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In the early part of the period under study a literary and debating society was organized, with social attractions; but it was feeble and short-lived. There are not enough leaders among the men to make such group-life possible.
The criminal and the sensualist leave the church for the gambling-hell and the brothel, and fill the slums of Chicago and Baltimore; the better classes segregate themselves from the group-life of both white and black, and form an aristocracy, cultured but pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way of escape.
Following the custom of many early English meeting houses, the men and women sat apart, the men on one side of the middle aisle, and the women on the other, so that men and women were not equals in the individualist sense, as they are for instance, in the practice and theory of Socialism, but were equals in separate group-life; to each sex, grouped apart from the other, equal functions were supposed to be delegated.
So long as the stores were in operation, at Toffey's, Akin's, and Merritt's places, the men could meet there, and had in their assembling a natural group-life, which satisfied many with life in the country.
When they are told of States where the spontaneous manifestations of group-life, non-conforming sects, workmen's associations, and ordinary social clubs, are driven underground and classed as dangerous secret societies, they should realize how precious a thing is that freedom of association which is one of the dearest attributes of English liberty.
It is a mistake to think of the savage as Rousseau imagined him, a freehearted, happy-go-lucky individualist, only by a cramping civilization bowed under the yoke of laws and conventions. Savage life is essentially group-life; the individual is nothing, the tribe everything.
On them rested the brush and branches. These seemed to have been tossed on almost aimlessly. There was no attempt at thatching. And I must confess that the roof leaked miserably in a heavy rain. But the Chatterer. He made home-life a burden for both my mother and me and by home-life I mean, not the leaky nest in the tree, but the group-life of the three of us.
Matters like complexion, stature, and hair-formation are merely the outward, visible symbols of correlative mental and spiritual differences which reveal themselves in sharply contrasted temperaments and view-points, and which translate themselves into the infinite phenomena of divergent group-life. Now it is one of these basic racial lines of cleavage which runs between "East" and "West."
The orbits of man's and woman's lives are separate, though each ascribes to the individuals of the other sex an ethical and religious parity. The effect is seen in the diminishing of the numbers of men on the Hill, in the group-life of the women, and in the type of woman. It may be well to consider these in reverse order.
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