Society And its Purpose
Book 3 - Determining the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 2
The soundness and corruption of the practical reason of the masses prior to the institution of civil society
295. We will gain a good deal of light on our subject, I think, if we first examine the different levels of soundness and corruption at which the practical reason of the masses and the speculative reason of individuals can be found. In each case, we shall show how these sound and corrupt reasons exercise their influence in determining the proximate end of society. We begin with the practical reason of the masses.
296. In order not to omit any case, we have to begin by considering the state of soundness and corruption in the masses anterior to the institution of civil society. We have to go back in thought to the cradle of humanity when, at the death of the father of a family, or whoever held his place, siblings with equal standing remained deprived of the natural ties binding them in domestic society.
297. Communal living on the part of siblings or kinsfolk forming a tribe, that is, an incipient civil society, retained family customs, although it is almost impossible to suppose the existence of such a community before the development of agriculture, which fixes the population on determined soil and forces it to adopt city-living. Probably only the Hebrews knew how to live together in strict sociality before becoming cultivators. The force of true religion brought them together and gave them as father a truly extraordinary man, a prophet of God. Religion made them respect this man, consecrate forever what he willed to them, and bind unmovably his paternal desires to the revelations of the Almighty and to solemn promises about future greatness. Religion accounted for the wonders which bound in such unity a multitude of descendants who had not as yet learned to live by cultivation. It is indeed difficult to find in history another example equal to that of the children of Jacob who, in their twelve tribes, lived as pastors, yet as a single people.(89) They had a single will, both in the slavery of Egypt and in the freedom of the desert where they were led for forty years by a captain who used only his God-given authority to guide these six million persons through such a vast, arid solitude.
298. Without these two causes (agriculture and religion), a multitude of descendants from one father do not unite gradually to form a single people. When fathers die, siblings divide into more than one family, that is, into that state which, according to us, is prior to the foundation of civil societies. During this period, hunting, fishing or pastoral activity, the sources of subsistence, give rise to only temporary, or at most imperfect, civil unions of tribes held together by the necessity of common defence. Their head is the finest warrior, who leads them to war when necessary, and whose power ceases when war comes to an end.
299. We must now examine the characteristic soundness and corruption present in the reason of the masses during the period of varying length that precedes true civil societies.
300. In this initial condition, the population has no intellective development. Nevertheless, the need to act draws with it some use of the understanding, whose development now begins. In the first steps of such development, made through the perception of external objects, nature provides human beings with a rule — physical pleasure and pain — enabling them to distinguish what is useful to them from what is harmful. Note that the physical pleasure and pain of which we speak are simply indicators for primitive people of what can help or harm their nature. As long as human beings remain incorrupt (even though they have not developed), they never tend to physical pleasure as their end, nor avoid pain as if it were the height of evil. They tend to good, general well-being, to a good state of their entire nature; pleasure and pain are only indications which they follow in the belief that they will find what they seek. Consequently, placing little importance in actual physical pleasure or pain is a sign that instinct and practical reason, which serve as guides to these people, are still incorrupt.
301. However, there are races in which the senses seem to have acquired total command over the will. This tyranny of the senses may depend both on the primitive strains of physical constitution amongst them and their continually obtuse, inert understanding, or on the corruption of their upright, natural instinct through the abuse of physical pleasures. In either case, it is certain that these populations can never make any progress if the corruption of which we are speaking is rampant in them before they associate in civil communities, nor can they ever hope to form civil aggregations.
This primitive corruption seems to account for the origin of savage tribes who appear to have been overtaken by corruption before political association has made possible the actuation of their intellectual and moral faculties. It is very difficult to believe that populations united in civil societies, which presuppose an activated intellective capacity, could descend into savagery, which presupposes no intellectual development. These populations and races were, therefore, held back from their initial step forward; their intellect, weak and inactive by nature, was overridden and conquered by the vehemence of material sensations. Sense alone thus remained in charge; and sense has no power to draw people together in civil communal life. Sense foresees nothing; it moves only on the basis of actually felt, present good.
302. I think that this origin of savage peoples explains better than any previous hypothesis the customs and characteristics distinguishing them from civilised people. Their passion for liquor, which makes them drink themselves to death, shows how immediate pleasure amongst such races has prevailed over the instinct for good behaviour and bodily health. This is an obvious symptom of the intimate corruption of the animal instinct which, while still incorrupt, is ruled consistently by the need to follow immediate pleasure not for itself but as an indication of what is healthy. It often happens, in fact, that the incorrupt instinct guides the animal even to deprive itself of certain pleasures and to submit spontaneously to certain kinds of pain.(90) Destroying a plant after collecting its fruit shows a total lack of foresight and practically zero use of the intellective faculties which, impeded and as it were imprisoned by present sensation, are scarcely capable of taking a single step ahead.
