On consulting notes taken at random in the literature of Africa, I find them replete with similar facts—­of aids convoked to take in the crops, of houses built by all inhabitants of the village—­ sometimes to repair the havoc done by civilized filibusters—­ of people aiding each other in case of accident, protecting the traveller, and so on.  And when I peruse such works as Post’s compendium of African customary law I understand why, notwithstanding all tyranny, oppression, robberies and raids, tribal wars, glutton kings, deceiving witches and priests, slave-hunters, and the like, these populations have not gone astray in the woods; why they have maintained a certain civilization, and have remained men, instead of dropping to the level of straggling families of decaying orang-outans.  The fact is, that the slave-hunters, the ivory robbers, the fighting kings, the Matabele and the Madagascar “heroes” pass away, leaving their traces marked with blood and fire; but the nucleus of mutual-aid institutions, habits, and customs, grown up in the tribe and the village community, remains; and it keeps men united in societies, open to the progress of civilization, and ready to receive it when the day comes that they shall receive civilization instead of bullets.

The same applies to our civilized world.  The natural and social calamities pass away.  Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or starvation; the very springs of life are crushed out of millions of men, reduced to city pauperism; the understanding and the feelings of the millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in the interest of the few.  All this is certainly a part of our existence.  But the nucleus of mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with the millions; it keeps them together; and they prefer to cling to their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather than to accept the teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them under the title of science, but are no science at all.

Notes: 

1.  A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected subject, is now growing in Germany.  Keller’s works, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer and Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, Cornelius’s Geschichte des munsterischen Aufruhrs, and Janssen’s Geschichte des deutschen Volkes may be named as the leading sources.  The first attempt at familiarizing English readers with the results of the wide researches made in Germany in this direction has been made in an excellent little work by Richard Heath—­“Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster, 1521-1536,” London, 1895 (Baptist Manuals, vol. i.)—­where the leading features of the movement are well indicated, and full bibliographical information is given.  Also K. Kautsky’s Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, London, 1897.

2.  Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement and the means by which it was suppressed.  But those who wrote immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in Germany.  See Zimmermann’s Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges.  For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the Netherlands see Richard Heath’s Anabaptism.