The title of this book would seem to hold a contradiction. Nature must be expressed in symbols; nature is known through symbols which are themselves a construction upon experience, a product of mind, an artifice or conventional product, therefore the reverse of natural. Nor can there be sense in speaking of natural symbols unless the mind tends in some natural way to use the same symbols for the same situations. This question through the ages has been deeply explored and the possibility of natural symbols is rejected. A symbol only has meaning from its relation to other symbols in a pattern. The pattern gives the meaning. Therefore no one item in the pattern can carry meaning by itself isolated from the rest. Therefore even the human physiology which we all share in common does not afford symbols which we can all understand. A cross-cultural, pan-human pattern of symbols must be an impossibility. For one thing, each symbolic system develops autonomously according to its own rules. For another, cultural environments add their difference. For another, the social structures add a further range of variation. The more closely we inspect the conditions of human interaction, the more unrewarding if not ridiculous the quest for natural symbols appears. However, the intuition against such a learned negative is strong. This book attempts to reinstate the intuition by following the line of argument of the French sociologists of L'Année sociologique. For if it is true, as they asserted, that the social relation of men provide the prototype for the logical relations between things, then, whenever this prototype falls into a common pattern, there should be something common to be discerned in the system of symbols it uses. Where regularities in the system are found, we should expect to find recurring, and always intelligible across cultures, the same natural systems of symbols. Society was not simply a model which classificatory thought followed; it was its own divisions which served as divisions for the system of classification. The first logical categories were social categories; the first classes of things were classes of men into which these things were integrated. It was because men were grouped and thought of themselves in the form of groups that in their ideas they grouped other things. The centre of the first scheme of nature is not the individual; it is society (Durkheim and Mauss, 1903: 82, 87). The quest for natural symbols becomes by the force of this argument the quest for natural systems of symbolizing. We will look for tendencies and correlations between the character of the symbolic system and that of the social system.
The easiest to recognize of these tendencies can be expressed as the rule of distance from physiological origin. I have argued elsewhere (in Purity and Danger, 1966) that the organic system provides an analogy of the social system which, other things being equal, is used in the same way and understood in the same way all over the world. The body is capable of furnishing a natural system of symbols, but our problem is to identify the elements in the social dimension which are reflected in one view and another of how the body should function or how its waste-products should be judged. In that book I made some suggestions, but the subject is very complex. According to the rule of distance from physiological origin (or the purity rule) the more the social situation exerts pressure on persons involved in it, the more the social demand for conformity tends to be expressed by a demand for physical control. Bodily processes are more ignored and more firmly set outside the social discourse, the more the latter is important. A natural way of investing a social occasion with dignity is to hide organic processes. Thus social distance tends to be expressed in distance from physiological origins and vice versa.
Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, explains the anthropomorphic reference to God in this idiom. Organs of locomotion or of sensation or of speech are figuratively ascribed to God, to express his agency in certain results. The Lord has a powerful voice (Psalms xxiv, 4), his tongue is a devouring fire (Isaiah xx, 27), his eyes behold (Psalms ii, 4). The external organs have a straightforward figurative sense, since power to act and to know are among God's attributes. But a problem arises when internal organs have to be interpreted:
In phrases like ‘my bowels are troubled for him’ (Jeremiah xxxi, 20); ‘The sounding of thy bowels’ (Isaiah lxiii, 15), the term ‘bowels’ is used in the sense of ‘heart’; for the term ‘bowels’ is used both in a general and in a specific meaning; it denotes specifically ‘bowels’ but more generally it can be used as the name of any inner organ, including ‘heart’. The correctness of this argument can be proved by the phrase ‘And thy law is within my bowels’ (Psalms xl, 9), which is identical with ‘And thy law is within my heart’. For that reason the prophet employed in this verse the phrase ‘my bowels are troubled’ (and ‘the sounding of thy bowels’); the verb hamah is in fact used more frequently in connection with ‘heart’ than with any other organ; compare ‘My heart maketh a noise (homeh) in me’ (Jeremiah iv, 19). Similarly, the shoulder is never used as a figure in reference to God, because it is known as a mere instrument of transport, and also comes into close contact with the thing which it carries. With far greater reason the organs of nutrition are never attributed to God; they are at once recognized as signs of imperfection.
(Maimonides, 1956: 61)
The possibility of imagining God with organs of digestion and excretion is out of the question for this divine. Indeed it is not entertained at all for the Jewish religion. But this is not a universal tendency. Many religions worship gods who are incarnate in every sense. The Incarnation is the central, distinctive doctrine of Christianity. A basic question for understanding natural symbolic systems will be to know what social conditions are the prototype for the one or the other set of attitudes to the human body and its fitness or unfitness for figuring godhead. What are the limits within which the disdain of organic processes can be used as an idiom for social distance? Great methodological difficulties are encountered in any attempt to answer these questions.