303. At times, the religious ideas of savages sometimes appear simple and pure (this is the case of North American Indians who worship God principally under the name of the Great Spirit); at other times feticism is found amongst savage races. This is a superstition originating in the family, and presupposes in those who initiate it not only dominion over the senses, but also control of the sensual imagination and some use of the intellect as an aid to the imagination. It is the opposite of the pure idea of the divinity as one and spiritual, which itself shows that primitive tradition has been preserved free from elaboration and alteration by the human spirit; in other words, it indicates a lesser degree of intellective activity than feticism [App., no. 6].
304. The nature of language amongst savage peoples also provides a sign of intellective inertia and immobility. The languages of the American Indians from the Arctic down to Cape Horn are regular to the highest degree, and depend upon the same grammatical laws. Modern philologists find that these languages possess a very exact, wise system of ideas.(91) Here, too, it is clear that such populations have traditionally preserved the language they received from antiquity without elaborating it. This is due, as we said, to the immobility of their intellective faculties. It would seem, therefore, that these languages, preserved more faithfully from remotest antiquity, provide a better source for discovering fragments of the primitive idiom towards which modern linguistic studies tend ever more eagerly, than do the languages of more developed peoples subject to greater changes.
305. The love of freedom and independence found amongst savage peoples is famous, but careful examination shows that what is at stake is great repugnance using the understanding rather than love of freedom. All social bonds require the use of understanding because they demand constant attention in directing one’s actions in harmony with them. This continual intellectual care and vigilance is an intolerable burden to savages who abandon themselves to the guidance of passing sensations. Civil society is thus excluded by savage peoples because their use of understanding is not at the level required by the institution of society. Their intellect, we repeat, has come to a halt before the insuperable repugnance felt in using it; at the same time, degraded human beings have an immense propensity to be moulded by casual yet lively sensations.
306. I note finally that poor use of the understanding does not prevent savage peoples from having extremely strong feelings. On the contrary, feeling seems greater when reflection is non-existent. In savages we find, united to animal instinct, activities arising from what we call human instinct.(92) This explains the presence in savages of heroic acts of natural virtues, allied with monstrous vices.
Charlevoix, in his description of the first French war against the Iroquois in 1610, narrates that the Huron, who were allies of the French, were greatly scandalised when they saw the French strip several Iroquois, lying dead on the battlefield, of their beaver skins. The Huron themselves, however, inflicted unheard-of cruelty on their prisoners, and the French were horrified to find them eating a man they had slaughtered.
| These barbarians prided themselves on their aloofness and were amazed at its absence in our own nation. Yet they did not understand that despoiling the dead was far less evil than eating their flesh like animals.(93) The Indian is kind and hospitable at times of peace, but in war merciless beyond the known limits of human cruelty. He is prepared to die of hunger for the sake of the stranger who knocks on his door at night, yet tears apart with his own hands the quivering members of his prisoners. The most famous republics of antiquity never saw more resolute courage, prouder spirits and more unshakeable love of independence than that hidden in the savage forests of the New World.(94) |
Hospitality and revenge pertain to human feeling, and do not require great use of reflection. Thus, they are found even to the highest degree in savage peoples.
307. This all shows clearly that the state of populations which have degenerated before the institution of civil society renders the institution impossible. The degree of intellectual activity sufficient to determine the proximate end of society is lacking, together with the means for achieving it. As a result, the collective will of these people is anti-social rather than simply unsocial. They consider society as an evil because the use of understanding required by society is for them an evil.
308. Nevertheless, humanity does not renounce contentment when reduced to a state in which it is unable to determine the proximate end of civil association. Contentment is that good to which human beings tend as human beings, either through society or without it. Savages, too, seek and find a suitable contentment amidst their dearth of needs and desires. They achieve it by neglecting their intellective faculties and exercising extreme physical activity, after having been immersed in this state of stupidity either through their ancestors’ fault or their own, or through having contracted disastrously yet blamelessly some disordered physical habit from the race.
Notes
(89) Nomadic tribes of pastors still exist, but I think that the Hebrews are the only example in human history of a pastoral people's changing, after four hundred years, into an agricultural, property-owning nation. There is no doubt that Providence used the two means of slavery and desert solitude to keep the Hebrews united amongst themselves by separating them from all other peoples. They thus came to possess that unique, indelible temperament which enabled Balaam to describe them as: `A people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself as among the nations' (Num 23: [9].
(90) This law of animal nature was studied at length in AMS, 401–415.
(91) On the languages of the American Indians, cf. Papers of the Philosophical Society of America, vol. 1, Philadelphia, 1819, pp. 356–464; vol. 3, which contains the grammar of the Delaware or Lenape language by Geiberger; American Encyclopaedia, vol. 6, in fine.
(92) Cf. our remarks about the human instinct in AMS, 683–686.
(93) Vol. 1, p. 235.
(94) President Jefferson reports: `The Iroquois have provided examples of elders who disdained to flee from their enemies or to go on living after the destruction of their country. They faced death like the ancient Romans during the sack of Rome by the Gauls.' (Note sulla Virginia, p. 148). He goes on: `There is no example of an Indian who begged for his life after falling into the hands of his enemies. Rather, the prisoner almost seeks death from his captors by insulting and provoking them in every way' (cf. p. 150).