56 tHE COMING OF MAN 



begins to own more things than a few flint tools. He goes 

 into partnership with Nature and is no longer a pauper, de- 

 pendent on her rich or scanty gifts. He is gaining worth 

 and dignity. He has been promoted, if he could appreciate it, 

 to an entirely new grade and school of education. 



He has a family and a home, and his home is in a neighbor- 

 hood or village, and he cannot escape from it. In many things 

 he must do as his neighbors do, talk and think like them. 

 The erection of great stone monuments and the founding and 

 maintaining of lake-dwellings are the work of men who have 

 learned to cooperate in obedience to leaders and governors; 

 and apparently the chief leaders were the priests and the old 

 men of the tribe. 



The Neolithic period was mainly one of peace, certainly not 

 of the continual war and blood-shed which has been asserted 

 of it. Weapons are few and scarce except among hunting 

 tribes. It was a period of conservatism and yet of steady 

 advance, for the two are not incompatible. 



It seems safe to believe that in Neolithic tribes, like all 

 peoples in a similar stage of development, the tribal conscience 

 ruled supreme. The essential characteristic of the tribal con- 

 science is the view that the whole tribe must accept the re- 

 sponsibility for offences of every individual member against 

 individuals of other tribes or the gods. It is illustrated by 

 the sin of Achan and rout of the Hebrews at Ai; in the offence 

 of Agamemnon against the priest of Apollo, punished by a 

 pestilence sweeping through the Greek host; by the rela- 

 tions of the red men to the whites in America; and in a host 

 of other cases showing its wide spread, if not universality, in a 

 certain stage of social development. 



If the tribe is responsible for the deeds of its individuals, 

 it must and will control individual thought and action. In- 

 dividual freedom is reduced to a minimum. The laws of 

 taboo prescribed by the priests and the inviolability of ancient 

 custom laid down by the old men constitute nearly the whole 

 of the tribal code. It is like teaching an awkward squad of 

 dull recruits to keep step or mark time. Neolithic man 



