well into the world, learns very quickly that he is to make his own way through it as best he may. His mother is prompt to nourish him, and solicitous in her care for him if he falls ill; but, as far as possible, she goes her own way and leaves the little fellow to go his.” Very early in life the child learns to help and to imitate its elders. “No small amount,” Mr. MacCauley tells us, “of the labour in a Seminole household is done by children, even as young as four years of age. They can stir the soup while it is boiling; they can aid in kneading the dough for bread; they can wash the ‘koonti’ root, and even pound it; they can watch and replenish the fire; they contribute in this and many other small ways to the necessary work of the home” (496. 497, 498).
Of the Indians of British Guiana, Mr. im Thurn reports: “As soon as the children can run about, they are left almost to themselves; or, rather, they begin to mimic their parents. As with the adults, so with the children. Just as the grown-up woman works incessantly, while the men alternately idle and hunt, so the boys run wild, playing not such concerted games as in other parts of the world more usually form child’s play, but only with mimic bows and arrows; but the girls, as soon as they can walk, begin to help the older women. Even the youngest girl can peel a few cassava roots, watch a pot on the fire, or collect and carry home a few sticks of firewood. The games of the boy are all such as train him to fish and hunt when he grows up; the girl’s occupations teach her woman’s work” (477. 219). The children imitate their elders in other ways also, for in nearly every Indian house are to be seen toy vessels of clay; for “while the Indian women of Guiana are shaping the clay, their children, imitating them, make small pots and goglets” (477. 298). And in like manner have been born, no doubt, among other peoples, some of the strange freaks of art which puzzle the _connoisseurs_ in the museums of Europe and America.
Mr. Powers, speaking of the domestic economy of the Achomawi Indians of California, says: “An Achomawi mother seldom teaches her daughters any of the arts of barbaric housekeeping before their marriage. They learn them by imitation and experiment after they grow old enough to perceive the necessity thereof” (519. 271). This peculiar neglect, however, is not entirely absent from our modern civilization, for until very recently no subject has been so utterly overlooked as the proper training of young girls for their future duties as mothers and housekeepers. The Achomawi, curiously enough, have the following custom, which helps, no doubt, the wife whose education has been so imperfect: “The parents are expected to establish a young couple in their lodge, provide them with the needful basketry, and furnish them with cooked food for some months, which indulgent parents sometimes continue for a year or even longer; so that the young people have a more real honeymoon than is vouchsafed to most civilized people.”
Among the Battas of Sumatra, “It is one of the morning duties of women and girls, even down to children of four and five years old, to bring drinking-water in the _gargitis_, a water-vessel made of a thick stalk of bamboo. The size and strength of growing girls are generally measured by the number of _gargitis_ they can carry” (518. XXII. 110).
Of the Kaffir children Theal informs us: “At a very early age they commence trials of skill against each other in throwing knobbed sticks and imitation assegais. They may often be seen enjoying this exercise in little groups, those of the same age keeping together, for there is no greater tyrant in the world than a big Kaffir boy over his younger fellows; when above nine or ten years old they practise sham-fighting with sticks; an imitation hunt is another of their boyish diversions” (543. 220).
Among the Apaches, as we learn from Reclus: “The child remains with its mother until it can pluck certain fruits for itself, and has caught a rat by its own unaided efforts. After this exploit, it goes and comes as it lists, is free and independent, master of its civil and political rights, and soon lost in the main body of the horde” (523. 131).
On the Andaman Islands, “little boys hunt out swarms of bees in the woods and drive them away by fire. They are also expected regularly to collect wood.” From their tenth year they are “accustomed to use little bows and arrows, and often attain great skill in shooting.” The girls “seek among the coral-reefs and in the swamps to catch little fish in hand-nets.” The Solomon Islands boy, as soon as he can walk a little, goes along with his elders to hunt and fish (326. I. 6). Among the Somali, of northeastern Africa, the boys are given small spears when ten or twelve years old and are out guarding the milk-camels (481 (1891). 163).
Of the Eskimo of Baffin Land, Dr. Boas tells us that the children, “when about twelve years old, begin to help their parents; the girls sewing and preparing skins, the boys accompanying their fathers in hunting expeditions” (402. 566). Mr. Powers records that he has seen a Wailakki Indian boy of fourteen “run a rabbit to cover in ten minutes, split a stick fine at one end, thrust it down the hole, twist it into its scut, and pull it out alive” (519. 118).
Among the games and amusements of the Andamanese children, of whom he says “though not borrowed from aliens, their pastimes, in many instances, bear close resemblance to those in vogue among children in this and other lands; notably is this the case with regard to those known to us as blind-man’s buff, leap-frog, and hide-and-seek,”–Mr. Man enumerates the following: _mock pig-hunting_ (played after dark); _mock turtle-catching_ (played in the sea); going after the Evil Spirit of the Woods; swinging by means of long stout creepers; swimming-races (sometimes canoe-races); pushing their way with rapidity through the jungle; throwing objects upwards, or skimming through the air; playing at “duck-and-drakes”; shooting at moving objects; wrestling on the sand; hunting small crabs and fish and indulging in sham banquets, comparable to the “doll’s feast” with us; making miniature canoes and floating them about in the water (498. 165).
_Education of Boys and Girls._
With the Dakota Indians, according to Mr. Riggs, the grandfather and grandmother are often the principal teachers of the child. Under the care of the father and grandfather the boy learns to shoot, hunt, and fish, is told tales of war and daring exploits, and “when he is fifteen or sixteen joins the first war-party and comes back with an eagle feather in his head, if he is not killed and scalped by the enemy.” Among the amusements he indulges in are foot-races, horse-racing, ball-playing, etc. Another branch of his education is thus described: “In the long winter evenings, while the fire burns brightly in the centre of the lodge, and the men are gathered in to smoke, he hears the folk-lore and legends of his people from the lips of the older men. He learns to sing the love-songs and the war-songs of the generations gone by. There is no new path for him to tread, but he follows in the old ways. He becomes a Dakota of the Dakota. His armour is consecrated by sacrifices and offerings and vows. He sacrifices and prays to the stone god, and learns to hold up the pipe to the so-called Great Spirit. He is killed and made alive again, and thus is initiated into the mysteries and promises of the Mystery Dance. He becomes a successful hunter and warrior, and what he does not know is not worth knowing for a Dakota. His education is finished. If he has not already done it, he can now demand the hand of one of the beautiful maidens of the village” (524. 209, 210).
Under the care and oversight of the mother and grandmother the girl is taught the elements of household economy, industrial art, and agriculture. Mr. Biggs thus outlines the early education of woman among these Indians: “She plays with her ‘made child,’ or doll, just as children in other lands do. Very soon she learns to take care of the baby; to watch over it in the lodge, or carry it on her back while the mother is away for wood or dressing buffalo-robes. Little girl as she is, she is sent to the brook or lake for water. She has her little work-bag with awl and sinew, and learns to make small moccasins as her mother makes large ones. Sometimes she goes with her mother to the wood and brings home her little bundle of sticks. When the camp moves, she has her small pack as her mother carries the large one, and this pack is sure to grow larger as her years increase. When the corn is planting, the little girl has her part to perform. If she cannot use the hoe yet, she can at least gather off the old corn-stalks. Then the garden is to be watched while the god-given maize is growing. And when the harvesting comes, the little girl is glad for the corn-roasting.” And so her young life runs on. She learns bead-work and ornamenting with porcupine quills, embroidering with ribbons, painting, and all the arts of personal adornment, which serve as attractions to the other sex. When she marries, her lot and her life (Mr. Riggs says) are hard, for woman is much less than man with these Dakotas (524. 210).
More details of girl-life among savage and primitive peoples are to be found in the pages of Professor Mason (113. 207-211). In America, the education varied from what the little girl could pick up at her mother’s side between her third and thirteenth years, to the more elaborate system of instruction in ancient Mexico, where, “annexed to the temples were large buildings used as seminaries for girls, a sort of aboriginal Wellesley or Vassar” (113 208).
_Games and Plays._
In the multifarious games of children, echoes, imitations, re-renderings of the sober life of their elders and of their ancestors of the long ago, recur again and again. The numerous love games, which Mr. Newell (313. 39-62) and Miss Gomme (243) enumerate, such as “Knights of Spain,” “Three kings,” “Here comes a Duke a-roving,” “Tread, tread the Green Grass,” “I’ll give to you a Paper of Pins,” “There she stands a lovely Creature,” “Green Grow the Rushes, O!” “The Widow with Daughters to marry,” “Philander’s March,” “Marriage,” etc., corresponding to many others all over the globe, evidence the social instincts of child-hood as well as the imitative tendencies of youth.
Under “Playing at Work” (313. 80-92), Mr. Newell has classed a large number of children’s games and songs, some of which now find their representatives in the kindergarten, this education of the child by itself having been so modified as to form part of the infantile curriculum of study. Among such games are: “Threading the Needle,” “Draw a Bucket of Water,” “Here I Brew and here I Bake,” “Here we come gathering Nuts of May,” “When I was a Shoemaker,” “Do, do, pity my Case,” “As we go round the Mulberry Bush,” “Who’ll be the Binder?” “Oats, Pease, Beans, and Barley grows.” Mr. Newell includes in this category, also, that well-known dance, the “Virginia Reel,” which he interprets as an imitation of weaving, something akin to the “Hemp-dressers’ Dance,” of the time of George III., in England.
In a recent interesting and valuable essay, “Education by Plays and Games,” by Mr. G. E. Johnson, of Clark University,–an effort “to present somewhat more correctly than has been done before, the educational value of play, and to suggest some practical applications to the work of education in the grades above the kindergarten,”–we have presented to us a list of some five hundred games, classified according to their value for advancing mental or physical education, for cultivating and strengthening the various faculties of mind and body. These games have also been arranged by Mr. Johnson, into such classes and divisions as might be held to correspond to the needs and necessities of the pupils in each of the eight grades above the kindergarten. Of the educational value of play and of “playing at work,” there can be no doubt in the mind of any one at all acquainted with the history of the individual and the history of the race. As Mr. Johnson justly observes (269.100): “The field of the study of play is very wide; the plays are well-nigh infinite, and as varied as life itself. No one can estimate the value of them. Given right toys and surroundings, the young child has an almost perfect school. It is marvellous how well he learns, Preyer does not overestimate the facts when he says the child in the first three or four years of his life learns as much as the student in his entire university course. In the making of mud pies and doll dresses, sand-pile farms and miniature roads, tiny dams and water-wheels, whittled-out boats, sleds, dog-harnesses, and a thousand and one other things, the child receives an accumulation of facts, a skill of hand, a trueness of eye, a power of attention and quickness of perception; and in flying kites, catching trout, in pressing leaves and gathering stones, in collecting stamps, and eggs, and butterflies, a culture also, seldom appreciated by the parent or teacher.”
Upon the banner of the youthful hosts might well be inscribed _in hoc ludo vincemus_. Yet there is danger that the play-theory may be carried to excess. Mr. James L. Hughes, discussing “The Educational Value of Play and the Recent Play-Movement in Germany,” remarks: “The Germans had the philosophy of play, the English had an intuitive love of play, and love is a greater impelling force than philosophy. English young men never played in order to expand their lungs, to increase their circulation, to develop their muscles in power and agility, to improve their figures, to add grace to their bearing, to awaken and refine their intellectual powers, or to make them manly, courageous, and chivalrous. They played enthusiastically for the mere love of play, and all these, and other advantages resulted from their play” (265. 328).
