CHAPTER VIII: TITLES.

§ 399. Adhering tenaciously to all his elders taught him, the primitive man deviates into novelty only through unintended modifications. Everyone now knows that languages are not devised but evolve; and the same is true of usages. To many proofs of this, the foregoing chapters have added further proofs.

The like holds of titles. Looked at as now existing, these appear artificial: there is suggested the idea that once upon a time they were consciously settled. But this is no more true than it is true that our common words were once consciously settled. Names of objects and qualities and acts, were at the outset directly or indirectly descriptive; and the names we class as titles were so too. Just as the deaf-mute who calls to mind a person he means by mimicking a peculiarity, has no idea of introducing a symbol; so neither has the savage when he indicates a place as the one where the kangaroo was killed or the one where the cliff fell down; so neither has he when he suggests an individual by referring to some marked trait in his appearance or fact in his life; and so neither has he when he gives those names, literally descriptive or metaphorically descriptive, which now and again develop into titles.

The very conception of a proper name grew up unawares. Among the uncivilized a child becomes known as “Thunderstorm,” or “New Moon,” or “Father-come-home,” Edition: current; Page: [160] simply from the habit of referring to an event which occurred on its birthday, as a way of raising the thought of the particular child meant. And if afterwards it gets such a name as “Squash-head,” or “Dirty-saddle” (Dacotah names), “The Great Archer,” or “He who runs up the Hill” (Blackfoot names), this results from spontaneously using an alternative, and sometimes better, means of identification. Evidently the like has happened with such less needful names as titles. These have differentiated from ordinary proper names, by being descriptive of some trait, or some deed, or some function, held in honour.

§ 400. Various savage races give a man a name of renown in addition to, or in place of, the name by which he was previously known, on the occasion of a great achievement in battle. The Tupis furnish a good illustration. “The founder of the [cannibal] feast took an additional name as an honourable remembrance of what had been done, and his female relations ran through the house shouting the new title.” And of these same people Hans Stade says,—“So many enemies as one of them slays, so many names does he give himself; and those are the noblest among them who have many such names.” In North America, too, when a young Creek Indian brings his first scalp, he is dubbed a man and a warrior, and receives a “war-name.” Among the people of ancient Nicaragua, this practice had established a general title for such: they called one who had killed another in battle tapalique; and cabra was an equivalent title given by the Indians of the Isthmus.

That descriptive names of honour, thus arising during early militancy, become in some cases official names, we see on comparing evidence furnished by two sanguinary and cannibal societies in different stages of advance. In Fiji, “warriors of rank receive proud titles, such as ‘the divider of’ a district, ‘the waster of’ a coast, ‘the depopulator of’ Edition: current; Page: [161] an island—the name of the place in question being affixed.” And then in ancient Mexico, the names of offices filled by the king’s brothers or nearest relatives were, one of them, “Cutter of men,” and another, “Shedder of blood.”

Where, as among the Fijians, the conceived distinction between men and gods is vague, and the formation of new gods by apotheosis of chiefs continues, we find the gods bearing names like those given during their lives to ferocious warriors. “The Woman-stealer,” “the Brain-eater,” “the Murderer,” “Fresh-from-slaughter,” are naturally such divine titles as arise from descriptive naming among ancestor-worshipping cannibals. That sundry titles of the gods worshipped by superior races have originated in a kindred manner, is implied by the ascription of conquests to them. Be they the Egyptian deities, the Babylonian deities, or the deities of the Greeks, their power is represented as having been gained by battle; and with accounts of their achievements are in some cases joined congruous descriptive names, such as that of Mars—“the Blood-stainer,” and that of the Hebrew god—“the Violent One;” which, according to Keunen, is the literal interpretation of Shaddai.

