CHAPTER XII: CEREMONIAL RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

§ 427. We find, then, that rules of behaviour are not results of conventions at one time or other deliberately made, as people tacitly assume. Contrariwise, they are natural products of social life which have gradually evolved. Apart from detailed proofs of this, we find a general proof in their conformity to the laws of Evolution at large.

In primitive headless groups of men, such customs as regulate conduct form but a small aggregate. A few naturally prompted actions on meeting strangers; in certain cases bodily mutilations; and in some interdicts on foods monopolized by adult men; constitute a brief code. But with consolidation into compound, doubly compound, and trebly compound societies, there arise great accumulations of ceremonial arrangements regulating all the actions of life—there is increase in the mass of observances.

Originally simple, these observances become progressively complex. From the same root grow up various kinds of obeisances. Primitive descriptive names develop into numerous graduated titles. From aboriginal salutes come, in course of time, complimentary forms of address adjusted to persons and occasions. Weapons taken in war give origin to symbols of authority, assuming, little by little, great diversities in their shapes. While certain trophies, differentiating into badges, dresses and decorations, eventually in each of these divisions present multitudinous varieties, no Edition: current; Page: [217] longer bearing any resemblance to their originals. And besides the increasing heterogeneity which in each society arises among products having a common origin, there is the further heterogeneity which arises between this aggregate of products in one society and the allied aggregates in other societies.

Simultaneously there is progress in definiteness; ending, as in the East, in fixed forms prescribed in all their details, which must not under penalty be departed from. And in sundry places the vast assemblages of complex and definite ceremonies thus elaborated, are consolidated into coherent codes set forth in books.

The advance in integration, in heterogeneity, in definiteness, and in coherence, is thus fully exemplified.

§ 428. When we observe the original unity exhibited by ceremony as it exists in primitive hordes, in contrast with the diversity which ceremony, under its forms of political, religious, and social, assumes in developed societies; we recognize another aspect of this transformation undergone by all products of evolution.

The common origin of propitiatory forms which eventually appear unallied, was in the last volume indicated by the numerous parallelisms we found between religious ceremonies and ceremonies performed in honouring the dead; and the foregoing chapters have shown that still more remarkable are the parallelisms between ceremonies of these kinds and those performed in honouring the living. We have seen that as a sequence of trophy-taking, parts of the body are surrendered to rulers, offered at graves, deposited in temples, and occasionally presented to equals; and we have seen that mutilations hence originating, become marks of submission to kings, to deities, to dead relatives, and in some cases to living friends. Beginning with presents, primarily of food, made to strangers by savages to secure goodwill, we pass to the presents, also primarily of food, Edition: current; Page: [218] made to chiefs; and, answering to these, we find the offerings, primarily of food, made to ghosts and to gods, developing among ancestor-worshipping peoples into sacrifices showing parallel elaborations; as in China, where feasts of many dishes are placed alike before the tablets inscribed to ancestors, apotheosized men, and great deities, and where it is a saying that “whatever is good for food is good for sacrifice.” Visits are paid to graves out of respect to the spirits of the departed, to temples in worship of the deities supposed to be present in them, to the courts of rulers in evidence of loyalty, and to private persons to show consideration. Obeisances, originally implying subjugation, are made before monarchs and superiors, are similarly made before deities, are sundry of them repeated in honour of the dead, and eventually become observances between equals. Expressing now the humility of the speaker and now the greatness of the one spoken to, forms of address, alike in nature, are used to the visible and the invisible ruler, and, descending to those of less power, are at length used to ordinary persons; while titles ascribing fatherhood and supremacy, applied at first to kings, gods, and deceased persons, become in time names of honour used to undistinguished persons. Symbols of authority like those carried by monarchs, occur in the representations of deities; in some cases the celestial and the terrestrial potentates have like costumes and appendages; and sundry of the dresses and badges once marking superiority of position, become ceremonial dresses worn, especially on festive occasions, by persons of inferior ranks. Other remarkable parallelisms exist. One we see in the anointing, which, performed on kings and on the images of gods, extended in Egypt to dead persons and to guests. In Egypt, too, birthday-ceremonials were at once social, political, and religious: besides celebrations of private birthdays and of the birthdays of kings and queens, there were celebrations of the birthdays of gods. Nor must we omit the sacredness of names. In Edition: current; Page: [219] many countries it is, or has been, forbidden to utter the name of the god; the name of the king is in other places similarly interdicted; elsewhere it is an offence to refer by name to a dead person; and among various savages the name of the living person may not be taken in vain. The feeling that the presence of one who is to be worshipped or honoured, is a bar to the use of violence, also has its parallel sequences. Not only is the temple of the god a sanctuary, but in sundry places the burial-place of the chief is a sanctuary, and in other places the presence of the monarch, as in Abyssinia where “it is death to strike, or lift the hand to strike, before the king;” and then among European peoples, the interdict on fighting in presence of a lady, shows how this element in ceremonial rule extends into general intercourse. Finally let me add a fuller statement of a curious example before referred to—the use of incense in worship of a deity, as a political honour, and as a social observance. In Egypt there was incense-offering before both gods and kings, as also among the Hebrews: instance the passage from the Song of Solomon (iii., 6-7)—“Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense . . . Behold his bed [litter], which is Solomon’s.” Clavigero tells us that “incense-offering among the Mexicans, and other nations of Anahuac, was not only an act of religion towards their gods, but also a piece of civil courtesy to lords and ambassadors.” During mediæval days in Europe, incense was burnt in compliment to rank: nobles on entering churches severally expected so many swings of the censer in front of them, according to their grades.

