III

The best illustration of the “people” stage of social evolution is to be found in the Germanic tribes as they first appear in history, the Catti, the Suevi, the Allemanni, the Rutuli, etc., as described by Tacitus and later writers. The word “thiud,” meaning people, enters into many of the names of Gothic chiefs and kings, e.g., Theodoric, Theobald, etc. The tract of land occupied by the “people” was the mark. Primitive Communism prevailed amongst them in the time of Tacitus, but the constant state of internecine war, and the tendency to rally round and exalt the victorious leader, betokened a ripeness for civilisation, which is further indicated by the tendency to acquire slaves, etc. For another instance of the “people” the reader may be referred to the early history of the Hebrew race. “What there was of permanent official authority,” says Professor Wellhausen (Encyc. Brit., 9th ed” art. Israel), “lay in the hands of the elders and heads of houses; in time of war they commanded each his own household force, in peace they dispensed justice each within his own circle.” And again, “actual and legal existence, in the modern sense, was predicable only of each of the many clans: the unity of the nation was realised in the first instance only through its religion.” Herodotus is a rich mine for indications of the “people” stage. Among modern analogies may be mentioned the Kurdish tribes, the Arab, and other tribes of the Soudan, etc. It is, however, I think, important to remember what has been hinted in the text; that modern instances of primitive, social, and intellectual conditions can only with safety he regarded as a more or less close approach to those conditions of the historical races which obtained in early ages, and not as some writers, insist as necessarily identical with them. Similarly the modern anthropoid ape, though undoubtedly presenting in structure and habits a close analogy with the ape-like ancestor of man, is not regarded by naturalists as reproducing identically such ancestor. Just as species have become fixed it seems likely that races have become fixed. The very fact of the capacity for development or progress in the “culture-races” would seem to imply elements in them which from the earliest stages must have differentiated them from those “nature-races,” where no such capacity exists.