§ 401. Very generally among primitive men, instead of the literally-descriptive name of honour, there is given the metaphorically-descriptive name of honour. Of the Tupis, whose ceremony of taking war-names is instanced above, we read that “they selected their appellations from visible objects, pride or ferocity influencing their choice.” That such names, first spontaneously given by applauding companions and afterwards accorded in some deliberate way, are apt to be acquired by men of the greatest prowess, and so to become names of rulers, is suggested by what Ximenez tells us respecting the semi-civilized peoples of Guatemala. Their king’s names enumerated by him are—“Laughing Tiger,” “Tiger of the Wood,” “Oppressing Eagle,” “Eagle’s Head,” “Strong Snake.” Throughout Africa Edition: current; Page: [162] the like has happened. The king of Ashantee has among his glorifying names “Lion” and “Snake.” In Dahomey, titles thus derived are made superlative: the king is “the Lion of Lions.” And in a kindred spirit the king of Usambara is called “Lion of Heaven:” a title whence, should this king undergo apotheosis, myths may naturally result. From Zulu-land, along with evidence of the same thing, there comes an illustration of the way in which names of honour derived from imposing objects, animate and inanimate, are joined with names of honour otherwise derived, and pass into certain of those forms of address lately dealt with. The titles of the king are—“The noble elephant,” “Thou who art for ever,” “Thou who art as high as the heavens,” “The black one,” “Thou who art the bird who eats other birds,” “Thou who art as high as the mountains,” &c. Shooter shows how these Zulu titles are used, by quoting part of a speech adressed to the king—“You mountain, you lion, you tiger, you that are black. There is none equal to you.” Further, there is proof that names of honour thus originating, pass into titles applied to the position occupied, rather than to the occupant considered personally; for a Kaffir chief’s wife “is called the Elephantess, while his great wife is called the Lioness.”

Guided by such clues, we cannot miss the inference that the use of kindred names for both kings and gods by extinct historic races, similarly arose. If we find that now in Madagascar one of the king’s titles is “Mighty Bull,” and are reminded by this that to the conquering Ramses a like laudatory name was given by defeated foes, we may reasonably conclude that from animal-names thus given to kings, there resulted the animal-names anciently given as names of honour to deities; so that Apis in Egypt became an equivalent for Osiris and the Sun, and so that Bull similarly became an equivalent for the conquering hero and Sungod Indra.

With titles derived from imposing inanimate objects it Edition: current; Page: [163] is the same. We have seen how, among the Zulus, the hyperbolic compliment to the king—“Thou who art as high as the mountains,” passes from the form of simile into the form of metaphor when he is addressed as “you Mountain.” And that the metaphorical name thus used sometimes becomes a proper name, proof comes from Samoa; where, as we saw, “the chief of Pango-Pango” is “now Maunga, or Mountain.” There is evidence that by sundry ancestor-worshipping peoples, divine titles are similarly derived. The Chinooks and Navajos and Mexicans in North America, and the Peruvians in South America, regard certain mountains as gods; and since these gods have other names, the implication is that in each case an apotheosized man had received in honour either the general name Mountain, or the name of a particular mountain, as has happened in New Zealand. From complimentary comparisons to the Sun, result not only personal names of honour and divine names, but also official titles. On reading that the Mexicans distinguished Cortes as “the offspring of the Sun,” and that the Chibchas called the Spaniards in general “children of the Sun,”—on reading that “child of the Sun” was a complimentary name given to any one particularly clever in Peru, where the Yncas, regarded as descendants of the Sun, successively enjoyed a title hence derived; we are enabled to understand how “Son of the Sun” came to be a title borne by the successive Egyptian kings, joined with proper names individually distinctive of them. In elucidation of this as well as of sundry other points, let me add an account of a reception at the court of Burmah which has occurred since the foregoing sentences were first published:—

“A herald lying on his stomach read aloud my credentials. The literal translation is as follows: ‘So-and-So, a great newspaper teacher of the Daily News of London, tenders to his Most Glorious Excellent Majesty, Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the Empires of Thunaparanta Edition: current; Page: [164] and Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sundescended Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King of Kings, and possessor of boundless dominions and supreme wisdom, the following presents.’ The reading was intoned in a comical high recitative, strongly resembling that used when our Church service is intoned; and the long-drawn ‘Phya-a-a-a-a’ (my lord) which concluded it, added to the resemblance, as it came in exactly like the ‘Amen’ of the Liturgy.” [Showing the kinship in religious worship.]

Given, then, the metaphorically-descriptive name, and we have the germ from which grow up these primitive titles of honour; which, at first individual titles, become in some cases titles attaching to the offices filled.

