The New Stone Age in Northern Europe Part 13

Here is a region which stands in free communication with the agricultural population of the parkland zone, open to influences from the steppe, accepting the higher civilization of Phrygia and the aegean.

It is a people of advanced agriculture, hence probably of rapidly increasing population, open to trade and commerce. Here wide and free communications would be likely to prevent the formation of an unyielding cake or crust of custom. People meeting from all lands and cultures might well make and use a language capable of expressing a great variety of shades of thought peculiar to a variety of peoples and cultures; we might safely call it a mixed language springing from a mixture of peoples. Here, as in the aegean region, the more or less fortified town or village would be a necessity. Here the horse and wagon would be early introduced from the east. Here the patriarchate, so characteristic of nomadic tribes, would be early imported from the steppe, or may have been developed independently.

There is a universality in the Indo-European religion, a sanity and proportion in their whole mode of thought, a broad sympathy, a willingness to accept new ideas and conditions--in general, a breadth of mind which could hardly be the product of isolation but rather of men who had "seen the customs of many men and many cities," and could look with tolerance and charity on alien cultures and fully appreciate their worth and advantages. Our Teutonic ancestors carried their mental and cultural environment with them wherever they went. They were apostles of purity of blood and hence of isolation. They were never good mixers, as were Celt and Achaean. All three migrated and conquered far and wide, and both usually disappeared in the alien population. But the Teuton left little impression on the alien culture, while Achaean and Celt leavened the whole ma.s.s. Here, as in other respects, Celt and Teuton show an incompatibility and oppositeness which strongly suggest difference of origin.

But we must carefully avoid too great certainty and definiteness of a.s.sertion. The weight of probability seems to be against any theory which locates the first, original homeland in the far east or in the far northwest. But we deal only with probabilities, and may well "carry our theories on our finger-tips." If the cradle was somewhere in southern Russia north of the Black Sea, or somewhat farther east or west, its second homeland just before the great dispersal was vastly larger. Myres thinks that it extended far to the eastward of the Volga, which perhaps was the boundary between the eastern and western branches, and whose upper waters drained a very early home of the Finns.

The Indo-Europeans were settled in a goodly land capable with their improved agriculture of supporting a very large population. Why did they migrate in all directions? Here, again, we are left much in the dark.

But Pumpelly, in his explorations at Anau, found the settlement deserted during the Bronze period about the same time when we find the Indo-Europeans leaving the homeland. At Anau there are signs that the desertion was due primarily to aridity or to disturbances accompanying such a change. It seems highly probable that climatic changes may have played a most important part in this movement, as they seem to have done in the later historical migrations from this region or from farther eastward.

We may close this chapter of uncertainties with one deduction which seems fairly evident. If the Germans were the first and original Indo-Europeans, the movement developed here directly out of preceding Neolithic conditions. If, as seems more probable, it originated farther to the southeast, and was introduced by the Celts, or in connection with the amber trade, it made little marked interruption in the development of the Germans. They and the Scandinavians continued to take from the south whatever they would, but their development was largely independent. A complete conquest of Germany and Scandinavia by the Celts seems very improbable.

The Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples were not precocious, and appear in history very late. But here apart, in the misty northland, a people was very slowly developing who, after the decadence and fall of Rome, could come forward and slowly and wearily rebuild a civilization better than that which had fallen, and a government of, by, and for the people, guaranteeing to the individual the right of free action and development, the grandest feature of Indo-European culture. This, rather than any precocity, is the glory of the northern peoples. Once again we find history in the making in an inconspicuous people during an apparently dormant period.

He that believeth will not despise the day of small things, neither will he make haste. If the vision tarries long, he will wait for it. "It shall come and shall not tarry." It will probably come by the way which he least suspects.

There seems to be a wide-spread opinion that the rise of the Indo-Europeans was the first dawn of day in a benighted world. Their migrations were a missionary movement on a grand scale. They dispelled darkness, ignorance, and superst.i.tions, broke the crust of a stagnant conservatism, overthrew outworn customs, brought an entirely new culture, and revolutionized life and the world. We might call attention to the fact that Indo-European culture and life were a product of Neolithic experience, that it was the blossoming of Neolithic growth, that it represented only one part or phase of Neolithic attainment. "The best traditions make the best rebels."[179] The question remains: Was Neolithic thought and feeling destroyed by their coming, or did it still persist, like a river flowing underground, and is most of our deepest life to-day a fairly direct continuation of the older current only somewhat modified by the revolution?

