limited by the same anthropomorphic conceptions, of nurture and growth, the goddesses begin to lose their preferential claim on men’s regard and fall into place as adjuncts or consorts of male divinities designed on other lines and built out of different materials and serving new ends.60 But the hegemony of the mother goddesses has unquestionably been very wide-reaching and very enduring, as it should be to answer to the extent in time and space of the civilisation of tillage as well as to its paramount importance in the life of mankind, and as it is shown to have been by the archaeological and ethnological evidence.
A further concomitant variation in the cultural scheme, associated with and presumably traceable to the same technological ground, is maternal descent, the counting of relationship primarily or solely in the female line. In the present state of the evidence on this head it would probably be too broad a proposition to say that the counting of relationship by the mother’s side is due wholly to preconceptions arising out of the technology of fertility and growth and that it so is remotely a creature of the instinct of workmanship; but it is at least equally probable that that ancient conceit must be abandoned according to which the system of maternal descent arises out of an habitual doubt of paternity. The mere obvious congruity of the cognatic system as contrasted with the agnatic, has presumably had as much to do with the matter as anything, and under the rule of the primitive technology of tillage and cattle-breeding this obvious congruity of the cognate relationship will have been very materially re-enforced by the current preconceptions regarding the preferential importance of the female line for the welfare of the household and the community. And so long as that technological era lasted, and until the more strenuous culture of predation and coercion came on and threw the male element in the community into the place of first consequence, maternal descent as well as the mother goddess appear to have held their own.
It will have been noticed that through all this argument runs the presumption that the culture which included the beginnings and early growth of tillage and cattle-breeding was substantially a peaceable culture. This presumption is somewhat at variance with the traditional view, particularly with the position taken as a matter of course by earlier students of ethnology in the nineteenth century. Still it is probably not subject to very serious question today. As the evidence has accumulated it has grown increasingly manifest that the ancient assumption of a primitive state of nature after the school of Hobbes cannot be accepted. The evidence from contemporary sources, as to the state of things in this respect among savages and many of the lower barbarians, points rather to peace than to war as the habitual situation, although this evidence is by no means unequivocal; besides which, the evidence from these contemporary lower cultures bears only equivocally on the point of first interest here, - viz., the antecedents of the Western cccivilisation. What is more to the point, though harder to get at in any definitive way, is the prehistory of this civilisation. Here the inquiry will perforce go on survivals and reminiscences and on the implications of known facts of antiquity as well as of certain features still extant in the current cultural scheme.
It seems antecedently improbable that the domestication of the crop plants and animals could have been effected at all except among peoples leading a passably peaceable, and presently a sedentary life. And the length of time required for what was achieved in remote antiquity in this respect speaks for the prevalence of (passably) peaceable conditions over intervals of time and space that overpass all convenient bounds of chronology and localisation. Evidence of maternal descent, maternal religious practices and maternal discretion in the disposal of goods meet the inquiry in ever increasing force as soon as it begins to penetrate back of the conventionally accepted dawn of history; and survivals and reminiscences of such institutions appear here and there within the historical period with increasing frequency the more painstaking the inquiry becomes. And that institutions of this character require a peaceable situation for their genesis as well as for their survival is not only antecedently probable on grounds of congruity, but it is evidenced by the way in which they incontinently decay and presently disappear wherever the cultural situation takes on a predatory character or develops a large-scale civilisation, with a coercive government, differentiation of classes - especially in the pecuniary respect - warlike ideals and ambitions, and a considerable accumulation of wealth.
Some further discussion of this early peaceable situation will necessarily come up in connection with the technological grounds of its disappearance at the transition to that predatory culture which has displaced it in all cases where an appreciably advanced phase of civilisation has been reached.
Chapter III.
The Savage State of the Industrial Arts
Technological knowledge is of the nature of a common stock, held and carried forward collectively by the community, which is in this relation to be conceived as a going concern. The state of the industrial arts is a fact of group life, not of individual or private initiative or innovation. It is an affair of the collectivity, not a creative achievement of individuals working self-sufficiently in severalty or in isolation. In the main, the state of the industrial arts is always a heritage out of the past; it is always in process of change, perhaps, but the substantial body of it is knowledge that has come down from earlier generations. New elements of insight and proficiency are continually being added and worked into this common stock by the experience and initiative of the current generation, but such novel elements are always and everywhere slight and inconsequential in comparison with the body of technology that has been carried over from the past.
Each successive move in advance, every new wrinkle of novelty, improvement, invention, adaptation, every further detail of workmanlike innovation, is of course made by individuals and comes out of individual experience and initiative, since the generations of mankind live only in individuals. But each move so made is necessarily made by individuals immersed in the community and exposed to the discipline of group life as it runs in the community, since all life is necessarily group life. The phenomena of human life occur only in this form. It is only as an outcome of this discipline that comes with the routine of group life, and by help of the commonplace knowledge diffused through the community, that any of its members are enabled to make any new move that may in this way be traceable to their individual initiative. Any new technological departure necessarily takes its rise in the workmanlike endeavours of given individuals, but it can do so only by force of their familiarity with the body of knowledge which the group already has in hand. A new departure is always and necessarily an improvement on or alteration in that state of the industrial arts that is already in the keeping of the group at large; and every expedient or innovation, great or small, that so is hit upon goes into effect by going into the common stock of technological resources carried by the group. It can take effect only in this way. Such group solidarity is a necessity of the case, both for the acquirement and use of this immaterial equipment that is spoken of as the state of the industrial arts and for its custody and transmission from generation to generation.
Within this common stock of technology some special branch or line of proficiency, bearing on some special craft or trade, may be held in a degree of isolation by some caste-like group within the community, limited by consanguinity, initiation, and the like, and so it may be held somewhat out of the common stock and transmitted in some degree of segregation. In the lower cultures the elements of technology that are so engrossed by a fraction of the community and held out of the common stock are most commonly of a magical or ceremonial nature, rather than effective elements of workmanship; since any such matters of ritual observance lend themselves with greater facility to exclusive use and transmission within lines of class limitation than do the matter-of-fact devices of actual workmanship.
In the lower cultures the exclusive training and information so held and transmitted in segregation by various secret organisations appear in the main to be of this magical or ceremonial character;61 although there is no reason to doubt that this technological make-believe is taken quite seriously and counts as a substantial asset in the apprehension of its possessors.