§ 402. To say that the words which in various languages answer to our word “God,” were originally descriptive words, will be startling to those who, unfamiliar with the facts, credit the savage with thoughts like our own; and will be repugnant to those who, knowing something of the facts, yet persist in asserting that the conception of a universal creative power was possessed by man from the beginning. But whoever studies the evidence without bias, will find proof that the general word for deity was at first simply a word expressive of superiority. Among the Fijians the name is applied to anything great or marvellous; among the Malagasy to whatever is new, useful, or extraordinary; among the Todas to everything mysterious, so that, as Marshall says, “it is truly an adjective noun of eminence.” Applied alike to animate and inanimate things, as indicating some quality above the common, the word is in this sense applied to human beings, both living and dead; but as the dead are supposed to have mysterious powers of doing good and evil to the living, the word comes to be especially applicable to them. Though ghost and god have with us widely-distinguished meanings, yet they are originally equivalent words; or rather, originally, there is Edition: current; Page: [165] but one word for a supernatural being. And since in early belief, the other-self of the dead man is equally visible and tangible with the living man, so that it may be slain, drowned, or otherwise killed a second time—since the resemblance is such that it is difficult to learn what is the difference between a god and a chief among the Fijians—since the instances of theophany in the Iliad prove that the Greek god was in all respects so like a man that special insight was required to discriminate him; we see how naturally it results that the name “god,” given to a powerful being thought of as usually, but not always, invisible, is sometimes given to a visible powerful being. Indeed, as a sequence of this theory, it inevitably happens that men transcending in capacity those around them, are suspected to be these returned ghosts or gods, to whom special powers are ordinarily ascribed. Hence the fact that, considered as the doubles of their own deceased people, Europeans are called ghosts by Australians, New Caledonians, Darnley Islanders, Kroomen, Calabar people, Mpongwe, &c. Hence the fact that they are called by the alternative name gods by Bushmen, Bechuanas, East Africans, Fulahs, Khonds, Fijians, Dyaks, Ancient Mexicans, Chibchas, &c. Hence the fact that, using the word in the above sense, superior men among some uncivilized peoples call themselves gods.

The original meaning of the word being thus understood, we need feel no surprise on finding that “God” becomes a title of honour. The king of Loango is so called by his subjects; as is also the king of Msambara. At the present time among wandering Arabs, the name “God” is applied in no other sense than as the generic name of the most powerful living ruler known to them. This makes more credible than it might else be, the statement that the Grand Lama, personally worshipped by the Tartars, is called by them “God, the Father.” It is in harmony with such other facts as that Radama, king of Madagascar, is addressed by the women who sing his praises as—“O our God;” Edition: current; Page: [166] and that to the Dahoman king the alternative word “Spirit” is used; so that, when he summons any one, the messenger says—“The Spirit requires you,” and when he has spoken, all exclaim—“The Spirit speaketh true.” All which facts make comprehensible that assumption of Θεός as a title by ancient kings in the East, which is to moderns so astonishing.

Descent of this name of honour into ordinary intercourse, though not common, does sometimes occur. After what has been said, it will not appear strange that it should be applied to deceased persons; as it was by the ancient Mexicans, who “called any of their dead teotl so and so—i. e., this or that god, this or that saint.” And prepared by such an instance we shall understand its occasional use as a greeting between the living. Colonel Yule says of the Kasias, “the salutation at meeting is singular—‘Kublé! oh God.’ ”

§ 403. The connexion between “God” as a title and “Father” as a title, becomes clear on going back to those early forms of conception and language in which the two are undifferentiated. The fact that even in so advanced a language as Sanscrit, words which mean “making,” “fabricating,” “begetting,” or “generating,” are indiscriminately used for the same purpose, suggests how naturally in the primitive mind, a father, as begetter or causer of new beings, ceasing at death to be visible, is then associated in word and thought with dead and invisible causers at large, who, some of them acquiring pre-eminence, come to be regarded as causers in general—makers or creators. When Sir Rutherford Alcock remarks that “a spurious mixture of the theocratic and patriarchal elements form the bases of all government, both in the Celestial and the Japanese Empires, under emperors who claim not only to be each the patriarch and father of his people, but also Divine descent;” he adds another to the misinterpretations produced Edition: current; Page: [167] by descending from our own higher conceptions, instead of ascending from the lower conceptions of the primitive man. For what he thinks a “spurious mixture” of ideas is, in fact, a normal union of ideas; which, in the cases named, has persisted longer than commonly happens in developed societies.

