e of us is the descendant of
ancestors who, forty generations back, were exercising their tribal
instincts to the full. The Roman occupation did much to break down the
tribal organization of Britain; the Saxon colonization did still more.
The forces, however, which forged the tribal links into a national chain
were commerce, communication, and the building of massed populations.
Tribes were united to form nations, but there is no greater mistake than
to suppose that the subconscious tribal impulses or instincts were
wholly converted into a sense of common nationality.

TRIBAL INSTINCTS NOW MANIFESTED IN EVERYDAY LIFE

We have only to watch our commoner actions and predilections to see that
in our modern States the spirit of nationality has only absorbed a
fraction of our tribal instincts. Every one of you regards your own
college and all the men belonging to it with pride; other colleges and
other men you view with a critical eye. You cheer your own crews and
teams; you want to see them beat all their rivals; you take sides. In
all of these actions and prejudices you manifest the elementary basis of
a tribal spirit. Every week we see hundreds of thousands attend football
or other competitive games, not so much to see an exhibition of skill as
to see their own side win. The spectators, as they cheer, are moved by a
tribal spirit. If we do not belong to a cricketing county we may go so
far as to adopt one as a foster-parent in order that we may exercise our
tribal instincts in being elated by its success or cast down by its
failure. Local national politics give us many opportunities of
exercising our tribal instincts. In politics we have to take sides; a
political party is a tribal organization, using ancient means for
compelling a unity of sentiment amongst its members. The church, too,
provides modern tribesmen with occasions for exercising their inherited
impulses; a heresy hunt finds its counterpart in the most ancient of
tribal communities. Women even more than men are slaves of their tribal
instincts; they are as susceptible to the dictates of fashion as their
ancient sisters were impressionable to the movings of the tribal spirit.
The local spirit which is so inherent a trait of the countryman,
particularly in the case of the Scotsman, Irishman, and Welshman, is
another, and often a very powerful, manifestation of the tribal spirit.
Men from the same locality or district, when they go to live in foreign
communit