Chapter VII. The Noble Savage

CHAPTER VII The Noble Savage The first abstract generalization made by Europeans in regard to the American aborigines was that the less civilized tribes had no government.* Europe was far enough from that condition to be struck with astonishment. The fact gave rise to the myth of the Noble Savage, which now seems like a gratuitous fabrication because it was translated into poetic and pictorial form. The Noble Savage was a syllogism, a logical construction from the premises of the European theory of government. Secular authority resided in society, which was an entity; and men were born in subjection to it. It was assumed that without government every man's hand must be against his neighbor, and every kind of crime would be committed by everyone. Possibly the memory of the barbarian invasions entered into this conviction; while the doctrine of original sin, if taken by itself, could be construed to support it. And since plenty of crimes certainly were committed, it was arguable that more would be if individuals were allowed leeway. How or why a society composed of individuals eager to do murder should restrain its members by force may appear incomprehensible, especially when the church exercised an authority superior to that of the secular organization by appealing to the conscience of the individual, intervening in armed disputes with moral injunctions. But the discrepancy was accounted for by the divine mission entrusted to the church. The order of secular society made it necessary to tie men to a given locality and class, and * The word government, as here used, signifies a formal political organization of denominated persons having definite functions, with authority for enforcement.

63 64 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE therefore to prescribe what they must and must not do, say, write, or think. Both exile and "preventive arrest," imprisonment without trial (as by lettre de cachet) are the ultimate extension of this theory. Thus it was a profound shock to discover that crime was rather less prevalent among savages with no government than in a society with authoritarian government minutely applied. The savages practiced most of the lay virtues: courage, hospitality, truthfulness, loyalty, perhaps even chastity. True that they made war and were sometimes cruel, but Europeans made war and legalized torture. Still, men do not readily abandon an opinion by which they have justified their institutions 5 therefore it could only be supposed that savages were peculiarly noble by nature \ or anyhow, American savages were so.* The Noble Savage was not an entirely new creation 5 Tacitus had idealized the barbarian in like manner, while the barbarian remained at a safe distance. Only the rationalization was new. But the Noble Savage passed into European mythology without gaining credence in America. The early white settlers, to whom the savage was a present and sanguinary enemy, were apt to overlook his virtues. Precisely at this point the schism or cleavage between American and European political ideas began.

The impact of a high energy system on a lower one has an internal effect upon the latter which is much more disintegrating and conclusive than the direct consequences of war. For example, if the North American Indians had been supplied with fire-arms and ammunition for their own use, while otherwise left as they were, their way of life would have been seriously deranged. The optimum population which a hunting economy will sustain is scanty. There are recurrent years when game is scarce anyhow 5 in such seasons the *The theorists ignored the Caribs, whose cannibalistic practices were unspeakable. And the Apaches were then unknown. People were simply sick of too much government.

THE NOBLE SAVAGE 6$ weaker members of the savage tribes perished; and at all times the ordeal of survival was severe. With guns, it would have been possible for the hunters to kill more game, so that the population would have tended to increase over a certain period of time, at the expense of the future food supply as the game was thinned out, until an exceptionally bad season brought wholesale starvation. As it was, much the same thing happened by degrees. No large numbers of North American Indians were slain by the white men in war. Instead, their economy was superseded; and those in contact with the white men were demoralized long before the continent was fully occupied by whites. The lapse of the Noble Savage from his pristine virtue could not escape observation. The myth remained, in European thinking, but had to be modified to a tentative hypothesis that perhaps all men were equally noble until corrupted by—what? By "society," at least as it was then organized, especially its political form. Approximating to the law of physics that action and reaction are equal and opposite, European minds began to swing to this extreme from their previous theory of status.

Emigrants to America had already made the physical move, so that their thinking tended to seek a balance. In the opinion of the frontiersman, the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But the frontiersman had no excessive attachment to government either. Informed and thoughtful Americans remained aware that the savage in his original condition did obey a moral code although he had no government. Being acquainted at first hand with the limitations of a primitive culture, such men of intellect had no desire to revert to savagery in quest of a sentimental illusion; what interested them was the reasonable question: if government did not prevent crime and enforce virtue, what did it do? If in certain conditions government could be dispensed with altogether, why and to what extent was it actually necessary in any condition?

66 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE The American colonies furnished a further object lesson and proving ground. Nominally they were under the same kind of authority as the European nations from which they were drawn j but the English settlements especially, for historic reasons, tended strongly to self-government, in which the strictly traditional element was diluted or eliminated, and the liberty of the individual was taken for granted. Yet they prospered 5 people got along with one another, and with much less government than in Europe there was no more crime. The existence of slavery at the same time can be understood only if the two theories of society are understood. Slavery occurs in what has lately been called a "mixed economy." Contract had become the prevailing relation, but the theory of status had not been explicitly repudiated by limitation of the scope of government. The presumed moral value of status is that it gives everyone "security," a place in society from which he cannot be ousted, and which, conversely, he may not leave. If there is any benefit in status, the serf enjoyed it as much as his lord.* By the complete and absolute theory of status the land could not be sold at all, but only inherited -y and should be held in perpetual tenancy; it could not be transferred away from the hereditary cultivator. This sounds so admirable that of late attempts have been made to reinstate unbreakable tenure, by piecemeal devices such as seniority in jobs (beginning with civil service), and government-endowed "subsistence colonies."