While, then, we are shown by numerous sets of parallelisms the common origin of observances that are now distinguished as political, religious, and social—while we thus find verified in detail the hypothesis that ceremonial government precedes in time the other forms of government, into all of which it enters; we are shown how, in conformity Edition: current; Page: [220] with the general laws of Evolution, it differentiates into three great orders at the same time that each of these orders differentiates within itself.

§ 429. From the beaten dog which, crawling on its belly licks its master’s hand, we trace up the general truth that ceremonial forms are naturally initiated by the relation of conqueror and conquered, and the consequent truth that they develop along with the militant type of society. While re-enunciated, this last truth may be conveniently presented under a different aspect. Let us note how the connexion between ceremonial and militancy, is shown at once in its rigour, in its definiteness, in its extent, and in its elaborateness.

“In Fiji, if a chief sees any of his subjects not stooping low enough in his presence, he will kill him on the spot;” while “a vast number of fingers, missing from the hands of men and women, have gone as the fine for disrespectful or awkward conduct.” And then of these same sanguinary and ferociously-governed people, Williams tells us that “not a member of a chief’s body, or the commonest acts of his life, are mentioned in ordinary phraseology, but all are hyperbolized.” Africa furnishes a kindred instance of this connexion between ceremonial rigour and the rigour of despotic power accompanying excessive militancy. In the kingdom of Uganda, where, directed by the king to try a rifle presented to him by Speke, a page went to the door and shot the first man he saw in the distance, and where, as Stanley tells us, under the last king, Suna, five days were occupied in cutting up thirty thousand prisoners who had surrendered; we find that “an officer observed to salute informally is ordered for execution,” while another who, “perhaps, exposes an inch of naked leg whilst squatting, or has his mbŭgŭ tied contrary to regulations,” “is condemned to the same fate.” And then in Asia a parallel connexion is shown us by the more civilized Siamese, whose adult males are all soldiers, and over whom rules omnipotently a sacred Edition: current; Page: [221] king, whose “palace must not be passed without marks of reverence” duly prescribed, and “severe punishments follow any inattention to these requirements,” and where, in social intercourse, “mistakes in these kinds of duties [obeisances] may be punished with the bâton by him against whom they have been committed.”

Along with this rigour of ceremonial rule we find great definiteness. In Fiji there are “various forms of salutation, according to the rank of the parties; and great attention is paid to insure that the salutation shall have the proper form:” such precision naturally arising where loss of life or fingers follows breach of observance. A kindred precision is similarly caused in the tyrannically-governed African kingdoms, such as Loango, where a king killed his own son, and had him quartered, because the son happened to see his father drink; or such as Ashantee, where there is much “punctilious courtesy, and a laboured and ceremonious formality.” And this definiteness characterizes observances under the despotisms of the remote East. Of the Siamese La Loubère says—“In the same ceremonies they always say almost the same things. The king of Siam himself has his words almost told [contées] in his audiences of ceremony.” So, too, in China, in the imperial hall of audience “stones are inlaid with plates of brass, on which are engraved in Chinese characters the quality of the persons who are to stand or kneel upon them;” and as Huc says, “it is easier to be polite in China than elsewhere, as politeness is subject to more fixed regulations.” Japan, also, shows us this precise adjustment of the observance to the occasion:—“The marks of respect to superiors . . . are graduated from a trifling acknowledgment to the most absolute prostration.” “This state of things is supported by law as well as custom, and more particularly by the permission given to a two-sworded man, in case of him feeling himself insulted, to take the law into his own hands.” Nor does Europe in its most militant country, autocratically ruled, fail to yield an Edition: current; Page: [222] illustration. Custine says of Russia that, at the marriage of the Grand Duchess Maria with the Duke of Leuchtenberg (1839) the Emperor Nicholas “was continually leaving his prayers, and slipping from one side to the other, in order to remedy the omissions of etiquette among his children, or the clergy. . . . All the great functionaries of the Court seemed to be governed by his minute but supreme directions.”

