KROPOTKUl is anterior to man. We also know to-day-anthropology has clearly demonstrated it ~that the starting point of humanity was not the family, but the clan, the tribe. The paternal family as we have it, or as depicted in Hebrew tradition, appeared very much later. Men lived teiµ; of thousands of years in the stage of clan or tribe, and during that first stage-let 11 s call it the primitive tribe-man already developed a whole seriesof jnstitutions, habits, and customs, far anterior to the paternal family • institutions. In those tribes, the separate family existed no more than it exists among so many other sociable mammals. Divisions in the tribe itself were formed by generations; and since the earliest periodsof tribal life limitations were establishe!f to hinder marriage relations between divers generations, while they were freely practised between JD.embersof the same generation. Traces of that period are still extant in certain contemporary tribes, and we find them again in the Janguage, customs and superstitions of nations who were far more advanced in civilisation. The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and when they were satisfied they gave themselves up to their dramatic dances. ,:,.lowadayswe still find tribes, very near this primitive phase, driven back to the least accessible regions of our world. The accumulation of private property could not take place, because each thing that had been the personal property of a member of the tribe was destroyed or burned where his corpse was buried. This is still done by gypsies in England, and the funeral rites of the "civilised" bear its traces: the Chinese bum paper models of what uie dead possessed; and we lead the military chief's horse, and carry }rissword and decorations as far as the grave. The meaning of the institution is lost : only the form survives. Far from professingcontempt for human life, these primitive men pad a horror of blood and murder. Shedding blood was considereda deed of such gravity that each drop shed-not only the·blood of men, but also that of certain animals-required that the aggressor should Josean equal quantity of blood. In fact, murder within the tribe itself was absolutely unknown; you may see this even now, among the Inoits or Esquimaux-those ~ivors of the stone age who inhabit the Arctic regions. But when tribes of different origin, colour, or tongue met during their migrations, war was often the result. It is true that men already tried to mitigate the effect of these shocks. Already, as has been demonstrated by ,Maine,*Post, and Nys, the tribes agreed upon and respected certain rules and limitations of war which contained the germs of what was later to become international law. For example, a village must not l'Maine's Ancient Law, a 19th century sociological classic, •is issued in the Everyman Library.-ED. 12 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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