The Zulus show us this union very clearly. They have traditions of Unkulunkulu (literally, the old, old one), “who was the first man,” “who came into being and begat men,” “who gave origin to men and everything besides” (including the sun, moon, and heavens), and who is inferred to have been a black man because all his descendants are black. The original Unkulunkulu is not worshipped by them, because he is supposed to be permanently dead; but instead of him the Unkulunkulus of the various tribes into which his descendants have divided, are severally worshipped, and severally called “Father.” Here, then, the ideas of a Creator and a Father are directly connected. Equally specific, or even more specific, are the ideas conveyed in the response which the ancient Nicaraguans gave to the question—“Who made heaven and earth?” After their first answers, “Tamagastad and Cipattoval,” “our great gods whom we call teotes,” cross-examination brought out the further answers—“Our fathers are these teotes;” “all men and women descend from them;” “they are of flesh and are man and woman;” “they walked over the earth dressed, and ate what the Indians ate.” Gods and first parents being thus identified, fatherhood and divinity become allied ideas. The remotest ancestor supposed to be still existing in the other world to which he went, “the old, old one,” or “ancient of days,” becomes the chief deity; and so “father” is not, as we suppose, a metaphorical equivalent for “god,” but a literal equivalent.

Therefore it happens that among all nations we find it an alternative title. In the before-quoted prayer of the New Caledonian to the ghost of his ancestor—“Compassionate Edition: current; Page: [168] father, here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it”—we are shown that original identification of fatherhood and godhood, to which all mythologies and theologies carry us back. We see the naturalness of the facts that the Peruvian Yncas worshipped their father the Sun; that Ptah, the first of the dynasty of the gods who ruled Egypt, is called “the father of the father of the gods;” and that Zeus is “father of gods and men.”

After contemplating many such early beliefs, in which the divine and the human are so little distinguished, or after studying the beliefs still extant in China and Japan, where the rulers, “sons of heaven,” claim descent from these most ancient fathers or gods; it is easy to see how the name father in its higher sense, comes to be applied to a living potentate. His proximate and remote ancestors being all spoken of as fathers, distinguished only by the prefixes grand, great great, &c., it results that the name father, given to every member of the series, comes to be given to the last of the series still living. With this cause is joined a further cause. Where establishment of descent in the male line has initiated the patriarchal family, the name father, even in its original meaning, comes to be associated with supreme authority, and to be therefore a name of honour. Indeed, in nations formed by the compounding and re-compounding of patriarchal groups, the two causes coalesce. The remotest known ancestor of each compound group, at once the most ancient father and the god of the compound group, being continuously represented in blood, as well as in power, by the eldest descendant of the eldest, it happens that this patriarch, who is head not of his own group only but also of the compound group, stands to both in a relation analogous to that in which the apotheosized ancestor stands; and so combines in a measure the divine character, the kingly character, and the paternal character.

Hence the prevalence of this word as a royal title. It is Edition: current; Page: [169] used equally by American Indians and by New Zealanders in addressing the rulers of the civilized. We find it in Africa. Of the various names for the king among the Zulus, father heads the list; and in Dahomey, when the king walked from the throne to the palace, “every inequality was pointed out, with finger snappings, lest it might offend the royal toe, and a running accompaniment of ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ (Grandfather! Grandfather!) and of ‘Dedde! Dedde!’ (softly! softly!) was kept up.” Asia supplies cases in which the titles “Lord Raja and Lord Father” are joined. In Russia, at the present time, father is a name applied to the Czar; and of old in France, under the form sire, it was the common name for potentates of various grades—feudal lords and kings; and ever continued to be a name of address to the throne.G