In respect of the range and elaborateness of ceremonial rule, assimilating the control of civil life to the control of military life, Oriental despotisms yield equally striking examples. La Loubère says:—“If there are several Siamese together, and another joins them, it often happens that the postures of all change. They know before whom and to what extent they should bend or remain erect or seated; whether they should join their hands or not and hold them low or high; whether being seated they may advance one foot or both, or should keep both hidden.” Even the monarch is under kindred restraints. “The Phra raxa monthieraban [apparently, sacred book] lays down the laws which the Sovereign is bound to obey, prescribes the hours for rising and for bathing, the manner of offering and the alms to be offered, to the bonzes, the hours of audience for nobles and for princes, the time to be devoted to public affairs and to study, the hours for repasts, and when audiences shall be allowed to the Queen and the ladies of the palace.” Again, in the account of his embassy to Ava, Syme writes:—“The subordination of rank is maintained and marked by the Birmans with the most tenacious strictness; and not only houses, but even domestic implements, such as the bettle box, water flagon, drinking cup, and horse furniture, all express and manifest, by shape and quality, the precise station of the owner.” In China, too, the Li ki, or Book of Rites, gives directions for all actions of life; and a passage in Huc shows at once the antiquity of their vast, coherent, elaborate system of observances, and the reverence with Edition: current; Page: [223] which its prescriptions were regarded:—“ ‘Under the first dynasties,’ says a famous Chinese moralist, ‘the government had perfect unity, the ceremonies and music embraced the whole empire.’ ” Once more, in Japan, especially in past times, ceremony was elaborated in books so far that every transaction, down to an execution, had its various movements prescribed with a scarcely credible minuteness.

That these connexions are necessary, we cannot fail to see on remembering how, with the compoundings and recompoundings of social groups effected by militancy, there must go an evolution of the forms of subordination; made strong by the needs for restraint, made multitudinous by the gradations of rank, made precise by continual performance under penalty.

§ 430. The moral traits which accompany respectively the development of ceremonial rule and the decay of ceremonial rule, may with advantage be named while noting how observances weaken as fast as industrialism strengthens.

We have seen that ceremony originates from fear: on the one side supremacy of a victor or master; on the other side dread of death or punishment felt by the vanquished or the slave. And under the régime of compulsory co-operation thus initiated, fear develops and maintains in strength all forms of propitiation. But with the rise of a social type based on voluntary co-operation, fear decreases. The subordinate ruler or officer is no longer wholly at the mercy of his superior; the trader, not liable to be robbed or tortured by the noble, has a remedy against him for non-payment; the labourer in receipt of wages, cannot be beaten like the slave. In proportion as the system of exchanging services under contract spreads, and the rendering of services under compulsion diminishes, men dread one another less; and, consequently, become less scrupulous in fulfilling propitiatory forms.

War of necessity cultivates deception: ambush, manœuvring, feints, and the like, involve acted lies; and skilful lying by actions is regarded as a trait of military genius. The slavery which successful war establishes, implies daily practice in duplicity. Against the anger of his cruel master a successful falsehood is the slave’s defence. Under tyrants unscrupulous in their exactions, skilful lying is a means of salvation, and is a source of pride. And all the ceremonies which accompany the régime of compulsory co-operation are pervaded by insincerity: the fulsome laudations are not believed by the utterer; he feels none of that love for his superior which he professes; nor is he anxious for his welfare as his words assert. But in proportion as compulsory co-operation is replaced by voluntary co-operation, the temptations to deceive that penalties may be escaped, become less strong and perpetual; and simultaneously, truthfulness is fostered, since voluntary co-operation can increase only as fast as mutual trust increases. Though throughout the activities of industry there yet survives much of the militant untruthfulness; yet, on remembering that only by daily fulfilment of contracts can these activities go on, we see that in the main the things promised are performed. And along with the spreading truthfulness thus implied, there goes on an increasing dislike of the more extreme untruthfulness implied in the forms of propitiation. Neither in word nor in act do the professed feelings so greatly exceed the real feelings.