We notice first of all the commonness or community of Neolithic feeling and life, its almost monotonous uniformity, over Europe, eastern Asia, and probably even far wider areas. We may easily exaggerate this. The cultures of the Mediterranean basin, of Spain and France, of the Danube valley, of northern Germany and Scandinavia, not to mention smaller, more isolated provinces, showed well-marked differences. There was probably more diversity in the people of every one of these provinces, especially at centres of trade, even in every larger village, than our hasty study would lead us to suspect. But in fundamental characters there was wide-spread and marked similarity; and this, like the wide range of dominant genera and species of animals, is a sign of vitality and fitness.

The Neolithic period coincides roughly with the latter part of Wundt's Totem Age: the Bronze period ushered in his Age of Heroes.?[180]

During the first period the individual counted for very little, everything was tribal. In the second period the great leaders of popular migrations emerge, young, vigorous, hot-blooded. With the appearance of these "kings of men" comes the rise of nations. Tribal control wanes, and the slow development of individual, personal judgment and conscience, self-control, and responsibility replaces it to a great extent.

We read in the history of Israel that the long Egyptian bondage of a stiff-necked nomad people, being broken to the rudiments of order and civilization, was followed by an exodus and a period of judges or popular leaders, when "there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." It was a period of lawlessness and anarchy; recovery was slow and painful, and finally only partially attained by the appointment of a king. A similar education, on a vastly larger scale both of area and time, was going on all over Europe.

Prehistoric man was guided and controlled by feelings usually expressing the dictates of a long experience out of which instincts had crystallized. His feelings were his instinctive responses to new emergencies. He could not a.n.a.lyze them, reason or argue about them; he was spared the "malady of thought." He had little or no logic or science; his philosophy, as we have seen, was a _way_ smoothed by the feet of his ancestors. He was a man of taste in the literal sense of the word. He knew what he liked and what he disliked; probably he could not have explained the reason for either feeling. He was wise in following these instinctive feelings and tastes; they represented the acc.u.mulated and a.s.similated experience of millennia.

Of course the experience had been that of individuals. Neolithic man's school and laboratory of education was mostly the family and the neighborhood. Here he had to learn to get on with other individuals, to live and let live, to practise co-operation and mutual aid. Here he learned the first and grandest lessons in morals; that he would be done by as he did, and hence that it was best to do as he would be done by.

He has never lost or forgotten the lessons learned in this excellent "dame's school."

Most of his higher education--and hence of his feeling, conscience, religion, and life--was tribal. Laws, or rather customs, were propounded by the elders of the tribe or priests, an exceedingly conservative court. The chief aim was not rapidity of progress, but confirming and practising that which long experience had proved to be good. Slowly but surely the fund of wisdom increased. "It is the three-per-cent man who gets all the money in the end."

Responsibility was tribal. The man who tried experiments or "fooled"

with the forbidden thing was a common nuisance summarily and thoroughly abated by the tribe.

Land was common property, though the individual had probably gained some rights of use. It is doubtful whether he could use the whole or any part of it entirely as he would. Even at a much later date his use was largely limited and controlled by ancient custom.

The ritual which still made up most of his religion was also tribal.[181] Dance and song were practised by the whole community. His creed, so far as he had one, was a belief in spiritual beings, daemons, of great power and marvellous efficiency. Some or many were beneficent; more were probably maleficent; but those might be appeased, mollified, bribed, won over, or controlled, if rightly approached through magical rites or ceremonies.

These daemons seem to have been supposed to be almost innumerable. No one was supreme, but some were more important than others. Here then was room for variety of opinion, of ritual, of the spirit occupying the most important place; hence also of change and development. The G.o.ds in one country were those of the hills; in another, those of the plains; in a third, of the forest. Fishing and agricultural tribes had different daemons. The wandering trader, pa.s.sing from tribe to tribe, in his own heart respected or neglected all alike. Every land had its own G.o.ds or G.o.ddesses. When a man migrated to another country he usually left his old G.o.ds at home. If he was adopted into the brotherhood of another tribe, he changed his religious allegiance also.

A religious hierarchy seems to have grown up during the Neolithic period headed by the G.o.ddess-mother of life. Her rise seems to have accompanied the introduction of agriculture, which must have brought great changes in religious ritual and belief. Daemons who had heretofore held a high place in the fear or affection of hunting tribes gradually lost their supremacy or were neglected.

The dethronement of G.o.ds or daemons was usually not sudden or revolutionary. The new mode of life and its accompanying cult gained ground slowly. Probably it was at first an extension or modification of some older one. The dethroned divinity long retained his hold on the fears or affections of many of the tribe. Finally he was remembered only by certain old wives in remote or isolated settlements. With the rest of the people he, or she, was fast becoming an imp, kobold, or fairy--the subject of fascinating stories, still tinged with mystery, joy, or fear, but not to be taken too seriously.