Swimming is an art soon learned by the children of some primitive races. Mr. Man says of the Andaman Islanders: “With the exception of some of the e.rem-tag.a-(inlanders), a knowledge of the art of swimming is common to members of both sexes; the _children_ even, learning almost as soon as they can run, speedily acquire great proficiency” (498. 47).
_Language._
With some primitive peoples the ideas as to language-study are pretty much on a par with those prevalent in Europe at a date not so very remote from the present. Of the Kato Pomo Indians of California, Mr. Powers remarks: “Like the Kai Pomo, their northern neighbours, they forbid their squaws from studying languages–which is about the only accomplishment possible to them save dancing–principally, it is believed, in order to prevent them from gadding about and forming acquaintances in neighbouring valleys, for there is small virtue among the unmarried of either sex. But the men pay considerable attention to linguistic studies, and there is seldom one who cannot speak most of the Pomo dialects within a day’s journey of his ancestral valley. The chiefs, especially, devote no little care to the training of their sons as polyglot diplomatists; and Robert White affirms that they frequently send them to reside several months with the chiefs of contiguous valleys to acquire the dialects there in vogue” (519. 150).
Nevertheless, as Professor Mason observes, among primitive races, woman’s share in the “invention, dissemination, conservation, and metamorphosis of language” has been very great, and she has been _par excellence_ the teacher of language, as indeed she is to-day in our schools when expression and _savoir faire_ in speech, rather than deep philological learning and dry grammatical analysis, have been the object of instruction.
_Geography._
Much has been said and written about the wonderful knowledge of geography and topography possessed by the Indian of America, and by other primitive peoples as well. The following passage from Mr. Powers’ account of the natives of California serves to explain some of this (519. 109):–
“Besides the coyote-stories with which gifted squaws amuse their children, and which are common throughout this region, there prevails among the Mattoal a custom which might almost be dignified with the name of geographical study. In the first place, it is necessary to premise that the boundaries of all the tribes on Humboldt Bay, Eel River, Van Dusen’s Fork, and in fact everywhere, are marked with the greatest precision, being defined by certain creeks, canons, bowlders, conspicuous trees, springs, etc., each one of which objects has its own individual name. It is perilous for an Indian to be found outside of his tribal boundaries, wherefore it stands him well in hand to make himself acquainted with the same early in life. Accordingly, the squaws teach these things to their children in a kind of sing-song not greatly unlike that which was the national _furore_ some time ago in rural singing-schools, wherein they melodiously chanted such pleasing items of information as this: ‘California. Sacramento, on the Sacramento River.’ Over and over, time and again, they rehearse all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to beat the bounds like Bumble the Beadle; and so wonderful is the Indian memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them previously given by their mothers. If an Indian knows but little of this great world more than pertains to boundary bush and bowlder, he knows his own small fighting-ground infinitely better than any topographical engineer can learn it.”
Mr. Powers’ reference to “beating the bounds like Bumble the Beadle” is an apt one. Mr. Frederick Sessions has selected as one of his _Folk-Lore Topics_ the subject of “Beating the Bounds” (352), and in his little pamphlet gives us much interesting information concerning the part played by children in these performances. The author tells us: “One of the earliest of my childish pleasures was seeing the Mayor and Corporation, preceded by Sword-bearer, Beadles, and Blue Coat School boys, going in procession from one city boundary-stone to another, across the meadows and the river, or over hedges and gardens, or anything else to which the perambulated border-line took them. They were followed along the route by throngs of holiday makers. Many of the crowd, and all the Blue boys, were provided with willow-wands, _peeled_, if I remember rightly, with which each boundary mark was well flogged. The youngest boys were bumped against the ‘city stones.'” In the little town of Charlbury in Oxfordshire, “the perambulations seem to have been performed mostly by boys, accompanied by one or more of their seniors.” At Houghton, a village near St. Ives in Huntingdonshire: “The bounds are still beaten triennially. They are here marked by holes in some places, and by stones or trees in others. The procession starts at one of the holes. Each new villager present is instructed in the position of this corner of the boundary by having his head forcibly thrust into the hole, while he has to repeat a sort of mumbo-jumbo prayer, and receives three whacks with a shovel. He pays a shilling for his ‘footing’ (boys only pay sixpence), and then the forty or fifty villagers march off to the opposite corner and repeat the process, except the monetary part, and regale themselves with bread and cheese and beer, paid for by the farmers who now occupy any portion of the old common lands.”
In Russia, before the modern system of land-registration came into vogue, “all the boys of adjoining Cossack village communes were ‘collected and driven like flocks of sheep to the frontier, whipped at each boundary-stone, and if, in after years two whipped lads, grown into men, disputed as to the precise spot at which they had been castigated, then the oldest inhabitant carrying a sacred picture from the church, led the perambulations, and acted as arbitrator.”
Here also ought to be mentioned perhaps, as somewhat akin and reminiscent of like practices among primitive peoples, “the _blason populaire_ (as it is neatly called in French), in which the inhabitants of each district or city are nicely ticketed off and distinguished by means of certain abnormalities of feature or form, or certain mental peculiarities attributed to them” (204.19). In parts of Hungary and Transylvania a somewhat similar practice is in vogue (392 (1892). 128).
_Story-Telling._
Some Indian children have almost the advantages of the modern home in the way of story-telling. Clark informs us (420.109):–
“Some tribes have regular story-tellers, men who have devoted a great deal of time to learning the myths and stories of their people, and who possess, in addition to a good memory, a vivid imagination. The mother sends for one of these, and, having prepared a feast for him, she and her little ‘brood,’ who are curled up near her, await the fairy stories of the dreamer, who, after his feast and smoke, entertains them for hours. Many of these fanciful sketches or visions are interesting and beautiful in their rich imagery, and have been at times given erroneous positions in ethnological data.”
Knortz refers in glowing terms to the _adisoke-winini_, or “storyteller” of the Chippeway Indians, those gifted men, who entertain their fellows with the tales and legends of the race, and who are not mere reciters, but often poets and transformers as well (_Skizzen_, 294).
So, too, among the Andaman Islanders, “certain mythic legends are related to the young by _okopai-ads_ [shamans], parents, and others, which refer to the supposed adventures or history of remote ancestors, and though the recital not unfrequently evokes much mirth, they are none the less accepted as veracious” (498. 95).
_Morals._
Among some of the native tribes of California we meet with _i-wa-musp_, or “men-women” (519. 132). Among the Yuki, for example, there were men who dressed and acted like women, and “devoted themselves to the instruction of the young by the narration of legends and moral tales.” Some of these, Mr. Powers informs us, “have been known to shut themselves up in the assembly-hall for the space of a month, with brief intermissions, living the life of a hermit, and spending the whole time in rehearsing the tribal-history in a sing-song monotone to all who chose to listen.”
Somewhat similar, without the hermit-life, appear to be the functions of the orators and “prophets” of the Miwok and the peace-chiefs, or “shell-men,” of the Pomo (519. 157, 352). Of the Indians of the Pueblo of Tehua, Mr. Lummis, in his entertaining volume of fairy-tales, says: “There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in which he has to be content with the bare command, ‘Do thus’; for each he learns a fairy- tale designed to explain how people first came to know that it was right to do thus, and detailing the sad results which befell those who did otherwise.” The old men appear to be the storytellers, and their tales are told in a sort of blank verse (302. 5).
Mr. Grinnell, in his excellent book about the Blackfeet,–one of the best books ever written about the Indians,–gives some interesting details of child-life. Children are never whipped, and “are instructed in manners as well as in other more general and more important matters.” Among other methods of instruction we find that “men would make long speeches to groups of boys playing in the camps, telling them what they ought to do to be successful in life,” etc. (464. 188-191).
Of the Delaware Indians we are told that “when a mere boy the Indian lad would be permitted to sit in the village councilhouse, and hear the assembled wisdom of the village or his tribe discuss the affairs of state and expound the meaning of the _keekg_’ (beads composing the wampum belts)…. In this way he early acquired maturity of thought, and was taught the traditions of his people, and the course of conduct calculated to win him the praise of his fellows” (516. 43). This reminds us of the Roman senator who had his child set upon his knee during the session of that great legislative and deliberative body.
_Playthings and Dolls._
As Professor Mason has pointed out, the cradle is often the “play-house” of the child, and is decked out to that end in a hundred ways (306. 162). Of the Sioux cradle, Catlin says:–“A broad hoop of elastic wood passes around in front of the child’s face to protect it in case of a fall, from the front of which is suspended a little toy of exquisite embroidery for the child to handle and amuse itself with. To this and other little trinkets hanging in front of it, there are attached many little tinselled and tinkling things of the brightest colours to amuse both the eyes and the ears of the child. While travelling on horseback, the arms of the child are fastened under the bandages, so as not to be endangered if the cradle falls, and when at rest they are generally taken out, allowing the infant to reach and amuse itself with the little toys and trinkets that are placed before it and within its reach” (306. 202). In like manner are “playthings of various kinds” hung to the awning of the birch-bark cradles found in the Yukon region of Alaska. Of the Nez Perce, we read: “To the hood are attached medicine-bags, bits of shell, haliotis perhaps, and the whole artistic genius of the mother is in play to adorn her offspring.” The old chronicler Lafiteau observed of the Indians of New France: “They put over that half-circle [at the top of the cradle] little bracelets of porcelain and other little trifles that the Latins call _crepundia_, which serve as an ornament and as playthings to divert the child” (306. 167, 187, 207).
And so is it elsewhere in the world. Some of the beginnings of art in the race are due to the mother’s instinctive attempts to please the eyes and busy the hands of her tender offspring. The children of primitive peoples have their dolls and playthings as do those of higher races. In an article descriptive of the games and amusements of the Ute Indians, we read: “The boy remains under maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot and engage in manly sports and enjoyments. Indian children play, laugh, cry, and act like white children, and make their own play-things from which they derive as much enjoyment as white children” (480. IV. 238).
Of the Seminole Indians of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children’s games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also “sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of grass into the ground, name it a ‘corn-field,'” and “the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, and call it ‘turkey-hunting.'” Moreover, they “have also dolls (bundles of rags, sticks with bits of cloth wrapped around them, etc.), and build houses for them which they call ‘camps'” (496. 506).
Of the Indians of the western plains, Colonel Dodge says: “The little girls are very fond of dolls, which their mothers make and dress with considerable skill and taste. Their baby houses are miniature teepees, and they spend as much time and take as much pleasure in such play as white girls” (432. 190). Dr. Boas tells us concerning the Eskimo of Baffin Land: “Young children are always carried in their mothers’ hoods, but when about a year and a half old they are allowed to play on the bed, and are only carried by their mothers when they get too mischievous.” The same authority also says: “Young children play with, toys, sledges, kayaks, boats, bow and arrows, and dolls. The last are made in the same way by all the tribes, a wooden body being clothed with scraps of deerskin cut in the same way as the clothing of the men” (402. 568, 571). Mr. Murdoch has described at some length the dolls and toys of the Point Barrow Eskimo. He remarks that “though several dolls and various suits of miniature clothing were made and brought over for sale, they do not appear to be popular with the little girls.” He did not see a single girl playing with a doll, and thinks the articles collected may have been made rather for sale than otherwise. Of the boys, Mr. Murdoch says: “As soon as a boy is able to walk, his father makes him a little bow suited to his strength, with blunt arrows, with which he plays with the other boys, shooting at marks–for instance the fetal reindeer brought home from the spring hunt–till he is old enough to shoot small birds and lemmings” (514. 380, 383).