It scarcely needs saying that as social co-operation becomes less coercive and more voluntary, independence increases; for the two statements are different aspects of the same. Forced service implies dependence; while service rendered under agreement implies independence. Naturally, the different moral attitudes involved, expressing themselves in different political types, as relatively despotic and relatively free, express themselves also in the accompanying kinds of ceremonial rule that are tolerated or Edition: current; Page: [225] liked. In the one case, badges of subjection are thought honourable and pleasure is taken in acts of homage; in the other case, liveries come to be hated and there is reluctance to use reverential forms approaching the obsequious. The love of independence joins the love of truthfulness in generating a repugnance to obeisances and phrases which express subordination where none is internally acknowledged.

The discipline of war, being a discipline in destruction of life, is a discipline in callousness. Whatever sympathies exist are seared; and any that tend to grow up are checked. This unsympathetic attitude which war necessitates, is maintained by the coercive social co-operation which it initiates and evolves. The subordination of slave by master, maintained by use of whatever force is needful to secure services however unwilling, implies repression of fellow-feeling. This repression of fellow-feeling is also implied by insisting on forms of homage. To delight in receiving cringing obeisances shows lack of sympathy with another’s dignity; and with the development of a freer social type and accompanying increase of sympathy, there grows up on the part of superiors a dislike to these extreme manifestations of subjection coming from inferiors. “Put your bonnet to its right use,” says Hamlet to Osric, standing bareheaded: showing us that in Shakespeare’s day, there had arisen the fellow-feeling which produced displeasure on seeing another humble himself too much. And this feeling, increasing as the industrial type evolves, makes more repugnant all ceremonial forms which overtly express subordination.

Once more, originating in societies which have the glory of victory in war as a dominant sentiment, developed ceremony belongs to a social state in which love of applause is the ruling social motive. But as fast as industrialism replaces militancy, the sway of this ego-altruistic sentiment becomes qualified by the growing altruistic sentiment; and with an increasing respect for others’ claims, there goes a decreasing eagerness for distinctions which by implication Edition: current; Page: [226] subordinate them. Sounding titles, adulatory forms of address, humble obeisances, gorgeous costumes, badges, privileges of precedence, and the like, severally minister to the desire to be regarded with actual or simulated admiration. But as fast as the wish to be exalted at the cost of humiliation to others, is checked by sympathy, the appetite for marks of honour, becoming less keen, is satisfied with, and even prefers, more subdued indications of respect.

So that in various ways the moral character natural to the militant type of society, fosters ceremony; while the moral character natural to the industrial type is unfavourable to it.

§ 431. Before stating definitely the conclusions, already foreshadowed, that are to be drawn respecting the future of ceremony, we have to note that its restraints not only form a part of the coercive régime proper to those lower social types characterized by predominant militancy, but also that they form part of a discipline by which men are adapted to a higher social life.

While the antagonistic or anti-social emotions in men, have that predominance which is inevitable while war is habitual, there must be tendencies, great and frequent, to words and acts generating enmity and endangering social coherence. Hence the need for prescribed forms of behaviour which, duly observed, diminish the risk of quarrels. Hence the need for a ceremonial rule rigorous in proportion as the nature is selfish and explosive.

Not à priori only, but à posteriori, it is inferable that established observances have the function of educating, in respect of its minor actions, the anti-social nature into a form fitted for social life. Of the Japanese, living for these many centuries under an unmitigated despotism, castes severely restricted, sanguinary laws, and a ceremonial system rigorous and elaborate, there has arisen a character which, while described by Mr. Rundell as “haughty, vindictive, Edition: current; Page: [227] and licentious,” yet prompts a behaviour admirable in its suavity. Mr. Cornwallis asserts that amiability and an unruffled temper are the universal properties of the women in Japan; and by Mr. Drummond they are credited with a natural grace which it is impossible to describe. Among the men, too, the sentiment of honour, based upon that regard for reputation to which ceremonial observance largely appeals, carries them to great extremes of consideration. Another verifying fact is furnished by another despotically-governed and highly ceremonious society, Russia. Custine says—“If fear renders the men serious, it also renders them extremely polite. I have never elsewhere seen so many men of all classes treating each other with such respect.” Kindred, if less pronounced, examples of this connexion are to be found in Western countries. The Italian, long subject to tyrannical rule, and in danger of his life if he excites the vengeful feelings of a fellow-citizen, is distinguished by his conciliatory manner. In Spain, where governmental dictation is unlimited, where women are harshly treated, and where “no labourer ever walks outside his door without his knife,” there is extreme politeness. Contrariwise our own people, long living under institutions which guard them against serious consequences from giving offence, greatly lack suavity, and show a comparative inattention to minor civilities.