Here, apparently, is one, by no means the only, source of folk-lore and fairy-tale. Folk-lore is an exceedingly wide field and our path leads through only a little corner of it. It was the growth of millennia. It preserves for us remnants of ancient beliefs and practices, whose original meaning had been forgotten long before the birth of the story-teller. Fossil beliefs of the most widely separated ages may be found jumbled together in the same story.

It was always intended to be told to a group of sympathetic listeners or to the whole community. It is genuine literature, but when reduced to writing or cold print it chills and dies. The story-teller must feel at once the sympathy or coldness of his listeners. The substance may remain unchanged, but the shading and emphasis must vary with the feeling and temper of the audience. Thus in a very true sense it was moulded by the people. If a story survived with certain forms and content, it was because it was essentially common and human, appealing to that which is not individual but at least tribal or racial.

Says Mr. Chesterton: "Our modern novels, which deal with men as they are, are chiefly produced by a small and educated section of the society. But this other literature (the kind now called folk-lore, the literature of the people) deals with men greater than they are--with demiG.o.ds and heroes--and that is far too important a matter to be trusted to the educated cla.s.ses. The fashioning of these portents is a popular trade, like ploughing or bricklaying; the men who made bridges, the men who made ditches, were the men who made deities. Men could not elect their kings, but they could elect their G.o.ds. So we find ourselves faced with a fundamental contrast between what is called fiction and what is called folk-lore. The one exhibits an abnormal degree of dexterity, operating within our daily limitations; the other exhibits quite normal desires extended beyond those limitations. Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy-tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people.

"As our world advances through history toward its present epoch, its becomes more specialist, less democratic, and folk-lore turns gradually into fiction. But it is only slowly that the old elfin fire fades into the light of common realism. For ages after our characters have dressed up in the clothes of mortals they betray the blood of the G.o.ds."[182]

The charm and wisdom of folk-lore and fairy-tale are mostly due to the commonness, in the best sense, of their subject, thought, and feeling.

They suit all times and places, and are immortal and timeless like their heroes. When we attempt to reclothe them in modern form or language to suit "private interpretation" their strength is departed from them.

Neolithic feeling, belief, ritual, religion; its music, art, and literature; its customs, inst.i.tutions, morals, ways, and life--all these sprang from the life and experience of the tribe or community. They were essentially growths in and from the ma.s.s of the people, usually owing comparatively little to the genius of any individual inventor or discoverer. We have called them Neolithic, but some or many of them were old far back in Paleolithic time. Like the tree Ygdrasil their roots lay hold on the foundations of the world.

So deeply rooted a growth or culture is almost ineradicable, though it has a marvellous adaptability and possibilities of growth and modification. It could never have been destroyed by its own Indo-European children, however rebellious. It must survive somewhere though probably changed for the better. We have found reasons to doubt whether Roman capacity for discipline and government, Roman laws and inst.i.tutions, were predominantly of Indo-European origin. We were still more doubtful whether the glory of Teutonic or Scandinavian history is due to its being Indo-European, or whether it was the result of a continuous, unbroken development from Neolithic times. If ever any culture seems largely native and indigenous, responsive to outside influences but always retaining its independent self-determination and power of selection and choice as to what and how far it will a.s.similate, that culture is to be found in northern Germany and Scandinavia.

We have seen the fate of Olympian religion and Achaean thought in Greece.

The Achaeans were a small minority completely outnumbered by an exceedingly conservative native population. They were absorbed and became a part of the Greek people, and their contribution must not be underestimated. We have noted the marvellous vitality of the old Neolithic thought, its re-emergence, its influence on Greek philosophy.

We remember that the great seat of progress was not in Dorian Sparta but in "Pelasgic Athens," almost unknown to Homer.

The Celt was, if anything, a better "mixer" and more adaptable than even the Achaean. His prejudices and zeal in regard to morals and religion seem not to have been deep or strong. The Celts were finally absorbed, affecting the temper of the people far more than their daily life.

Through all these revolutions, as well as those which were to follow, family and neighborhood retained their compact unity, perhaps with all its mutual attractions strengthened by the pressure of the conquerors.

They were still the controlling influence in the life and education of the individual, as they probably remain to this day. The power of these smaller communities may have waxed, as tribal control waned. What they had lost in the mutual support within the tribe they made good by leaning more closely on their neighbors.

This solidarity makes the common people very stiff-necked, in an excellent sense of the word. Like the Neolithic folk of Scandinavia, they select and accept from their more cultured neighbors only that which they can a.s.similate to the stores of experience and instincts which they already possess. The fickleness, of which they are often accused, is characteristic of a very different cla.s.s or stratum of the population, and of far later origin and development. Their own development is naturally slow, gradual, and continuous.