In a recent extensive and elaborately illustrated article, Dr. J. W. Fewkes has described the dolls of the Tusayan Indians (one of the Pueblo tribes). Of the _tihus_, or carved wooden dolls, the author says (226. 45): “These images are commonly mentioned by American visitors to the Tusayan Pueblos as idols, but there is abundant evidence to show that they are at present used simply as children’s playthings, which are made for that purpose and given to the girls with that thought in mind.” Attention is called to the difficulty of drawing the line between a doll and an idol among primitive peoples, the connection of dolls with religion, psychological evidence of which lingers with us to-day in the persistent folk-etymology which connects _doll_ with _idol_. The following remarks of Dr. Fewkes are significant: “These figurines [generally images of deities or mythological personages carved in true archaic fashion] are generally made by participants in the _Ni-man-Ka-tci-na_, and are presented to the children in July or August at the time of the celebration of the farewell of the _Ka-tci’-nas_ [supernatural intercessors between men and gods]. It is not rare to see the little girls after the presentation carrying the dolls about on their backs wrapped in their blankets in the same manner in which babies are carried by their mothers or sisters. Those dolls which are more elaborately made are generally hung up as ornaments in the rooms, but never, so far as I have investigated the subject, are they worshipped. The readiness with which they are sold for a proper remuneration shows that they are not regarded as objects of reverence.” But, as Dr. Fewkes himself adds, “It by no means follows that they may not be copies of images which have been worshipped, although they now have come to have a strictly secular use.” Among some peoples, perhaps, the dolls, images of deities of the past, or even of the present, may have been used to impart the fundamentals of theology and miracle-story, and the play-house of the children may have been at times a sort of religious kindergarten of a primitive type. Worthy of note in this connection is the statement of Castren that “the Finns manufacture a kind of dolls, or _paras_, out of a child’s cap filled with tow and stuck at the end of a rod. The fetich thus made is carried nine times round the church, with the cry ‘synny para’ (Para be born) repeated every time to induce a _hal’tia_–that is to say, a spirit–to enter into it” (388. 108).
A glance into St. Nicholas, or at the returns to the syllabus on dolls sent out by President Hall, is sufficient to indicate the farreaching associations of the subject, while the doll-congress of St. Petersburg has had its imitators both in Europe and America. A bibliography of doll-poems, doll-descriptions, doll-parties, doll-funerals, and the like would be a welcome addition to the literature of dolls, while a doll-museum of extended scope would be at once entertaining and of great scientific value.
The familiar phrase “to cry for the moon” corresponds to the French “prendre la lune avec ses dents.” In illustration of this proverbial expression, which Rabelais used in the form _Je ne suis point clerc pour prendre la lune avec les dents_, Loubens tells the amusing story of a servant who, when upbraided by the parents for not giving to a child what it wanted and for which it had been long crying, answered: “You must give it him yourself. A quarter-of-an-hour ago, he saw the moon at the bottom of a bucket of water, and wants me to give it him. That’s all.” (_Prov. et locut. franc_., p. 225.)
To-day children cry for the moon in vain, but ’twas not ever thus. In payment for the church, which King Olaf wanted to have built,–a task impossible, the saint thought,–the giant demanded “the sun and moon, or St. Olaf himself.” Soon the building was almost completed, and St. Olaf was in great perplexity at the unexpected progress of the work. As he was wandering about “he heard a child cry inside a mountain, and a giant-woman hush it with these words: ‘Hush! hush! to-morrow comes thy father Wind-and-Weather home, bringing both sun and moon, or saintly Olaf’s self.'” Had not the king overheard this, and, by learning the giant’s name, been enabled to crush him, the child could have had his playthings the next day.
In the course of an incarnation-myth of the raven among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Mr. Mackenzie tells us (497. 53):–
“In time the woman bore a son, a remarkably small child. This child incessantly cried for the moon to play with, thus–_Koong-ah-ah, Koong-ah-ah_ (‘the moon, the moon’). The spirit-chief, in order to quiet the child, after carefully closing all apertures of the house, produced the moon, and gave it to the child to play with.” The result was that the raven (the child) ran off with the moon, and the people in consequence were put to no little inconvenience. But by and by the raven broke the original moon in two, threw half up into the sky, which became the sun, while of the other half he made the moon, and of the little bits, which were left in the breaking, all the stars.
In the golden age of the gods, the far-off _juventus mundi_, the parts of the universe were the playthings, the _Spielzeug_ of the divine infants, just as peasants and human infants figure in the folk-tales as the toys of giants and Brobdingnagians. Indeed, some of the phenomena of nature and their peculiarities are explained by barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples as the result of the games and sports of celestial and spiritual children.
With barbarous or semi-civilized peoples possessing flocks and herds of domesticated animals the child is early made acquainted with their habits and uses. Regarding the Kaffirs of South Africa Theal says that it is the duty of the young boys to attend to the calves in the kraal, and “a good deal of time is passed in training them to run and to obey signals made by whistling. The boys mount them when they are eighteen months or two years old, and race about upon their backs” (543. 220). In many parts of the world the child has played an important role as shepherd and watcher of flocks and herds, and the shepherd-boy has often been called to high places in the state, and has even ascended the thrones of great cities and empires, ecclesiastical as well as political.
_Dress._
In his little book on the philosophy of clothing Dr. Schurtz has given us an interesting account of the development and variation of external ornamentation and dress among the various races, especially the negro peoples of Africa. The author points out that with not a few primitive tribes only married persons wear clothes, girls and boys, young women and men even, going about _in puris naturalibus_ (530. 13). Everywhere the woman is better clothed than the girl, and in some parts of Africa, as the ring is with us, so are clothes a symbol of marriage. Among the Balanta, for example, in Portuguese Senegambia, when a man marries he gives his wife a dress, and so long as this remains whole, the marriage-union continues in force. On the coast of Sierra Leone, the expression “he gave her a dress,” intimates that the groom has married a young girl (530. 14, 43-49).
Often, with many races the access of puberty leads to the adoption of clothing and to a refinement of dress and personal adornment. A relic of this remains, as Dr. Schurtz points out, in the leaving off of knickerbockers and the adoption of “long dresses,” by the young people in our civilized communities of to-day (530. 13).
With others the clothing of the young is of the most primitive type, and children in very many cases go about absolutely naked.
That the development of the sex-feeling, and entrance upon marriage, have with very many peoples been the chief incitements to dress and personal ornamentation, has been pointed out by Schurtz and others (530. 14).
Not alone this, but, sometimes, as among the Bura Negroes of the upper Blue Nile region, the advent of her child brings with it a modification in the dress of the mother. With these people, young girls wear an apron in front, married women one in front and one behind, but women who have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had borne a child (530. 78).
Schurtz points out that the kangaroo-skin breast-covering of the Tasmanian women, the shoulder and arm strips worn by the women of the Monbuttu in Africa, the skin mantles of the Marutse, the thick hip-girdle of the Tupende, and other articles of clothing of a like nature, seem to be really survivals of devices for carrying children, and not to have been originally intended as dress _per se_ (530. 110, 111). Thus early does childhood become a social factor.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY.
In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.–_Ruskin_.
Children generally hate to be idle; all the care is then that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.–_Locke_.
Look into our childish faces;
See you not our willing hearts?
Only love us–only lead us;
Only let us know you need us,
And we all will do our parts.–_Mary Howitt_.
[Greek: Anthropos Phusei zoon politikon] [Man is by nature a political (social) animal].–_Aristotle_.
Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.–_Carlyle_.
Predestination and Caste.
“Who can tell for what high cause
This darling of the Gods was born?”
asks the poet Marvell. But with some peoples the task of answering the question is an easy one; for fate, or its human side, caste, has settled the matter long before the infant comes into the world. The Chinese philosopher, Han Wan-Kung, is cited by Legge as saying: “When Shuh-yu was born, his mother knew, as soon as she looked at him, that he would fall a victim to his love of bribes. When Yang sze-go was born, the mother of Shuh-he-ang knew, as soon as she heard him cry, that he would cause the destruction of all his kindred. When Yueh-tseaou was born, Tzewan considered it was a great calamity, knowing that through him all the ghosts of the Johgaou family would be famished” (487. 89).
In India, we meet with the Bidhata-Purusha, a “deity that predestines all the events of the life of man or woman, and writes on the forehead of the child, on the sixth day of its birth, a brief precis of them” (426. 9). India is _par excellence_ the land of caste, but other lands know the system that makes the man follow in his father’s footsteps, and often ignores the woman altogether, not even counting her in the census of the people, as was formerly the case even in Japan and China, where a girl was not worthy to be counted beside the son. Of ancient Peru, Letourneau says: “Every male inherited his father’s profession; he was not allowed to choose another employment. By right of birth a man was either labourer, miner, artisan, or soldier” (100. 486). Predestination of state and condition in another world is a common theological tenet, predestination of state and condition in this world is a common social theory.
Vast indeed is the lore of birth-days, months and years, seasons and skies–the fictions, myths, and beliefs of the astrologist, the spiritualist, the fortune-teller, and the almanac-maker–which we have inherited from those ancestors of ours, who believed in the kinship of all things, who thought that in some way “beasts and birds, trees and plants, the sea, the mountains, the wind, the sun, the moon, the clouds, and the stars, day and night, the heaven and the earth, were alive and possessed of the passions and the will they felt within themselves” (258. 25). Here belongs a large amount of folk-lore and folk-speech relating to the defective, delinquent, and dependent members of human society, whose misfortunes or misdeeds are assigned to atavistic causes, to demoniacal influences.
_Parenthood._
Among primitive peoples, the advent of a child, besides entailing upon one or both of the parents ceremonies and superstitious performances whose name and fashion are legion, often makes a great change in the constitution of society. Motherhood and fatherhood are, in more than one part of the globe, primitive titles of nobility and badges of aristocracy. With the birth of a child, the Chinese woman becomes something more than a mere slave and plaything, and in the councils of uncivilized peoples (as with us to-day) the voice of the father of a family carries more weight than that of the childless. With the civilized races to-day, more marriages mean fewer prison-houses, and more empty jails, than in the earlier days, and with the primitive peoples of the present, this social bond was the salvation of the tribe to the same extent and in the same way.
As Westermarck points out, there are “several instances of husband and wife not living together before the birth of a child.” Here belong the temporary marriages of the Creek Indians, the East Greenlanders, the Fuegians, the Essenes, and some other Old World sects and peoples–the birth of a child completes the marriage–“marriage is therefore rooted in family, rather than family in marriage,” in such cases. With the Ainos of the island of Tezo, the Khyens of Farther India, and with one of the aboriginal tribes of China, so Westermarck informs us, “the husband goes to live with his wife at her father’s house, and never takes her away till after the birth of a child,” and with more than one other people the wife remains with her own parents until she becomes a mother (166. 22, 23).
In some parts of the United States we find similar practices among the population of European ancestry. The “boarding-out” of young couples until a child is born to them is by no means uncommon.
_Adoption._
Adoption is, among some primitive peoples, remarkably extensive. Among the natives of the Andaman Islands “it is said to be of rare occurrence to find any child above six or seven years of age residing with its parents, and this, because it is considered a compliment and also a mark of friendship for a married man, after paying a visit, to ask his hosts to allow him to adopt one of their children” (498. 57).
