SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS
{Concluded) By J. W. POWELL
HISTORICS
Histories is the science which records events of social life and shows the relation existing between social causes and social effects. A mere record of events is usually called annals, and furnishes the data for history. Only the history of peoples is usually called history, the history of individuals is usually called biography ; but as we wish to include history and biography in the science which we are to characterize we shall call it histories, meaning that history and biography are included therein. We shall divide the periods or stages of social history into savagery, barbarism, monarchy, and democracy.
Savagery
To the ethnologist a savage is a forest dweller. In common conception the savage is a brutal person whose chief delight is in taking scalps. Sometimes the sylvan man is cruel, — but even civilized men are sometimes cruel. Savagery is a status of culture to the ethnologist, who recognizes four such stages, of which savagery is the lowest. Some of the Amerindian tribes belong to this lowest stage ; while others belong to a higher stage which is called barbarism. Wishing to show my readers how a savage tribe is governed, I must at the outset ask them to consider the savage not as a man of cruelty, but as a man who takes part in a regularly organized government, with laws that are obeyed and enforced. What, then, is a savage tribe, and how does tribal society differ from national society ?
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