We have ventured the opinion that the essentials of Neolithic culture survived the conquests of the Indo-Europeans in a but slightly modified form. If this is granted, we have every reason to think that the effects of all succeeding invasions and conquests, changes of dynasties and governments, international or national policies, internal legislation and reforms, have been even more temporary, slight, and superficial.

Modern revolutions have been more and more uprisings of the people a.s.serting the inalienable rights and privileges of their dignity as men.

The trend of popular life and feeling has resembled the flow of a river or the incoming of the tide. It turns or winds as it meets obstacles in its path, but keeps in the main to a fairly clear course and direction.

The people may not be against the government, they merely go their way regardless of it. But we must not trespa.s.s on the field of the historian.

During the Neolithic period everybody, except perhaps certain priests and elders, belonged to the common people. But acc.u.mulation of wealth, the rise of leaders, the conquest of new lands developed a distinct aristocracy of birth, wealth, prowess, leadership, and genius. The common people of to-day, whom, as Mr. Lincoln said, "G.o.d must have loved or he never would have made so many of them," seem to be the whole population minus the uncommon aristocracy. It is not easy to see just where we ought to draw the line between ma.s.s and cla.s.s.

All the virtues, brains, and possibilities of progress can hardly be confined to this upper stratum. Can we define or describe our common people? They are a very mixed mult.i.tude. There is probably more individual variety than among the conventional refined and cultured, and this makes them more original and interesting. Hence any composite picture is usually a blur; a definite picture of any group or part would be partial and one-sided, very possibly a caricature of the whole. We dare not try to offer one.

Men and women like Mr. Robert Woods, of Boston, and Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, have set themselves patiently, persistently, sympathetically, respectfully, and wisely to study and help these people. They can and will describe them, if we will listen. Their faith in the people seems to be deep and strong.

We all recognize that in times of trial and emergency, when great testing moral issues are at stake, the people are practically unanimous in recognizing and supporting the cause of justice and right, unless befogged, divided, or misled by statesmen. Their taste for right ends is keen and reliable. Their feelings ring true, and they act accordingly, whatever the cost.

They are not inarticulate, though their speech is often interjectory.

They are only beginning to produce a large number of spokesmen. Now and then their demands are voiced by a prophet, a.s.serting that what Jehovah demands is "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d"; or the prophecy is sung by a poet, like Burns. They may sometimes or often be misled; but if their heart and feeling is not healthy we may well despair of the republic.

But the true prophet is very rarely a statesman. His feeling and taste for ends is marvellously good. Here his word, like the feeling of the people from whom he sprang, is almost infallible. But the choice of means and policy, the selection of the next step toward the attainment of the end, is the real business of the statesman.

The _elite_ of wealth, learning, and culture to-day have generally given up the search for ends in life. The old question: "What is man's chief end?" sounds archaic. We are doubtful as to the existence or desirability of such a thing. We are, in the language of the broker, very "long" on means, but terribly "short" on ends, for which there is no market. Some day we shall again find a place for end and purpose in our philosophy and science, as in the systems of Paul, Plato, and especially of Aristotle, with his "pa.s.sion for the obvious," but at present these thinkers are back numbers. Yet we must have ends of life beyond mere survival, comfort, or luxury, and getting a living. Some scale of values, not solely and purely mercantile, would also be useful.

If the aristocracy of wealth, learning, and culture can provide us no adequate system of ends and values in life, would it not be well for us to borrow temporarily a few from the people? Might we not to good advantage even go into partnership with them, cordially accepting their ends, and loyally and honestly attempting to find the means of attaining them? The result might be a solidarity of thought, feeling, action, and final attainment superior even to those of our Neolithic ancestors.

You may possibly say: "We in America are already living under a democratic form of government--'of the people, by the people, and for the people.'" Is this the statement of an accomplished fact or the definition of a dim, far-off event toward which we hope we are moving?

How far did the framers of our Const.i.tution desire or intend that the will of the people should govern? Was the method of choosing and electing the President of the United States, as originally devised, intended to make that election popular or not? We have changed that. Did they intend that the Senate of the United States should be a means of carrying out the will of the people, or rather that it should defer or check its becoming the law of the land? Does our governmental action to-day represent the will of the people? Is it truly representative?

Perhaps our ancestors were wise in their caution. Perhaps a change has become advisable. We are asking how far government changes or modifies the people; how far governmental action, change of President or controlling party, their legislation and policies, affect the deeper currents of character and life. The people seem to me to be still continuing to go their own way and to follow quietly but firmly their own line of development, largely regardless of the votes of national Congress or State legislature, perhaps sometimes with a slight sigh of relief at their adjournment. It may be best that it is so. The independence and continuity of popular development is still maintained to-day as throughout prehistoric times.