Of the Hawaiian Islanders, Letourneau remarks (100. 389, 390): “Adoption was rendered extremely easy; a man would give himself a father or sons almost _ad infinitum_.” In the Marquesas Islands “it was not uncommon to see elderly persons being adopted by children.” Moreover, “animals even were adopted. A chief adopted a dog, to whom, he offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments. The dog was carried about by a _kikino_, and at every meal he had his stated place beside his adopted father.” Connected with adoption are many curious rites and ceremonies which may be found described in Ploss and other authorities. Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss (280) has recently treated at some length of a special form of adoption symbolized by the cutting of the hair, and particularly known among the southern Slavonians. The cutting off the hair here represents, the author thinks, the unconditional surrendering of one’s body or life to another. The origin of the sacrifice of the hair is to be sought in the fact that primitive peoples have believed that the seat of the soul was in the hair and the blood, which were offered to the spirits or demons in lieu of the whole body. The relation between nurse and child has been treated of by Ploss and Wiedniann (167), the latter with special reference to ancient Egypt and the Mohammedan countries. In ancient Egypt the nurse was reckoned as one of the family, and in the death-steles and reliefs of the Middle Kingdom her name and figure are often found following those of the children and parents of the deceased. The wet-nurse was held in especial honour. The milk-relationship sometimes completely takes the place of blood-relationship. The Koran forbids the marriage of a nurse and a man whom, as a child, she has suckled; the laws of the Hanafi forbid a man to marry a woman from whose breast he has imbibed even a single drop of milk. Among the southern Slavonians: “If of two children who have fed at the breast of the same woman, one is a boy and the woman’s own child, and the other (adopted) a girl, these two must never marry.” If they are both girls, they are like real sisters in love and affection; if both boys, like real brothers. In Dardistan and Armenia also, milk-relationship prevents marriage (167. 263).
In Mingrelia as soon as a child is given to a woman to nurse, she, her husband, children, and grandchildren are bound to it by ties more dear even than those of blood-relationship; she would yield up her life for the child, and the latter, when grown up, is reciprocally dutiful. It is a curious fact that even grown-up people can contract this sort of relationship. “Thus peasant-women are very anxious to have grown-up princesses become then foster-children–the latter simply bite gently the breasts of their foster-mothers, and forthwith a close relationship subsists between them.” It is said also that girls obtain protectors in like manner by having youths bite at their breasts, which (lately) they cover with a veil (167. 263). Adoption by the letting or transfusion of blood is also found in various parts of the world and has far-reaching ramifications; as Trumbull, Robertson Smith, and Daniels have pointed out. The last calls attention to the Biblical declaration (Proverbs, xxviii. 24): “There is a friend which sticketh closer than a brother,” underlying which seems to be this mystic tie of blood (214. 16).
The mourning for the death of children is discussed in another part of this work. It may be mentioned here, however, that the death of a child often entails other, sometimes more serious, consequences. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, “when a father has lost his child, he kills the first man he meets as he goes out of his house; this is to him an act of duty” (100. 238).
_Hereditary Bights._
The hereditary rights of children to share in the property of their parents have been made the subject of an interesting study by Clement Deneus (215), a lawyer of Ghent, who has treated in detail of the limitation of the patria potestas in respect to disposition of the patrimony, and the reservation to the children of a portion of the property of their parents–an almost inviolable right, of which they can be deprived only in consequence of the gravest offences. This reservation the author considers “a principle universally recognized among civilized nations,” and an institution which marks a progress in the history of law and of civilization (215. 49), while testamentary freedom is unjust and inexpedient. The author discusses the subject from the points of view of history, statute and natural law, social economy, etc., devoting special attention to pointing out the defects of the system of the school of Le Play,–primogeniture, which still obtains in England, in several parts of Germany, in certain localities of the Pyrenees, and in the Basque provinces.
In the countries of modern Europe, the testamentary power of the father is limited as follows: _Austria_ (Code of 1812): One-half of parents’ property reserved for children. The law of 1889 makes exception in the case of rural patrimonies of moderate size with dwelling attached, where the father has the right to designate his heir. _Denmark_ (Code of 1845): Father can dispose of but one-fourth of the property; nobles, however, are allowed to bestow upon one of their children the half of their fortune. _Germany_: No uniform civil legislation exists as yet for the whole empire. In the majority of the smaller states, in a part of Bavaria, Rugen, eastern Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein, the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ of Justinian is in force, while the Napoleonic code obtains in Rhenish Prussia, Hesse, and Bavaria, in Baden, Berg, Alsace-Lorraine. In Prussia, the reserve is one-third, if there are less than three children; one-half, if there are three or four. In Saxony, if there are five or more children, the reserve is one-half; if there are four or less, one-third. _Greece:_ The Justinian novels are followed. _Holland:_ The Napoleonic code is in force. _Italy_ (Code of 1866): The reserve is one-half. _Norway_ (Code of 1637, modified in 1800, 1811, 1825): The father is allowed free disposal of one-half of the patrimony, but for religious charities (_fondationspieuses_) only. _Portugal_: The legitimate is two-thirds. _Roumania_ (Code of 1865): The same provision as in the Napoleonic code. _Russia_ (Code of 1835): The father can dispose at pleasure of the personal property and property acquired, but the property itself must be divided equally. In Esthonia, this provision also applies to personal property acquired by inheritance. _Spain_ (Code of 1889): The father can dispose of one-third of the patrimony to a stranger; to a child he can will two-thirds. He can also, in the case of farming, industry, or commerce, leave his entire property to one of his children, except that the legatee has to pecuniarily indemnify his brothers and sisters. _Sweden_ (Code of 1734): In the towns, the father can dispose of but one-sixth of the patrimony; in the country, the patrimonial property must go to the children. The rest is at the will of the father, except that he must provide for the sustenance of his children. _Switzerland:_ At Geneva, the Napoleonic code is in force; in the Canton of Uri, the younger son is sometimes specially favoured; in Zurich, the father can dispose of one-sixth in favour of strangers, or one-fifth in favour of a child; in Bale, he is allowed no disposal; in the cantons of Neuchatel and Vaud, the reserve is one-half, in Bern and Schaffhausen, two-thirds, and in Eriburg and Soleure, three-fourths. _Turkey:_ The father can dispose of two-thirds by will, or of the whole by gift (215. 39-41).
In Prance, article 913 of the civil code forbids the father to dispose, by gift while living, or by will, of more than one-half of the property, if he leaves at his death but one legitimate child; more than one-third, if he leaves two children; more than one-fourth, if he leave three or more children. In the United States great testamentary freedom prevails, and the laws of inheritance belong to the province of the various States.
Among the nations of antiquity,–Egyptians, Persians, Assyrians, Chinese,–according to Deneus (215. 2), the _patria potestas_ probably prevented any considerable diffusion of the family estates. By the time of Moses, the Hebrews had come to favour the first-born, and to him was given a double share of the inheritance. With the ancient Hindus but a slight favouring–of the eldest son seems to have been in vogue, the principle of co-proprietorship of parent and children being recognized in the laws of Manu. In Sparta, the constitution was inimical to a reserve for all the children; in Athens, the code of Solon forbade a man to benefit a stranger at the expense of his legitimate male children; he had, however, the right to make particular legacies, probably up to one-half of the property. Deneus considers that the _penchant_ of the Athenians for equality was not favourable to a cast-iron system of primogeniture, although the father may have been able to favour his oldest child to the extent of one-half of his possessions. In ancient Rome (215. 4-16), at first, a will was an exception, made valid only by the vote of a lex curiata; but afterwards the absolute freedom of testamentary disposition, which was approved in 450 B.C. by the Law of the Twelve Tables,–_Uti legassit super pecunia tutelage suce rei, ita jus esto,_–appears, and the father could even pass by his children in silence and call upon an utter stranger to enjoy his estate and possessions. By 153 B.C., however, the father was called upon to nominally disinherit his children, and not merely pass them over in silence, if he wished to leave his property to a stranger. For some time this provision had little effect, but a breach in the _patria potestas_ has really been made, and by the time of Pliny the Younger (61-115 A.D.), who describes the procedure in detail, the disinherited children were given the right of the _querula inoffidosi testamenti,_ by which the father was presumed to have died intestate, and his property fell in equal shares to all his children. Thus it was that the right of children in the property of the father was first really recognized at Rome, and the _pars legitima,_ the reserve of which made it impossible for the children to attack the will of the father, came into practice. In the last years of the Republic, this share was at least one-fourth of what the legitimate heir would have received in the absence of a will; under Justinian, it was one-third of the part _ab intestate,_ if this was at least one-fourth of the estate; otherwise, one-half. The father always retained the right to disinherit, for certain reasons, in law. With this diminution of his rights over property went also a lessening of his powers over the bodies of his children. Diocletian forbade the selling of children, Constantine decreed that the father who exposed his new-born child should lose the _patria potestas,_ and Valentinian punished such action with death. Among the ancient Gauls, in spite of the father’s power of life and death over his offspring, he could not disinherit them, for the theory of co-proprietorship obtained with these western tribes (215. 16). With the ancient Germans, the father appears to have been rather the protector of his children than their owner or keeper; the child is recognized, somewhat rudely, as a being with some rights of his own. Michelet has aptly observed, as Deneus remarks, that “the Hindus saw in the son the reproduction of the father’s soul; the Romans, a servant of the father; the Germans, a child” (215. 17). At first wills were unknown among them, for the system of co-proprietorship,–_hoeredes successoresgue sui cuique liberi et nullum testamentum,_–and the solidarity of the family and all its members, did not feel the need of any. The inroad of Roman ideas, and especially, Deneus thinks, the fervour of converts to Christianity, introduced testamentary legacies.
The Goths and Burgundians, in their Roman laws, allowed the parent to dispose of three-fourths, the Visigoths one-third or one-fifth, according as the testator disposed of his property in favour of a child or a stranger. The national law of the Burgundians allowed to the father the absolute disposal of his acquisitions, but prescribed the equal sharing of the property among all the children. The ripuarian law of the Franks left the children a reserve of twelve sons, practically admitting absolute freedom of disposition by will (215. 18). The course of law in respect to the inheritance of children during the Middle Ages can be read in the pages of Deneus and the wider comparative aspect of the subject studied in the volumes of Post, Dargun, Engels, etc., where the various effects of mother-right and father-right are discussed and interpreted.
_Subdivisions of Land._
In some cases, as in Wurtemburg, Switzerland, Hanover, Thuringia, Hesse, certain parts of Sweden, France, and Russia, the subdivision of property has been carried out to an extent which has produced truly Lilliputian holdings. In Switzerland there is a certain commune where the custom obtains of transmitting by will to each child its proportional share of each parcel; so that a single walnut-tree has no fewer than sixty proprietors. This reminds us of the Maoris of New Zealand, with whom “a portion of the ground is allotted to the use of each family, and this portion is again subdivided into individual parts on the birth of each child.” It is of these same people that the story is told that, after selling certain of their lands to the English authorities, they came back in less than a year and demanded payment also for the shares of the children born since the sale, whose rights they declared had not been disposed of. On the islands of the Loire there are holdings “so small that it is impossible to reduce them any less, so their owners have them each in turn a year”; in the commune of Murs, in Anjou, there is “a strip of nine hectares, subdivided into no fewer than thirty-one separate parcels.” The limit, however, seems to be reached in Laon, where “it is not rare to find fields scarce a metre (3 ft. 3.37 in.) wide; here an apple-tree or a walnut-tree covers with its branches four or five lots, and the proprietor can only take in his crop in the presence of his neighbours, to whom he has also to leave one-half of the fruit fallen on their lots.” No wonder many disputes and lawsuits arise from such a state of affairs. It puts us in mind at once of the story of the sand-pile and the McDonogh farm. The exchange or purchase of contiguous parcels sometimes brings temporary or permanent relief (215. 112, 113).