Both deductively and inductively, then, we see that ceremonial government is one of the agencies by which social co-operation is facilitated among those whose natures are in large measure anti-social.

§ 432. And this brings us to the general truth that within each embodied set of restraining agencies—the ceremonial as well as the political and ecclesiastical which grow out of it—there gradually evolves, a special kind of disembodied control, which eventually becomes independent.

Political government, having for its original end subordination; Edition: current; Page: [228] and inflicting penalties on men who injure others not because of the intrinsic badness of their acts but because their acts break the ruler’s commands; has ever been habituating men to obey regulations conducive to social order; until there has grown up a consciousness that these regulations have not simply an extrinsic authority derived from a ruler’s will, but have an intrinsic authority derived from their utility. The once arbitrary, fitful, and often irrational, dictates of a king, grow into an established system of laws, which formulate the needful limitations to men’s actions arising from one another’s claims. And these limitations men more and more recognize and conform to, not only without thinking of the monarch’s injunctions, but without thinking of the injunctions set forth in Acts of Parliament. Simultaneously, out of the supposed wishes of the ancestral ghost, which now and again developing into the traditional commands of some expanded ghost of a great man, become divine injunctions, arises the set of requirements classed as religious. Within these, at first almost exclusively concerning acts expressing submission to the celestial king, there evolve the rules we distinguish as moral. As society advances, these moral rules become of a kind formulating the conduct requisite for personal, domestic, and social wellbeing. For a long time imperfectly differentiated from the essential political rules, and to the last enforcing their authority, these moral rules, originally regarded as sacred only because of their supposed divine origin, eventually acquire a sacredness derived from their observed utility in controlling certain parts of human conduct—parts not controlled, or little controlled, by civil law. Ideas of moral duty develop and consolidate into a moral code, which eventually becomes independent of its theological root. In the meantime, from within that part of ceremonial rule which has evolved into a system of regulations for social intercourse, there grows a third class of restraints; and these, in like manner, become at length independent. Edition: current; Page: [229*] From observances which, in their primitive forms, express partly subordination to a superior and partly attachment to him, and which, spreading downwards, become general forms of behaviour, there finally come observances expressing a proper regard for the individualities of other persons, and a true sympathy in their welfare. Ceremonies which originally have no other end than to propitiate a dominant person, pass, some of them, into rules of politeness; and these gather an authority distinct from that which they originally had. Apt evidence is furnished by the “Ritual Remembrancer” of the Chinese, which gives directions for all the actions of life. Its regulations “are interspersed with truly excellent observations regarding mutual forbearance and kindness in society, which is regarded as the true principle of etiquette.” The higher the social evolution, the more does this inner element of ceremonial rule grow, while the outer formal element dwindles. As fast as the principles of natural politeness, seen to originate in sympathy, distinguish themselves from the code of ceremonial within which they originate, they replace its authority by a higher authority, and go on dropping its non-essentials while developing further its essentials.

So that as law differentiates from personal commands, and as morality differentiates from religious injunctions, so politeness differentiates from ceremonial observance. To which I may add, so does rational usage differentiate from fashion.

§ 433. Thus guided by retrospect we cannot doubt about the prospect. With further development of the social type based on voluntary co-operation, will come a still greater disuse of obeisances, of complimentary forms of address, of titles, of badges, &c., &c. The feelings alike of those by whom, and those to whom, acts expressing subordination are performed, will become more and more averse to them.

Of course the change will be, and should be, gradual. Just as, if political freedom is gained faster than men become adequately self-controlled, there results social disorder—just as abolition of religious restraints while yet moral restraints have not grown strong enough, entails increase of misconduct; so, if the observances regulating social intercourse lose their sway faster than the feelings which prompt true politeness develop, there inevitably follows more or less rudeness in behaviour and consequent liability to discord. It needs but to name certain of our lower classes, such as colliers and brickmakers, whose relations to masters and others are such as to leave them scarcely at all restrained, to see that considerable evils arise from a premature decay of ceremonial rule.

The normal advance toward that highest state in which the minor acts of men towards one another, like their major acts, are so controlled by internal restraints as to make external restraints needless, implies increasing fulfilment of two conditions. Both higher emotions and higher intelligence are required. There must be a stronger fellow feeling with all around, and there must be an intelligence developed to the extent needful for instantly seeing how all words and acts will tell upon their states of mind—an intelligence which, by each expression of face and cadence of speech, is informed what is the passing state of emotion, and how emotion has been affected by actions just committed.