More readily than usual, perhaps from its double meaning, has this title been diffused. Everywhere we find it the name for any kind of superior. Not to the king only among the Zulus is the word “baba,” father, used; but also by inferiors of all ranks to those above them. In Dahomey a slave applies this name to his master, as his master applies it to the king. Livingstone tells us that he was referred to as “our father” by his attendants; as also was Burchell by the Bachassins. It was the same of old in the East; as when “his servants came near, and spake unto Naaman, and said, My father,” &c.; and it is the same in the remote East at the present time. A Japanese “apprentice addresses his patron as ‘father.’ ” In Siam “children of the Edition: current; Page: [170] nobles are called ‘father and mother’ by their subordinates.” And Huc narrates how he saw Chinese labourers prostrating themselves before a mandarin exclaiming—“Peace and happiness to our father and mother.” Then, as a stage in the descent to more general use, may be noted its extension to those who, apart from their rank, have acquired the superiority ascribed to age: a superiority sometimes taking precedence of rank, as in Siam, and in certain ways in Japan and China. Such extension occurred in ancient Rome, where pater was at once a magisterial title and a title given by the younger to the elder, whether related or not. In Russia at the present time, the equivalent word is used to the Czar, to a priest, and to any aged man. Eventually it spreads to young as well as old. Under the form sire, at first applied to feudal rulers, major and minor, the title “father” originated our familiar sir.

A curious group of derivatives, common among uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples, must be named. The wish to compliment by ascribing that dignity which fatherhood implies, has in many places led to the practice of replacing a man’s proper name by a name which, while it recalls this honourable paternity, distinguishes him by the name of his child. The Malays have “the same custom as the Dyaks of taking the name of their first-born, as Pa Sipi, the father of Sipi.” The usage is common in Sumatra; and equally prevails in Madagascar. It is so too among some Indian Hill tribes: the Kasias “address each other by the names of their children, as Pabobon, father of Bobon!” Africa also furnishes instances. Bechuanas addressing Mr. Moffat, used to say—“I speak to the Father of Mary.” And in the Pacific States of North America there are people so solicitous to bear this primitive name of honour, that until a young man has children, his dog stands to him in the position of a son, and he is known as the father of his dog.

§ 404. The supremacy associated with age in patriarchal groups, and in societies derived by composition from patriarchal groups, shown primarily in that honouring of parents which, as in the Jewish commandments, is put next to the worship of God, and secondarily in the honouring of old men in general, gives rise to a kindred but divergent group of titles. Age being dignified, words indicating seniority become names of dignity.

The beginnings may be discerned among the uncivilized. Counsels being formed of the older men, the local name for an older man becomes associated in thought with an office of power and therefore of honour. Merely noting this, it will suffice if we trace in European language the growth of titles hence resulting. Among the Romans senator, or member of the senatus, words having the same root with senex, was a name for a member of the assembly of elders; and in early times these senators or elders, otherwise called patres, represented the component tribes: father and elder being thus used as equivalents. From the further cognate word senior, we have, in derived languages, signior, seigneur, senhor; first applied to head men, rulers, or lords, and then by diffusion becoming names of honour for those of inferior rank. The same thing has happenel with ealdor or aldor. Of this Max Müller says,—“like many other titles of rank in the various Teutonic tongues, it is derived from an adjective implying age;” so that “earl” and “alderman,” both originating from this root, are names of honour similarly resulting from that social superiority gained by advanced years.

Whether or not the German title graf should be added, is a moot point. If Max Müller is right in considering the objections of Grimm to the current interpretation inadequate, then the word originally means grey; that is, grey-headed.

§ 405. We may deal briefly with the remaining titles; which re-illustrate, in their respective ways, the general principle set forth.

Like other names of honour that grew up in early times, the name “king” is one concerning the formation of which there are differences of opinion. By general agreement, however, its remote source is the Sanscrit ganaka; and “in Sanscrit, ganaka means producing, parent, then king.” If this is the true derivation, we have simply an alternative title for the head of the family-group, of the patriarchal group, and of the cluster of patriarchal groups. The only further fact respecting it calling for remark, is the way in which it becomes compounded to produce a higher title. Just as in Hebrew, Abram, meaning “high father,” came to be a compound used to signify the fatherhood and headship of any minor groups; and just as the Greek and Latin equivalents to our patriarch, signified by implication, if not directly, a father of fathers; so in the case of the title “king,” it has happened that a potentate recognized as dominant over numerous potentates, has in many cases been descriptively called “king of kings.” In Abyssinia this compound royal name is used down to the present time; as we lately saw that it is also in Burmah. Ancient Egyptian monarchs assumed it; and it occurred as a supreme title in Assyria. And here again we meet a correspondence between terrestrial and celestial titles. As “father” and “king” are applied in common to the visible and to the invisible ruler; so, too, is “king of kings.”