The following figures show the extent to which this Lilliputian system obtained in France in 1884, according to the returns of the Minister of Finance:–
NATURE OF PROPERTY. ABSOLUTE PER TOTAL PER NUMBER OF CENT. HECTARES. CENT. HOLDINGS.
Less than 20 ares
(100 ares = one hectare) 4,115,463 29.00 Less than 50 ares 6,597,843 47.00 1,147,804 2.31 Less than 1 hectare ( =2-1/2 acres) 8,585,523 61.00 2,574,589 5.19 Less than 2 hectares 10,426,368 74.09 5,211,456 10.53 From 2 to 6 hectares 2,174,188 15.47 7,543,347 15.26 From 6 to 50 hectares 1,351,499 9.58 19,217,902 38.94 From 50 to 200 hectares 105,070 0.74 9,398,057 19.04 More than 200 hectares 17,676 0.12 8,017,542 16.23
Totals………………… 14,074,801 100.00 49,388,304 100.00
Deneus gives other interesting figures from Belgium and elsewhere, showing the extent of the system. Other statistics given indicate that this parcelling-out has reached its lowest point, and that the reaction has set in. It is a curious fact, noted by M. Deneus, that of the 1,173,724 tenant-farmers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1884, no fewer than 852,438 cultivated an acre or less.
_Younger Son._
Mr. Sessions, in his interesting little pamphlet (351) calls attention to the important _role_ assigned in legend and story to the “younger son,” “younger brother,” as well as the social customs and laws which have come into vogue on his account. Sir Henry Maine argued that “primogeniture cannot be the natural outgrowth of the family, but is a political institution, coming not from clansmen but from a chief.” Hence the youngest son, “who continues longest with the father, is naturally the heir of his house, the rest being already provided for.” Mr. Sessions observes (351. 2): “Among some primitive tribes, as those of Cape York [Australia] and the adjacent islands, the youngest son inherited a double portion of his deceased father’s goods. Among the Maoris of New Zealand he takes the whole. Among some hill tribes of India, such as the Todas of the Neilgherries, he takes the house and maintains the women of the family, whilst the cattle, which represent the chief personalities, are equally divided. The Mrus and Kolhs and Cotas have similar customs.” Somewhat similar to the code of the Todas was that of the Hindu Aryans, as embodied in the laws of Manu, for “the youngest son has, from time immemorial, as well as the eldest, a place in Hindu legislation.” The succession of the youngest prevails among the Mongolian Tartars, and “when in Russia the joint family may be broken up, the youngest takes the house.” The right of the youngest was known among the Welsh, Irish, and some other Celtic tribes; the old Welsh law gave the youngest son the house and eight acres, the rest of the land being divided equally between all the sons. Mr. Sessions calls attention to the fact that, while in Old Testament Palestine primogeniture was the rule, the line of ancestry of Christ exhibits some remarkable exceptions. And among primitive peoples the hero or demi-god is very often the younger son.
Under the name of “Borough English,” the law by which the father’s real property descends to the youngest son alone, survives in Gloucester and some few other places in England,–Lambeth, Hackney, part of Islington, Heston, Edmonton, etc.
Another interesting tenure is that of gavelkind, by which the land and property of the father was inherited in equal portions by all his sons, the youngest taking the house, the eldest the horse and arms, and so on. This mode of tenure, before the Conquest, was quite common in parts of England, especially Wales and Northumberland, still surviving especially in the county of Kent. Many things, indeed, testify of the care which was taken even in primitive times to secure that the youngest born, the child of old age, so frequently the best-loved, should not fare ill in the struggle for life.
_Child-Nurses._
One important function of the child (still to be seen commonly among the lower classes of the civilized races of to-day) with primitive peoples is that of nurse and baby-carrier. Even of Japan, Mrs. Bramhall gives this picture (189. 33):–
“We shall see hundreds of small children, not more than five or six years of age, carrying, fast asleep on their shoulders, the baby of the household, its tiny smooth brown head swinging hither and thither with every movement of its small nurse, who walks, runs, sits, or jumps, flies kites, plays hop-scotch, and fishes for frogs in the gutter, totally oblivious of that infantile charge, whether sleeping or waking. If no young sister or brother be available, the husband, the uncle, the father, or grandfather hitches on his back the baby, preternaturally good and contented.”
The extent to which, in America, as well as in Europe, to-day, young children are entrusted with the care of infants of their family, has attracted not a little attention, and the “beyond their years” look of some of these little nurses and care-takers is often quite noticeable. The advent of the baby-carriage has rather facilitated than hindered this old-time employment of the child in the last century or so. In a recent number (vol. xvii. p. 792) of _Public Opinion_ we find the statement that from June 17, 1890, to September 15, 1894, the “Little Mothers’ Aid Association,” of New York, has been the means of giving a holiday, one day at least of pleasure in the year, to more than eight thousand little girls, who are “little mothers, in the sense of having the care of younger children while the parents are at work.” In thrifty New England, children perform not a little of the housework, even the cooking; and “little mothers” and “little housekeepers” were sometimes left to themselves for days, while their elders in days gone by visited or went to the nearest town or village for supplies.
_Child-Marriages._
“Marriages are made in heaven,” says the old proverb, and among some primitive peoples we meet with numerous instances of their having been agreed upon and arranged by prospective parents long before the birth of their offspring. Indeed, the betrothal of unborn children by their parents occurs sporadically to-day in civilized lands. Ploss has called attention to child-marriages in their sociological and physiological bearings (125.1. 386-402), and Post has considered the subject in his historical study of family law. In these authorities the details of the subject may be read. In Old Calabar, men who already possess several wives take to their bosom and kiss, as their new wife, babes two or three weeks old. In China, Gujurat, Ceylon, and parts of Brazil, wives of from four to six years of age are occasionally met with. In many parts of the world wives of seven to nine years of age are common, and wives of from ten to twelve very common. In China it is sometimes the case that parents buy for their infant son an infant wife, nursed at the same breast with him (234. xlii.). Wiedemann, in an article on child-marriages in Egypt (381), mentions the fact that a certain king of the twenty-first dynasty (about 1100 B.C.) seems to have had as one of his wives a child only a few days old. From Dio Cassius we learn that in Rome, at the beginning of the Empire, marriages of children under ten years occasionally took place.
In some parts of the world the child-wife does not belong to her child-husband. “Among the Reddies, of India,” Letourneau informs us, “a girl from sixteen to twenty years of age is married to a boy of five or six. The wife then becomes the real wife of the boy’s uncle, or cousin, or of the father of the reputed husband. But the latter is considered to be the legal father of the children of his pretended wife.” So it is only when the boy has grown up that he receives his wife, and he, in turn, acts as his relative before him (100. 354). Temple cites the following curious custom in his tales of the Panjab (542. I. xviii.):– “When Raja Vasali has won a bride from Raja Sirkap, he is given a new-born infant and a mango-tree, which is to flower in twelve years, and when it flowers, the girl is to be his wife.” The age prescribed by ancient Hindu custom (for the Brahman, Tshetria, and Vysia classes) is six to eight years for the girl, and the belief prevailed that if a girl were to attain her puberty before being married, her parents and brothers go to hell, as it was their duty to have got her married before that period (317. 56). Father Sangermano, writing of Burma a hundred years ago, notices the “habit of the Burmese to engage their daughters while young, in real or fictitious marriages, in order to save them from the hands of the king’s ministers, custom having established a rule, which is rarely if ever violated, that no married woman can be seized, even for the king himself” (234. xlii.). The child-marriages of India have been a fruitful theme for discussion, as well as the enforced widowhood consequent upon the death of the husband. Among the most interesting literature on the subject are the “Papers relating to Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India” (317), Schlagintweit (142), etc. The evils connected with the child-marriages of India are forcibly brought out by Mrs. Steel in several of the short stories in her _From the Five Rivers_ (1893), and by Richard Garbe in his beautiful little novel _The Redemption of the Brahman_(1894).
But India and other Eastern lands are not the only countries where “child-marriages” have flourished. Dr. F. J. Furnivall (234), the distinguished English antiquary and philologist, poring over at Chester the “Depositions in Trials in the Bishop’s Court from November, 1561 to March, 1565-6,” was astonished to find on the ninth page the record: “that Elizabeth Hulse said she was married to George Hulse in the Chapel of Knutsford, when she was but _three or four_ years old, while the boy himself deposed that he was about seven,” and still more surprised when he discovered that the volume contained “no fewer than twenty-seven cases of the actual marriage in church of the little boys and girls of middle-class folk.” The result of Dr. Furnivall’s researches is contained in the one-hundred-and-eighth volume (original series) of the Early English Text Society’s Publications, dealing with child-marriages, divorces, ratifications, etc., and containing a wealth of quaint and curious sociological lore. Perhaps the youngest couple described are John Somerford, aged about three years, and Jane Brerton, aged about two years, who were married in the parish church of Brerton about 1553. Both were carried in arms to the church, and had the words of the marriage service said for them by those who carried them. It appears that they lived together at Brerton for ten years, but without sustaining any further marital relations, and when the husband was about fifteen years, we find him suing for a divorce on account of his wife’s “unkindness, and other weighty causes.” Neither party seemed affectionately disposed towards the other (234.26). Other very interesting marriages are those of Bridget Dutton (aged under five years) and George Spurstowe (aged six) (234. 38); Margaret Stanley (aged five) and Roland Dutton (aged nine), brother of Bridget Dutton (234. 41); Janet Parker (aged five) and Lawrence Parker (aged nine to ten). The rest of the twenty-seven couples were considerably older, the most of the girls ranging between eight and twelve, the boys between ten and fourteen (234. 28). It would Seem that for the most part these young married couples were not allowed to live together, but at times some of the nuptial rites were travestied or attempted to be complied with. In two only of the twenty-seven cases is there mention of “bedding” the newly-married children. John Budge, who at the age of eleven to twelve years, was married to Elizabeth Ramsbotham, aged thirteen to fourteen years, is said to have wept to go home with his father and only by “compulsion of the priest of the Chapel” was he persuaded to lie with his wife, but never had any marital relations with her whatever, and subsequently a petition for divorce was filed by the husband (234. 6). In the case of Ellen Dampart, who at the age of about eight years, was married to John Andrew aged ten, it appears that they slept in the same bed with two of the child-wife’s sisters between them. No marital relations were entered upon, and the wife afterwards sues for a divorce (234. 15, 16).
The practice seems to have been for each of the children married to go to live with some relative, and if the marriage were not ratified by them after reaching years of consent, to petition for a divorce. In some nine cases the boy is younger than the girl, and Humfrey Winstanley was under twelve when he was married to Alice Worsley aged over seventeen; in this case no marital relations were entered upon, though the wife was quite willing; and the husband afterwards petitions for a divorce (234.2-4). Thomas Dampart, who at the age of ten years, was married to Elizabeth Page, appears to have lived with his wife about eight years and to have kept up marital relations with her until she left him of her own motion. Dr. Furnivall (234. 49-52) cites four cases of ratification of child-marriages by the parties after they have attained years of discretion, in one of which the boy and the girl were each but ten years old when married. The most naive account in the whole book is that of the divorce-petition of James Ballard, who, when about eleven years of age, was married in the parish church of Colne at ten o’clock at night by Sir Roger Blakey, the curate, to a girl named Anne; the morning after the ceremony he is said “to have declared unto his uncle that the said Anne had enticed him with two Apples, to go with her to Colne, and marry her.” No marital relations were entered upon, and the curate was punished for his hasty and injudicious action (234. 45).
