id="Page_10" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="10"/>their knowledge. Then the myth-building imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account for the prosperity or calamity.7 The Greek notion of the Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of Crœsus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Crœsus had done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was very pious and lived by the rules of religion. The story is told in different forms. "The people could not make up their minds that a prince who had been so liberal to the gods during his prosperity had been abandoned by them at the moment when he had the greatest need of their aid."8 They said that he expiated the crime of his ancestor Gyges, who usurped the throne; that is, they found it necessary to adduce some guilt to account for the facts, and they introduced the notion of hereditary responsibility. Another story was that he determined to sacrifice all his wealth to the gods. He built a funeral pyre of it all and mounted it himself, but rain extinguished it. The gods were satisfied. Crœsus afterwards enjoyed the friendship of Cyros, which was good fortune. Still others rejected the doctrines of correlation between goodness and happiness on account of the fate of Crœsus. In ancient religion "the benefits which were expected from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished, the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."9 Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.10 This is like the case of Œdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the mouths of prophets.11 Hezekiah expostulated with God because, although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had done what was right in His sight, he suffered calamity.12 In the seventy-third Psalm, the author is perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked, and the contrast of his own fortunes. "Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in innocency, for all day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning." He says that at last the wicked were cast down. He was brutish and ignorant not to see the solution. It is that the wicked prosper for a time only. He will cleave unto God. The book of Job is a discussion of the relation between goodness and happiness. The crusaders were greatly perplexed by the victories of the Mohammedans. It seemed to be proved untrue that God would defend His own Name or the true and holy cause. Louis XIV, when his armies were defeated, said that God must have forgotten all which he had done for Him.

11. Immortality and compensation. The notion of immortality has been interwoven with the notion of luck, of justice, and of the relation of goodness and happiness. The case was reopened in another world, and compensations could be assumed to take place there. In the folk drama of the ancient Greeks luck ruled. It was either envious of human prosperity or beneficent.13 Grimm14 gives more than a thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and proverbs about "luck." The Italians of the fifteenth century saw grand problems in the correlation of goodness and happiness. Alexander VI was the wickedest man known in history, but he had great and unbroken prosperity in all his undertakings. The only conceivable explanation was that he had made a pact with the devil. Some of the American Indians believed that there was an hour at which all wishes uttered by men were fulfilled.15 It is amongst half-civilized peoples that the notion of luck is given the greatest influence in human affairs. They seek devices for operating on luck, since luck controls all interests. Hence words, times, names, places, gestures, and other acts or relations are held to control luck. Inasmuch as marriage is a relationship in which happiness is sought and not always found, wedding ceremonies are connected with acts "for luck." Some of these still survive amongst us as jests. The fact of the aleatory element in human life, the human interpretations of it, and the efforts of men to deal with it constitute a large part of the history of culture. They have produced groups of folkways, and have entered as an element into folkways for other purposes.

12. Tradition and its restraints. It is evident that the "ways" of the older and more experienced members of a society deserve great authority in any primitive group. We find that this rational authority leads to customs of deference and to etiquette in favor of the old. The old in turn cling stubbornly to tradition and to the example of their own predecessors. Thus tradition and custom become intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. Children see their parents always yield to the same custom and obey the same persons. They see that the elders are allowed to do all the talking, and that if an outsider enters, he is saluted by those who are at home according to rank and in fixed order. All this becomes rule for children, and helps to give to all primitive customs their stereotyped formality. "The fixed ways of looking at things which are inculcated by education and tribal discipline, are the precipitate of an old cultural development, and in their continued operation they are the moral anchor of the Indian, although they are also the fetters which restrain his individual will."16

13. The concept of "primitive society"; we-group and others-group. The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over