This need for marking by some additional name the ruler who becomes head over many rulers, leads to the introduction of other titles of honour. In France, for example, while the king was but a predominant feudal noble, he was addressed by the title sire, which was a title borne by feudal nobles in general; but towards the end of the fifteenth century, when his supremacy became settled, the additional word “majesty” grew into use as specially applicable Edition: current; Page: [173] to him. Similarly with the names of secondary potentates. In the earlier stages of the feudal period, the titles baron, marquis, duke, and count, were often confounded: the reason being that their attributes as feudal nobles, as guards of the marches, as military leaders, and as friends of the king, were so far common to them as to yield no clear grounds for distinction. But along with differentiation of functions went differentiation of these titles.

“The name ‘baron,’ ” says Chéruel, “appears to have been the generic term for every kind of great lord, that of duke for every kind of military chief, that of count and marquis for every ruler of a territory. These titles are used almost indiscriminately in the romances of chivalry. When the feudal hierarchy was constituted, the name baron denoted a lord inferior in rank to a count and superior to a simple knight.”

That is to say, with the progress of political organization and the establishment of rulers over rulers, certain titles became specialized for the dignifying of the superiors, in addition to those which they had in common with the inferiors.

As is shown by the above cases, special titles, like general titles, are not made but grow—are at first descriptive. Further to exemplify their descriptive origin, and also to exemplify the undifferentiated use of them in early days, let me enumerate the several styles by which, in the Merovingian period, the mayors of the palace were known; viz. major domûs regiæ, senior domûs, princeps domûs, and in other instances præpositus, præfectus, rector, gubernator, moderator, dux, custos, subregulus. In which list (noting as we pass how our own title “mayor,” said to be derived from the French maire, is originally derived from the Latin major, meaning either greater or elder) we get proof that other names of honour carry us back to words implying age as their originals; and that in place of such descriptive words, the alternative words used describe functions.

§ 406. Perhaps better in the case of titles than in any other case, is illustrated the diffusion of ceremonial forms that are first used to propitiate the most powerful only.

Uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples, civilized peoples of past times, and existing civilized peoples, all furnish examples. Among Samoans “it is usual, in the courtesies of common conversation, for all to call each other chiefs. If you listen to the talk of little boys even, you will hear them addressing each other as chief this, that, and the other thing.” In Siam, a man’s children by any of his inferior wives, address their father as “my lord, the king;” and the word Naï, which is the name for chief among the Siamese, “has become a term of civility which the Siamese give to one another.” A kindred result has occurred in China, where sons speak of their father as “family’s majesty,” “prince of the family;” and China supplies a further instance which is noteworthy because it is special. Here, where the supremacy of ancient teachers became so great, and where the titles tze or futze, signifying “great teacher,” added to their names, were subsequently added to the names of distinguished writers, and where class distinctions based on intellectual eminence characterize the social organization; it has resulted that this name of honour signifying teacher, has become an ordinary complimentary title. Ancient Rome furnishes other evidences. The spirit which led to the diffusion of titles is well shadowed forth by Mommsen in describing the corrupt giving of public triumphs that were originally accorded only to a “supreme magistrate who augmented the power of the State in open battle.”

“In order to put an end to peaceful triumphators, . . . the granting of a triumph was made to depend on the producing proof of a pitched battle which had cost the lives of at least five thousand of the enemy; but this proof was frequently evaded by false bulletins. . . . Formerly the thanks of the community once for all had sufficed for service rendered to the State; now every meritorious act seemed to demand a permanent distinction. . . . A custom came into vogue, by Edition: current; Page: [175] which the victor and his descendants derived a permanent surname from the victories they had won. . . . The example set by the higher was followed by the humbler classes.”

And under influences of this kind, dominus and rex eventually became titles used to ordinary persons. Nor do modern European nations fail to exemplify the process. The prevalence of names of rank on the continent, often remarked, reaches in some places great extremes. “In Mecklenburg,” says Captain Spencer, “it is computed that the nobility include one half of the population. . . . At one of the inns I found a Herr Graf [Count] for a landlord, a Frau Gräfinn [Countess] for a landlady, the young Herren Gräfen filled the places of ostler, waiter, and boots, while the fair young Fräulein Gräfinnen were the cooks and chambermaids. I was informed that in one village . . . the whole of the inhabitants were noble except four.”