These are accepted without recognition of the inevitable corollary 5 it is the return of serfdom. If employment cannot be terminated by the employer according to contract, or tenancy by the owner on the expiration of a stated lease, presently the worker or tenant must lose the right to quit his employment or his allotment. Nor will he have, under the *The serf was not free to starve. He had to starve under arrest, and he did starve pretty often. Famine was recurrent even in fertile regions. The United States is the only country on record that has never had a famine since it became a nation.

THE NOBLE SAVAGE 6j "state," the human character which pertained to the serf under feudalism, onerous as it was. He can be nothing but a cog in the machine. But chattel slavery was a monstrous combination of status and contract, the epitome of the "mixed economy." The unequal condition of the slave is status, but he is bought and sold by contract. In theory, the serf was still a man, while the chattel slave was an object. This anomaly was bound to trouble the conscience of slave-owners for the very reason that they were free men. It left freedom at the mercy of accident. The facile proposition that the Negro was a slave by the curse of Ham did not cover the fact that white men also were condemned and shipped to America to be sold as slaves for political offenses. So the whole course of history was repeated, run off again, before the eyes of Americans. One man in his lifetime could see it all, if he cared to contemplate what lay in view; theories and arguments were put to the test by demonstration.

Looking back to Europe, he could see the system of status still in force or yielding to various modifications. He could observe the portent of a new and terrible tyranny, "the state," emerging in its ancient guise of absolute monarchy. He could discern the ultimate position of men as subjects of that absolute state; they were slaves. He could study the reality of savage life at its best and worst, contrasted with the difficulties, the pains and the rewards of civilization. He could see men who had rejected civilization to embrace savagery, sinking to the worst instead of achieving the best. He could see others who had taken to the wilderness with the innocence of a deer or a hawk, but their recourse availed only for one generation. He could also see free men in free association making and building, working for no master yet industrious, and meeting approximately as equals without disorder. Amazingly, most of the social problems brought from Europe were never solved nor settled; they just evaporated. The wars of re68 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE ligion dwindled to a little local persecution. The barriers of class dissolved 5 and where persons of various nationalities mixed in one community, they dwelt amicably. Yet as individuals they did not undergo any notable transformation 3 they remained human beings.

Clearly then their behavior and mode of association was practicable, and must have deducible principles, intrinsically different from those of Europe. The presence of slaves gave the answer; other distinctions were so nearly obliterated that the two possible conditions became starkly evident. A man was either free or not free. And where it had formerly been assumed that men were not fit for freedom, it was now thinkable that nothing but freedom was fit for men. During centuries past, in Europe, various "liberties" had been wrested or bought from authority, but such concessions had always been phrased as grants from above, not right but privilege. When the sum became considerable, the Society of Contract could at least be imagined. It had been imagined, and projected to the New World. In the New World it had become a fact. At length the time was ripe to affirm it as a political concept, without reservations.

The terms were found: all men are endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Freedom was indivisible, a pre-condition. To talk of several "freedoms" is to use the language of Europe, not of America; it is an abandonment of the basic principle on which the United States was founded. But for the concept of freedom, the appropriate form of government remained to be devised. The fallacy of anarchism was not entertained. Though it was not exactly clear why a measure of government was unavoidable, the necessity was felt. The puzzle of the savages—why they had no government although they were subject to human weakness—had to be left unsolved, though it was not forgotten and it had much influence in sustaining the theory of freedom. The THE NOBLE SAVAGE 69 change from the European basis of government was made by positing that men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior. Since volition is a function of the individual, the individual has the precedent right. Then even if it was presumed that government did equate roughly with the moral shortcomings of humanity, it should still be limited and subsidiary. If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority -y it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another's rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best.

Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression. By this view, men are neither wholly "noble" nor incorrigibly bad, but rather imperfect creatures gifted with the divine spark and so capable of improvement, perhaps in the long run of "perfectibility." This is essentially a secular application of the Christian doctrine of the individual soul, born to immortality, with the faculty of free-will, which includes the possibility of sin or error, yet equally enabled to 7O THE GOD OF THE MACHINE strive toward salvation, its heritage. Let anyone who does not recognize the connection of these principles try to rewrite the Declaration of Independence without reference to a divine source of human rights. It cannot be done; the axiom is missing. A philosophy of materialism can admit no rights whatever; hence the most grinding despotism ever known resulted at once from the "experiment" of Marxist communism, which could posit nothing but a mechanistic process for its validation.

The Christian idea was necessary to the concept of freedom. The Roman idea was indispensable for the form—a government of laws and not of men. The question posed by the absence of government in savage society had to be dropped for the time being, because nobody recognized it as a matter of engineering; and it cannot be expressed otherwise. It is of course a moral problem, since it concerns the relation of human beings; but the specific relations involved are those which Include time and sface. The organization of actions over time and space constitutes the science of engineering. Anyhow, the immediate task was to determine the mode of minimum government, by examination and comparison of historic examples, checking intentions and devices against performance. The source of secular authority having been postulated as residing in the individual, the object then was to prevent that authority being usurped by its agent. However, one engineering factor was certainly understood—the function of private property as the sole basis of liberty. It is no accident that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence nominated private property as an inalienable right of the individual.