Dr. Furnivall (234. xxxv.) quotes at some length the legal opinion–the law on infant marriages–of Judge Swinburne (died, 1624), from which we learn that “infants” (i.e. children under seven years of age) could not contract spousals or matrimony, and such contracts made by the infants or by their parents were void, unless subsequently ratified by the contracting parties by word or deed,–at twelve the girls ceased to be children, and at fourteen the boys, and were then fully marriageable, as they are to-day in many parts of the world. Of childhood, Judge Swinburne says, “During this age, children cannot contract Matrimony _de praesenti_., but only _de futuro_”; but their spousals could readily be turned into actual marriages after the girls were twelve and the boys fourteen, as Dr. Furnivall points out.
The fifth limitation to his general statement, which the learned judge made, is thus strangely and quaintly expressed: “The fifth Limitation is, when the Infants which do contract Spousals are of that _Wit and Discretion_, that albeit they have not as yet accomplished the full Age of Seven Years, yet doth their supra-ordinary understanding fully supply that small defect of Age which thing is not rare in these days, wherein Children become sooner ripe, and do conceive more quickly than in former Ages” (234. xxxvi.).
First among the causes of these child-marriages Dr. Furnivall is inclined to rank “the desire to evade the feudal law of the Sovereign’s guardianship of all infants,” for “when a father died, the Crown had the right to hold the person and estate of the propertied orphan until it came of age, and it could be sold in marriage for the benefit of the Crown or its grantee.” Moreover, “if the orphan refused such a marriage with a person of its own rank, it had to pay its guardian a heavy fine for refusing his choice, and selecting a spouse of its own” (234. xxxix.). Property-arrangement also figures as a cause of these alliances, especially where the bride is older than the groom: Elizabeth Hulse (aged four) was married to George Hulse (aged seven) “because her friends thought she should have a living by him” (234. 4). When Elizabeth Ramsbotham (aged 13-14) married John Bridge (aged 11-12), “money was paid by the father of the said Elizaboth, to buy a piece of land” (234. 6); according to the father of Joan Leyland (aged 11-12), who married Ralph Whittall (aged 11-12), “they were married because she should have had by him a pretty bargain, if they could have loved, one the other” (234.12); Thomas Bentham (aged twelve) and Ellen Boltoii (aged ten) were married because Richard Bentham, grandfather of Ellen, “was a very wealthy man, and it was supposed that he would have been good unto them, and bestowed some good farm upon them” (234. 32); the marriage of Thomas Fletcher (aged 10-11) and Anne Whitfield (aged about nine) took place because “John Fletcher, father of the said Thomas, was in debt; and, to get some money of William Whitfield, to the discharge of his debts, married and bargained his sonne to the said Whitfield’s daughter.” The “compulsion of their friends” seems also to have been a cause of the marriages of children; Peter Hope (about thirteen) married Alice Ellis (aged nine), “because it was his mother’s mind, he durst not displease her” (234. 20, 23).
So far the evidence has related to unsatisfactory and unfortunate marriages, but, as Dr. Furnivall remarks, “no doubt scores of others ended happily; the child-husband and–wife just lived on together, and–when they had reached their years of discretion (girls twelve, boys fourteen) or attained puberty–ratified their marriage by sleeping in one bed and having children” (234. xix., 203).
Some additional cases of child-marriages in the diocese of Chester are noticed by Mr. J. P. Earwaker (234. xiv.), a pioneer in this branch of antiquarian research, whose studies date back to 1885. The case of John Marden, who, at the age of three years, was married to a girl of five is thus described: “He was carried in the arms of a clergyman, who coaxed him to repeat the words of matrimony. Before he had got through his lesson, the child declared he would learn no more that day. The priest answered: ‘You must speak a little more, and then go play you.'” Robert Parr, who, in 1538-9, at the age of three, was married to Elizabeth Rogerson, “was hired for an apple by his uncle to go to church, and was borne thither in the arms of Edward Bunburie his uncle … which held him in arms the time that he was married to the said Elizabeth, at which time the said Robert could scarce speak.” Mr. Earwaker says that in the _Inquisitiones post mortem_, “it is by no means unfrequent to read that so and so was heir to his father, and then aged, say, ten years, and was already married” (234. xxi.-xxxiii.).
A celebrated child-marriage was that at Eynsham, Oxfordshire, in 1541, the contracting parties being William, Lord Eure, aged 10-11 years, and Mary Darcye, daughter of Lord Darcye, aged four. The parties were divorced November 3, 1544, and in 1548, the boy took to himself another wife. Dr. Furnivall cites from John Smith’s _Lives of the Berkeleys_, the statements that Maurice, third Lord Berkeley, was married in 1289, when eight years old, to Eve, daughter of Lord Zouch, and, before he or his wife was fourteen years of age, had a son by her; that Maurice, the fourth Lord Berkeley, when eight years of age, was married in 1338-9, to Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh Lord Spenser, about eight years old; that Thomas, the fourth Lord Berkeley, when about fourteen and one-half years of age, was married, in 1366, to Margaret, daughter of Lord de Lisle, aged about seven. Smith, in quaint fashion, refers to King Josiah (2 Kings, xxiii., xxvi.), King Ahaz (2 Kings, xvi. 2, xviii. 2), and King Solomon (1 Kings, xi. 42, xiv. 21) as having been fathers at a very early age, and remarks: “And the Fathers of the Church do tell us that the blessed Virgin Mary brought forth our Saviour at fifteen years old, or under” (234. xxvii).
Even during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries child-marriages are numerously attested. Following are noteworthy cases (234. xxiii.): In 1626 Anne Clopton, aged nearly fourteen, was married to Sir Simonds D’Ewes, aged nearly twenty-four; in 1673, John Power, grandson of Lord Anglesey, was married at Lambeth, by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mrs. Catherine Fitzgerald, his cousin-german, she being about thirteen, and he eight years old; at Dunton Basset, Leicestershire, in 1669, Mary Hewitt (who is stated to have lived to the good old age of seventy- seven) was married when but three years old; in 1672, the only daughter (aged five) of Lord Arlington was married to the Duke of Grafton, and the ceremony was witnessed by John Evelyn, who, in 1679, “was present at the re-marriage of the child couple”; in 1719, Lady Sarah Cadogan, aged thirteen, was married to Charles, Duke of Eichmond, aged eighteen; in 1721, Charles Powel, of Carmarthen, aged about eleven, was married to a daughter of Sir Thomas Powel, of Broadway, aged about fourteen; in 1729, “a girl of nine years and three months was taken from a boarding school by one of her guardians, and married to his son”; Bridget Clarke, in 1883, is reputed to have been twenty-five years old, to have had seven children, and to have been married when only thirteen; at Deeping, Lincolnshire, a young man of twenty-one married a girl of fourteen, and “it was somewhat of a novelty to observe the interesting bride the following day exhibiting her skill on the skipping-rope on the pavement in the street.” Mr. Longstaff, who has studied the annual reports of the registrar-general for 1851-81, finds that during these thirtyone years, “out of 11,058,376 persons married, 154 boys married before 17, and 862 girls before 16. Of these, 11 boys of 15 married girls of 15 (four cases), 16, 18 (two cases), 20, and 21. Three girls of 14 married men of 18, 21, and 25. Five girls of 15 married boys of 16; in 29 marriages both girl and boy were sixteen” (234. xxxiii).
Further comments upon infant marriages may be found in an article in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for September, 1894, the writer of which remarks: “Within recent years, however, the discovery has been made, that, so far from being confined, as had been supposed, to royal or aristocratic houses, infant marriages were, in the sixteenth century, common in some parts of England among all classes” (367. 322).
It was said “marriages are made in heaven,” and that some times children are married before they are born; it might also be said “marriages are made for heaven,” since some children are married after they are dead. In some parts of China (and Marco Polo reported the same practice as prevalent in his time among the Tartars) “the spirits of all males who die in infancy or in boyhood are, in due time, married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age” (166. 140).
As Westermarck observes, “Dr. Ploss has justly pointed out that the ruder a people is, and the more exclusively a woman is valued as an object of desire, or as a slave, the earlier in life is she chosen; whereas, if marriage becomes a union of souls as well as of bodies, the man claims a higher degree of mental maturity from the woman he wishes to be his wife.”
In so civilized a nation even as the United States, the “age of consent” laws evidence the tenacity of barbarism. The black list of states, compiled by Mr. Powell (180. 201), in a recent article in the _Arena_, reveals the astonishing fact that in three states–Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina-the “age of consent” is _ten_ years; in four states, twelve years; in three states, thirteen years; in no fewer than twenty states, fourteen years; in two states, fifteen years; in twelve states, sixteen years; and in one state (Florida), seventeen years. In Kansas and Wyoming alone is the “age of consent” eighteen years, and it is worthy of note that Wyoming is the only state in the Union in which women have for any considerable length of time enjoyed the right to vote on exactly the same terms as men. In England, the agitation set going by Mr. Stead, in 1885, resulted in, the passage of a law raising the “age of consent” from thirteen to sixteen years. It is almost beyond belief, that, in the State of Delaware, only a few years ago, the “age of consent” was actually as low as seven years (180.194)! Even in Puritan New England, we find the “age of consent” fixed at thirteen in New Hampshire, and at fourteen in Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine (180. 195). It is a sad comment upon our boasted culture and progress that, as of old, the law protects, and even religion fears to disturb too rudely, this awful sacrifice to lust which we have inherited from our savage ancestors. There is no darker chapter in the history of our country than that which tells of the weak pandering to the modern representatives of the priests of Bacchus, Astarte, and the shameless Venus. The religious aspect of the horrible immolation may have passed away, but wealth and social attractions have taken its place, and the evil works out its destroying way as ever. To save the children from this worse than death, women must fight, and they will win; for once the barbarity, the enormity, the inhumanity of this child-sacrifice is brought home to men they cannot for their own children’s sake permit the thing to go on. Here, above all places else, apply the words of Jesus: “Whoso shall cause one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it is profitable that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.” The marriage-laws of some of the states savour almost as much of prehistoric times and primitive peoples. With the consent of her parents, a girl of twelve years may lawfully contract marriage in no fewer than twenty-two states and territories; and in no fewer than twenty, a boy of fourteen may do likewise. Among the twenty-two states and territories are included: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont; and among the twenty, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont. In some of the Southern States the age seems to be somewhat higher than in a number of the Northern. The existence of slavery may have tended to bring about this result; while the same fact in the West is to be accounted for by the vigour and newness of the civilization in that part of the country.