French history shows us more clearly perhaps than any other, the stages of diffusion. Noting that in early days, while madame was the title for a noble lady, mademoiselle was used to the wife of an advocate or physician; and that when, in the sixteenth century, madame descended to the married women of these middle ranks, mademoiselle descended from them to the unmarried women; let us look more especially at the masculine titles, sire, seigneur, sieur, and monsieur. Setting out with sire as an early title for a feudal noble, we find, from a remark of Montaigne, that in 1580, though still applicable in a higher sense to the king, it had descended to the vulgar, and was not used for intermediate grades. Seigneur, introduced as a feudal title while sire was losing its meaning by diffusion, and for a period used alternatively with it, became, in course of time, contracted into sieur. By and by sieur also began to spread to those of lower rank. Afterwards, re-establishing a distinction by an emphasizing prefix, there came into use monsieur; which, as applied to great seigneurs, was new in 1321, and which came also to be the title of sons of kings Edition: current; Page: [176] and dukes. And then by the time that monsieur also had become a general title among the upper classes, sieur had become a bourgeois title. Since which time, by the same process, the early sire and the later sieur dying out, have been replaced by the universal monsieur. So that there appear to have been three waves of diffusion: sire, sieur, and monsieur have successively spread downwards. Nay, even a fourth may be traced. The duplication of the monsieur on a letter, doubtless at first used to mark a distinction, has ceased to mark a distinction.

How by this process high titles eventually descend to the very lowest people, we are shown most startingly in Spain; where “even beggars address each other as Señor y Caballero—Lord and Knight.”

§ 407. For form’s sake, though scarcely otherwise, it is needful to point out that we are taught here the same lesson as before. The title-giving among savages which follows victory over a foe, brute or human, and which literally or metaphorically distinguishes the individual by his achievement, unquestionably originates in militancy. Though the more general names father, king, elder, and their derivatives, which afterwards arise, are not directly militant in their implications, yet they are indirectly so; for they are the names of rulers evolved by militant activity, who habitually exercise militant functions: being in early stages always the commanders of their subjects in battle. Down to our most familiar titles we have this genesis implied. “Esquire” and “Mister” are derived the one from the name of a knight’s attendant and the other from the name magister—originally a ruler or chief, who was a military head by origin and a civil head by development.

As in other cases, comparisons of societies of different types disclose this relation in another way. Remarking that in sanguinary and despotic Dahomey, the personal name “can hardly be said to exist; it changes with every rank of Edition: current; Page: [177] the holder,” Burton says—“The dignities seem to be interminable; except amongst the slaves and the canaille, ‘handles’ are the rule, not the exception, and most of them are hereditary.” So, too, under Oriental despotisms. “The name of every Burman disappears when he gets a title of rank or office, and is heard no more;” and in China, “there are twelve orders of nobility, conferred solely on the members of the imperial house or clan,” besides “the five ancient orders of nobility.” Europe supplies further evidence. Travellers in both Russia and Germany, with their social organizations adapted to war, comment on the “insane rage for titles of every description:” the results being that in Russia “a police-office clerk belongs to the eighteenth grade, and has the right to the title of Your Honour;” and in Germany the names of rank and names of office so abundantly distributed, are habitually expected and studiously given, in both speech and writing. Meanwhile England, for ages past less militant in type, has ever shown this trait in a smaller degree; and along with the growth of industrialism and accompaying changes of organization, the use of titles in social intercourse has decreased.

With equal clearness is this connexion seen within each society. By the thirteen grades in our army and the fourteen grades in our navy, we are shown that the exclusively-militant structures continue to be characterized in the highest degree by numerous and specific titular marks. To the ruling classes, descendants or representatives of those who in past times were heads of military forces, the higher distinctions of rank still mostly belong; and of remaining titles, the ecclesiastical and legal are also associated with the regulative organization developed by militancy. Meanwhile, the producing and exchanging parts of the society, carrying on industrial activities, only in exceptional cases bear any titles beyond those which, descending and spreading, have almost lost their meanings.

It is indisputable, then, that serving first to commemorate Edition: current; Page: [178] the triumphs of savages over their foes, titles have expanded, multiplied, and differentiated, as conquests have formed large societies by consolidation and re-consolidation of small ones; and that, belonging to the social type generated by habitual war, they tend to lose their uses and their values, in proportion as this type is replaced by one fitted for carrying on the pursuits of peace.