Many sorts of animals, such as deer and antelopes,
might long ago have been exterminated but for their mutual cooperation
and service. Affection and sympathy in high degree are evident in some
sub-human species. When we come to man, we find his earliest recorded
life based upon a social morality which, if crude, was in some respects
stricter than that of today. It is a mistake to think of the savage
as Rousseau imagined him, a freehearted, happy-go-lucky individualist,
only by a cramping civilization bowed under the yoke of laws and
conventions. Savage life is essentially group-life; the individual
is nothing, the tribe everything. The gods are tribal gods, warfare
is tribal warfare, hunting, sowing, harvesting, are carried on by the
community as a whole. There are few personal possessions, there is
little personal will; obedience to the tribal customs, and mutual
cooperation, are universal. [Footnote: As an example of the solidarity
of barbarous tribes, note how Abimelech, seeking election as king,
says to "all the men of Shechem": "Remember that I am your bone and
your flesh." (Judges IX, 2.) Later, "all the tribes of Israel" say
to David, "Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh." (2 Sam. V, 1.) Of
savage life as observed in modern times we have many reports like this:
"Many strange customs and laws obtain in Zululand, but there is no
moral code in all the world more rigidly observed than that of the
Zulus.
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