_Children’s Rights._
Where, as in ancient Rome, for example, the _patria potestas_ flourished in primitive vigour,–Mommsen says, “all in the household were destitute of legal rights,–the wife and the child no less than the bullock or the slave” (166. 229), children could in nowise act as members of society. Westermarck (166. 213-239) shows to what extent and to what age the _mundiwm_, or guardianship of the father over his children, was exercised in Rome, Greece, among the Teutonic tribes, in France. In the latter country even now “a child cannot quit the paternal residence without the permission of the father before the age of twenty-one, except for enrolment in the army. For grave misconduct by his children the father has strong means of correction. A son under twenty-five and a daughter under-twenty-one cannot marry without the consent of their parents; and even when a man has attained his twenty-fifth year, and the woman her twenty-first, both are still bound to ask for it, by a formal notification.” Westermarck’s observations on the general subject are as follows:–“There is thus a certain resemblance between the family institution of savage tribes and that of the most advanced races. Among both, the grown-up son, and frequently the grown-up daughter, enjoys a liberty unknown among peoples at an intermediate stage of civilization. There are, however, these vital differences: that children in civilized countries are in no respect the property of their parents; that they are born with certain rights guaranteed to them by society; that the birth of children gives parents no rights over them other than those which conduce to the children’s happiness. These ideas, essential as they are to true civilization, are not many centuries old. It is a purely modern conception the French Encyclopaedist expresses when he says, ‘Le pouvoir paternel est plutot un devoir qu’un pouvoir'” (166. 239).
_The Child at School._
It was in this spirit also that Count Czaky (when Minister of Education in Hungary), replying to the sarcastic suggestion of one of the Deputies, during the debate on the revision of the curriculum of classical studies, that “the lazy children should be asked whether they liked to study Greek or not,” said that “when it became necessary, he would willingly listen to the children themselves.” That children have some rights in the matter is a view that is slowly but surely fixing itself in the minds of the people,–that the school should be something more than an intellectual prison-house, a mental and moral tread-mill, a place to put children in out of the way of the family, a dark cave into which happy, freedom-loving, joyous childhood must perforce retire from that communion with nature which makes the health of its body and the salvation of its soul. This false theory of education is vanishing, however tardily, before the teachings of the new psychology and the new anthropology, which demand a knowledge of what the child is, feels, thinks, before they will be party to any attempt to make him be, feel, think, something different. The school is but a modified form of society, of its fundamental institution, the family. Dr. Eiccardi, in the introduction to his _Antropologia e Pedagogia_,-in which he discusses a mass of psychological, sociological, and anthropological observations and statistics,–well says (336. 12):–
“The school is a little society, whose citizens are the scholars. The teacher has not merely to instruct the pupil, but ought also to teach him to live in the little school-society and thus fitly prepare him to live in the great society of humanity. And just as men are classified in human society, so ought to be classified the scholars in the little school-society; and just as the teacher looks upon the great human world in movement upon the earth, so ought he also to look upon that little world called the school, observing its elements with a positive eye, without preconceptions and without prejudices. The teacher, therefore, in regard to the school-organism, is as a legislator in regard to society. And the true and wise legislator does not give laws to the governed, does not offer security and liberty to the citizens, until after he has made a profound study of his country and of society. Let the teacher try for some time to take these criteria into his school; let him try to apply in the school many of those facts and usages which are commonly employed in human society, and he will see how, little by little, almost unnoticeably, the primitive idea of the school will be modified in his mind, and he will see how the school itself will assume the true character which it ought to have, that is, the character of a microscopic social organism. This legislator for our children, by making the children and youths clearly see of themselves that the school is nothing else but a little society, where they are taught to live, and by making them see the points of resemblance and of contact with the great human society, will engender in the minds of the pupils the conscience of duty and of right; will create in them the primitive feeling of justice and of equity. And the pupils, feeling that there is a real association, feeling that they do form part of a little world, and are not something merely gathered together by chance for a few hours, will form a compact homogeneous scholastic association, in which all will try to be something, and of which all will be proud. In this way will the assemblage of disparate, diverse, heterogeneous elements, with which the school begins the year, be able to become homogeneous and create a true school organism. And if the teacher will persevere, whether in the direction of the school, in the classification of the pupils, or in the different contingencies that arise, in applying those criteria, those ideas, those forms, which are commonly employed in society, he will be favouring the homogeneity of the little organism which he has to instruct and to educate. He will thus have always before his mind all the organic, psychic, and moral characteristics of human society and will see the differences from, and the resemblances to, those of the school-organism. In so far will he have an example, a law, a criterion, a form to follow in the direction of the little human society entrusted to him, with its beautiful and its ugly side, its good and its bad, its vices and its virtues. This idea of the school as an organism, however much it seems destined to overturn ideas of the past, will be the crucible from which will be turned out in the near future all the reforms and many new ideas.”
This view of the school as an organism, a social microcosm, a little society within the great human society, having its resemblances to, and its differences from, the family and the nation, is one that the new development of “child-study” seems bound to promote and advance. Rank paternalism has made its exit from the great human society, but it has yet a strong hold upon the school. It is only in comparatively recent times that motherhood, which, as Zmigrodzki says, has been the basis of our civilization, has been allowed to exercise its best influence upon the scholastic microcosm. Paternalism and celibacy must be made to yield up the strong grasp which they have upon the educational institutions of the land, and the early years of the life of man must be confided to the care of the mother-spirit, which the individual man and the race alike have deified in their golden age. The mother who laid so well the foundations of the great human society, the originator of its earliest arts, the warder of its faiths and its beliefs, the mother, who built up the family, must be trusted with some large share in the building of the school.
_Child-Sociology._
In _The Story of a Sand-Pile_ (255), President G. Stanley Hall has chronicled for us the life-course of a primitive social community-nine summers of work and play by a number of boys with a sand-pile in the yard of one of their parents. Here we are introduced to the originality and imitation of children in agriculture, architecture, industrial arts, trade and commerce, money and exchange, government, law and justice, charity, etc. The results of this spontaneous and varied exercise, which, the parents say, “has been of about as much yearly educational value to the boys as the eight months of school,” and in contrast with which “the concentrative methodic unities of Ziller seem artificial, and, as Bacon said of scholastic methods, very inadequate to subtlety of nature,” Dr. Hall sums up as follows (255. 696):–
“Very many problems that puzzle older brains have been met in simpler terms and solved wisely and well. The spirit and habit of active and even prying observation has been greatly quickened. Industrial processes, institutions, and methods of administration and organization have been appropriated and put into practice. The boys have grown more companionable and rational, learning many a lesson of self-control, and developed a spirit of self-help. The parents have been enabled to control indirectly the associations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-community, to have them in a measure under observation without in the least restricting their freedom. The habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, have been avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has been given to their development, and much social morality has been taught in the often complicated _modus vivendi_ with others that has been evolved. Finally, this may perhaps be called one illustration of the education according to nature we so often hear and speak of.”
This study of child-sociology is a _rara avis in terra_; it is to be hoped, however, that if any other parents have “refrained from suggestions, and left the hand and fancy of the boys to educate each other under the tuition of the mysterious play-instinct,” they may be as fortunate in securing for the deeds of their young off-spring, as observant and as sympathetic a historian as he who has told the story of the sand-pile in that little New England town.
Bagehot, in the course of his chapter on “Nation-Making,” observes (395. 91):–
“After such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling to illustrate the subject from little boys. But it is not trifling. The bane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things are the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity to freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. But every boarding-school changes as a nation changes. Most of us may remember thinking,’ How odd it is that this _half_ should be so unlike last _half_; now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always going; now we play rounders, then we played prisoner’s base,’ and so through all the easy life of that time. In fact, some ruling spirits, some one or two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come, and so all was changed. The models were changed, and the copies changed; a different thing was praised, and a different thing bullied.” It was in the spirit of this extract (part of which he quotes), that the editor of the “Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science” happily admitted into that series of monographs, Mr. J. H. Johnson’s _Rudimentary Society among Boys_(272), a sociological study of peculiar interest and importance–“a microcosm, not only of the agrarian, but of the political and economic history of society.” Mr. Johnson has graphically described the development of society among some fifty boys on the farm belonging to the McDonogh School, not far from the city of Baltimore, Maryland; land-tenure, boy-legislation, judicial procedure, boy-economy, are all treated of in detail and many analogies with the life and habits of primitive peoples brought out, and the author has gone a long way towards realizing the thesis that “To show a decided resemblance between barbarian political institutions and those of communities of civilized children, would be a long step towards founding a science of Social Embryology” (272. 61).
_”Gangs.”_
Mr. Stewart Culin (212) in his interesting account of the “Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.” notices _en passant_ the existence of “gangs” of boys–boys’ societies of the ruder and rougher kind. As evidence of the extent to which these organizations have flourished, the following somewhat complete list of those known to have existed in the city of Philadelphia is given:–
Badgers, Bed Bugs, Bleeders, Blossoms, Bouncers, Buena Vistas, Buffaloes, Bull Dogs, Bullets, Bunker Hills, Canaries, Clippers, Corkies, Cow Towners, Cruisers, Darts, Didos, Dirty Dozen, Dumplingtown Hivers, Dung Hills, Muters, Forest Eose, Forties, Garroters, Gas House Tarriers, Glassgous, Golden Hours, Gut Gang, Haymakers, Hawk-Towners, Hivers, Killers, Lancers, Lions, Mountaineers, Murderers, Niggers, Pigs, Pluckers, Pots, Prairie Hens, Railroad Roughs, Rats, Ramblers, Ravens, Riverside, Eovers, Schuylkill Eangers, Skinners, Snappers, Spigots, Tigers, Tormentors, War Dogs, Wayne Towners.
Of these Mr. Culin remarks: “They had their laws and customs, their feuds and compacts. The former were more numerous than the latter, and they fought on every possible occasion. A kind of half-secret organization existed among them, and new members passed through a ceremony called ‘initiation,’ which was not confined to the lower classes, from which most of them were recruited. Almost every Philadelphia boy, as late as twenty years ago, went through some sort of ordeal when he first entered into active boyhood. Being triced up by legs and arms, and swung violently against a gate, was usually part of this ceremony, and it no doubt still exists, although I have no particular information, which indeed is rather difficult to obtain, as boys, while they remain boys, are reticent concerning all such matters” (212. 236).
These street-organizations exist in other cities also, and have their ramifications in the school-life of children, who either belong to, or are in some way subject to, these curious associations. Every ward, nay, every street of any importance, seems to have its “gang,” and it is no small experience in a boy’s life to pass the ordeal of initiation, battle with alien organizations, and retire, as childhood recedes, unharmed by the primitive _entourage_.
No doubt, from these street-gangs many pass into the junior criminal societies which are known to exist in many great cities, the training-schools for theft, prostitution, murder, the feeding-grounds for the “White Caps,” “Molly Maguires,” “Ku-Klux,” “Mafia,” “Camorra,” and other secret political or criminal associations, who know but too well how to recruit their numbers from the young. The gentler side of the social instinct is seen in the formation of friendships among children, associations born of the nursery or the school-room which last often through life. The study of these early friendships offers a tempting field for sociological research and investigation.
_Secret Societies of the Young._
There are among primitive peoples many secret societies to which children and youth are allowed to belong, or which are wholly composed of such.
Among the secret societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, of British Columbia, Dr. Boas mentions the “Keki’qalak–( = the crows),” formed from the children (403. 53). The same author speaks of the Tsimshians, another British Columbia tribe, in these terms (403. 57):–
“A man who is not a member of a secret society is a ‘common man.’ He becomes a middle-class man after the first initiation, and attains higher rank by repeated initiations. The novice disappears in the same way as among the Kwakiutl. It is supposed that he goes to heaven. During the dancing season a feast is given, and while the women are dancing the novice is suddenly said to have disappeared. If he is a child, he stays away four days; youths remain absent six days, and grown-up persons several months. Chiefs are supposed to stay in heaven during the fall and entire winter. When this period has elapsed, they suddenly reappear on the beach, carried by an artificially-made monster belonging to their crest. Then all the members of the secret society to which the novice is to belong gather and walk down in grand procession to the beach to fetch the child. At this time the child’s parents bring presents, particularly elk skins, strung on a rope as long as the procession, to be given at a subsequent feast. The people surround the novice and lead him into every house in order to show that he has returned. Then he is taken to the house of his parents and a bunch of cedar-bark is fastened over the door, to show that the place is tabooed, and nobody is allowed to enter.” The dance and other ceremonies which follow may be read of in Dr. Boas’ report.
Dr. Daniels, in his study of _Regeneration_, has called attention to “seclusion” and “disappearance,” followed by reappearance and adoption as members of society, as characteristic practices in vogue among many savage and semi-civilized tribes with respect to children and those approaching the age of puberty–a change of name sometimes accompanies the “entering upon the new life,” as it is often called. Of the Australians we read: “The boy at eight or ten years of age must leave the hut of his father and live in common with the other young men of the tribe. He is called by another name than that which he has borne from birth and his diet is regulated to some extent.” In New Guinea, in Africa, and among some of the tribes of American aborigines like habits prevail. The custom of certain Indians formerly inhabiting Virginia is thus described: “After a very severe beating the boys are sent into a secluded spot. There they must stay nine months and can associate with no human being. They are fed during this time with a kind of intoxicating preparation of roots to make them forget all about their past life. After their return home everything must seem strange to them. In this way it is thought that they ‘begin to live anew.’ They are thought of as having been dead for a short time and are ‘numbered among the older citizens after forgetting that they once were boys'” (214. 11-13).
In the African district of Quoja existed a secret society called Belly-Paaro, “the members of which had to spend a long time in a holy thicket. Whoever broke the rules of this society was seized upon by the Jannanes, or spirits of the dead, who dwelt in the thicket and brought thither, whence he was unable to return” (127. I. 240). Of this practice Kulischer remarks: “‘It is a death and a new birth, since they are wholly changed in the consecrated thicket, dying to the old life and existence, and receiving a new understanding.’ When the youths return from the thicket, they act as if they had come into the world for the first time, and had never known where their parents lived or their names, what sort of people they were, how to wash themselves” (214. 12).
Of another part of Africa we read: “In the country of Ambamba each person must die once, and come to life again. Accordingly, when a fetich-priest shakes his calabash at a village, those men and youths whose hour is come fall into a state of death-like torpor, from which they recover usually in the course of three days. But if there is any one that the fetich loves, him he takes into the bush and buries in the fetich-house. Oftentimes he remains buried for a long series of years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his reason is gone, and the fetich-man is obliged to train him and instruct him in the simplest bodily movements, like a little child. At first the stick is only the instrument of education, but gradually his senses come back to him, and he begins to speak. As soon as his education is finished, the priest restores him to his parents. They seldom recognize their son, but accept the express assurance of the feticero, who also reminds them of events in the past. In Ambamba a man who has not passed through the process of dying and coming to life again is held in contempt, nor is he permitted to join in the dance” (529. 56).
Some recollection, perhaps, of similar customs and ideas appears in the game of “Ruripsken,” which, according to Schambach, is played by children in Gottingen: One of the children lies on the ground, pretending to be dead, the others running up and singing out “Ruripsken, are you alive yet?” Suddenly he springs up and seizes one of the other players, who has to take his place, and so the game goes on.
Among the Mandingos of the coast of Sierra Leone, the girls approaching puberty are taken by the women of the village to an out-of-the-way spot in the forest, where they remain for a month and a day in strictest seclusion, no one being permitted to see them except the old woman who has charge of their circumcision. Here they are instructed in religion and ceremonial, and at the expiration of the time set, are brought back to town at night, and indulge in a sort of Lady Godiva procession until daybreak. At the beginning of the dry-cool season among the Mundombe “boys of from eight to ten years of age are brought by the ‘kilombola-masters’ into a lonely uninhabited spot, where they remain for ninety days after their circumcision, during which time not even their own parents may visit them. After the wound heals, they are brought back to the village in triumph” (127. 1. 292).
With the Kaffirs the circumcision-rites last five months, “and during this whole time the youths go around with their bodies smeared with white clay. They form a secret society, and dwell apart from the village in a house built specially for them” (127. I. 292). Among the Susu there is a secret organization known as the _Semo_, the members of which use a peculiar secret language, and “the young people have to pass a whole year in the forest, and it is believed right for them to kill any one who comes near the wood, and who is not acquainted with this secret tongue” (127. I. 240). A very similar society exists among the tribes on the Rio Nunez. Here “the young people live for seven or eight years a life of seclusion in the forest.” In Angoy there is the secret society of the _Sindungo_, membership in which passes from father to son; in Bomma, the secret orders of the fetich Undembo; among the Shekiani and the Bakulai, that of the great spirit Mwetyi, the chief object of which is to keep in subjection women and children, and into which boys are initiated when between fourteen and eighteen years old; the Mumbo Jumbo society of the Mandingos, into which no one under sixteen years of age is allowed to enter (127. I. 241-247).
Among the Mpongwe the women have a secret society called _Njembe_, the object of which is to protect them against harsh treatment by the men. The initiation lasts several weeks, and girls from ten to twelve years of age are admissible (127. I. 245).
Of the Indians of the western plains of the United States of America we are told: “At twelve or thirteen these yearnings can no longer be suppressed; and, banded together, the youths of from twelve to sixteen years roam over the country; and some of the most cold-blooded atrocities, daring attacks, and desperate combats have been made by these children in pursuit of fame” (432. 191).
Among the Mandingos of West Africa, during the two months immediately following their circumcision, the youths “form a society called _Solimana_. They make visits to the neighbouring villages, where they sing and dance and are _feted_ by the inhabitants.”
In Angola the boys “live for a month under the care of a fetich-priest, passing their time in drum-beating, a wild sort of singing, and rat-hunting.” Among the Beit Bidel “all the youths who are to be consecrated as men unite together. They deck themselves out with beads, hire a guitar-player, and retire to the woods, where they steal and kill goats from the herds of their tribe, and for a whole week amuse themselves with sport and song. The Wanika youths of like age betake themselves, wholly naked, to the woods, where they remain until they have slain a man.” On the coast of Guinea, after their circumcision, “boys are allowed to exact presents from every one and to commit all sorts of excesses” (127. 1.291-4).
“Among the Fulas, boys who have been circumcised are a law unto themselves until the incision has healed. They can steal or take whatever suits them without its being counted an offence. In Bambuk, for fourteen days after the circumcision-_fete_, the young people are allowed to escape from the supervision of their parents. From sunrise to sunset they can leave the paternal roof and run about the fields near the village. They can demand meat and drink of whomsoever they please, but may not enter a house unless they have been invited to do so.” In Darfur, “after their circumcision, the boys roamed around the adjacent villages and stole all the poultry” (127. I. 291).
_Modern Aspects_.
These secret societies and outbursts of primitive lawlessness recall at once to our attention the condition of affairs at some of our universities, colleges, and larger schools. The secret societies and student-organizations, with their initiations, feasts, and extravagant demonstrations, their harassing of the uninitiated, their despisal of municipal, collegiate, even parental authority, and their oftentime contempt and disregard of all social order, their not infrequent excesses and debauches, carry us back to their analogues in the institutions of barbarism and savagery, the accompaniments of the passage from childhood to manhood. Of late years, the same spirit has crept into our high schools, and is even making itself felt in the grammar grades, so imitative are the school-children of their brothers and sisters in the universities and colleges. Pennalism and fagging, so prevalent of old time in Germany and England, are not without their representatives in this country. The “freshman” in the high schools and colleges is often made to feel much as the savage does who is serving his time of preparation for admission into the mysteries of Mumbo- Jumbo.
In the revels of “May Day,” “Midsummer,” “Eogation Week,” “Whitsuntide,” “All Fools’ Day,” “New Year’s Day,” “Hallow E’en,” “Christmas,” “Easter,” etc., children throughout England and in many parts of Europe during the Middle Ages took a prominent part and _role_ in the customs and practices which survive even to-day, as may be seen in Brand, Grimm, and other books dealing with popular customs and festivals, social _fetes_ and merry-makings.
In _Tennyson’s May_ Queen we read:–
“You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow’ll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year; Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”
And a “mad, merry day” it certainly was in “merry England,” when the fairest lass in the village was chosen “Queen of the May,” and sang merry songs of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.
Polydore Virgil tells us that in ancient Home the “youths used to go into the fields and spend the Calends of May in dancing and singing in honour of Flora, goddess of fruits and flowers.” Westermarck seems to think some of these popular customs have something to do with the increase of the sexual function in spring and early summer (166. 30).
In seizing upon this instinct for society-making among children and youth lies one of the greatest opportunities for the prevention of crime and immorality the world has ever known. To turn to good ends this spontaneity of action, to divert into channels of usefulness these currents of child-activity, will be to add immensely to the equipment of mankind in the struggle with vice. A certain bishop of the early Christian Church is credited with having declared that, if the authorities only took charge of the children soon enough, there would be no burning of heretics, no scandalous schisms in the body ecclesiastic; and there is a good deal of truth in this observation.
The Catholic Church, and many of the other Christian churches have seen the wisdom of appealing to, and availing themselves of, the child-power in social and socio-religious questions. Not a little of the great spread of the temperance movement in America and Europe of recent years is due to the formation of children’s societies,–Bands of Hope, Blue Ribbon Clubs, Junior Temperance Societies and Prohibition Clubs, Young Templars’ Associations, Junior Father Matthew Leagues, and the like,– where a legitimate sphere is open to the ardour and enthusiasm of the young of both sexes. The great Methodist Church has been especially quick to recognize the value of this kind of work, and the junior chapters of the “Epworth League”–whose object is “to promote intelligence and loyal piety in its young members and friends and to train them in experimental religion, practical benevolence, and church work”–now numbers some three thousand, with a membership of about one hundred and twenty thousand. This society was organized at Cleveland, Ohio, May 15, 1889. The “Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour,” the first society of which was established at Portland, Maine, February 2,1881, with the object of “promoting an earnest Christian life among its members, increasing their mutual acquaintance, and making them more useful in the service of God,” has now enrolled nearly thirty-four thousand “Companies,” with a total membership (active and associate) all over the world of over two million; of these societies 28,696 are in the United States and 2243 in Canada. Another society of great influence, having a membership in America and the Old World of some thirty-five thousand, is the “Ministering Children’s League,” founded by the Countess of Meath in 1885, and having as objects “to promote kindness, unselfishness, and the habit of usefulness amongst children, and to create in their minds an earnest desire to help the needy and suffering; to give them some definite work to do for others, that this desire may be brought to good effect”; there are also the “Lend-a-Hand Clubs” of the Unitarian Church. The Episcopal Church has its “Girls’ Friendly Societies,” its “Junior Auxiliaries to the Board of Missions”; its “Brotherhood of St. Andrew,” and “Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip,” for young men. For those of not too youthful years, the “Young Men’s Christian Association,” the associations of the “White,” “Red,” and “Iron Cross” exist in the various churches, besides many other “Guilds,” “Alliances,” “Leagues,” etc. For those outside the churches there are “Boys’ Clubs,” and “Girls’ Societies” in the cities and larger towns. The “Bands of Mercy” and the branches of the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” exert a widespread influence for good; while several of the secret benevolent associations, such as the “Foresters,” for example, have instituted junior lodges, from which the youth are later on drafted into the society of their elders. There exist also many social clubs and societies, more or less under the supervision of the