One of the most intractable difficulties is the problem of holding other variables steady while we compare a piece of behaviour in one culture with a parallel one in another. Take the case of laughter, for instance. In any of a number of social systems the idea of loud vociferous laughter may be unseemly in polite company. But what counts as loud and vociferous may vary greatly. In her Book of Manners for Women (1897: 12) Mrs Humphry described rather unkindly the laughter of a theatre audience of whom very few ‘know how to indulge themselves in the expression of their mirth’.
For every one whose laughter is melodious, there will be found a dozen who merely grin and half-a-dozen whose sole relief is in physical contortion. Some of the latter bend forward, folding themselves almost double, then spring back again, and repeat this jerky and ridiculous movement at every joke. Others throw their heads back in a way that disagreeably suggests dislocation. A few are so put to it to give vent to their overwhelming sense of amusement that they violently slap themselves, twisting about the whole as though they were undergoing tortures. Cachinnations in every key resound on all sides, varying from the shrill and attenuated ‘He! he!’ to the double chuckle ‘Ho! ho!’ fired off like postmen's knocks, at a tremendous speed, so as to be ready, decks cleared, for the next joke. Cackling suggestive of the farmyard, and snorts not unreminiscent of pig-styes, produce variety.
Mrs Humphry disapproved of dislocation, violence, jerks, uncontrolled cachinnations, snorts and cackles. In a chapter on learning to laugh, she stated: ‘There is no greater ornament to conversation than the ripple of silvery notes that forms the perfect laugh.’ But what passes for a ripple in one culture can be taken for a series of uncouth jerks in another. This is the central problem of comparison that has shackled the attempt to compare rules of bodily behaviour between different societies or different historical periods of the same people. If we are trying to compare forms of expression, we are involved in assessing behaviour in the physical dimension. The range of physical variables is so astonishingly great that it obviously contains a large cultural element. As Lévi-Strauss has said:
The thresholds of excitement, the limits of resistance are different in each culture. The ‘impossible’ effort, the ‘unbearable’ pain, the ‘unbounded’ pleasure are less individual functions than criteria sanctioned by collective approval, and disapproval. Each technique, each item of behaviour, traditionally learnt and transmitted, is based on certain nervous and muscular syndromes which constitute true systems, related within a total sociological context.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1950: xii)
It follows that no objective physiological limits to the range from most complete bodily control to most utter abandonment are relevant. Similarly for all the possible range of symbolic expressions: each social environment sets its own limits to the modes of expression. From London to the north standard stimulants shift from beer to whisky, between some social circles they shift from weak tea to coffee, to shandy. And with these shifts go special ranges of noise and quiet, and of bodily gesture. There is no way of controlling the cultural differences. And yet, without some method, the cross-cultural comparison falls to the ground and with it the whole interest of this exercise. If we cannot bring the argument back from tribal ethnography to ourselves, there is little point in starting it at all. The same goes for the experience of social control. What it feels like to have other people controlling one's behaviour varies with the quality of restraints and freedoms they can use. Each social environment sets limits to the possibilities of remoteness or nearness of other humans, and limits the costs and rewards of group allegiance and conformity to social categories. To compare across cultures is like trying to compare the worth of primitive currencies where no common standard of value applies. And yet the problem is basically the same as that faced by linguists in comparing tonal languages in which the variations in tone occur within a range of relative pitch and not in relation to absolute pitch. One way to solve the comparative problem is to limit the predictions of a hypoth- esis to any given social environment. Even here the difficulty of defining a social environment is great. The methodological rule is merely a rough kind of safeguard against the wildest kinds of cultural selections.
It serves to counter the effects of Bongo-Bongoism, the trap of all anthropological discussion. Hitherto when a generalization is tentatively advanced, it is rejected out of court by any fieldworkers who can say: ‘This is all very well, but it doesn't apply to the Bongo-Bongo.’ To enter this present discussion the Bongoist must precisely specify the cultural field within which his comparisons are drawn.
The hypothesis which I will propose about concordance between symbolic and social experience will always have to be tested within a given social environment. One of the arguments will be that the more value people set on social constraints, the more the value they set on symbols of bodily control. The rule of comparison will not allow me to compare Lloyd George's unruly hair with Disraeli's flowing locks, for they belonged to different cultural periods in English history. Strictly it should not allow me to compare Lloyd George with a younger generation of more close-cropped contemporaries. The latitude allowed by the term ‘given social environment’ is a matter of discretion. The more limited the cultural ranges within which the comparison is made, the more significant the results.
Bearing these rules of method in mind, I will try to identify four distinctive systems of natural symbols. These will be social systems in which the image of the body is used in different ways to reflect and enhance each person's experience of society. According to one, the body will tend to be conceived as an organ of communication. The major preoccupations will be with its functioning effectively; the relation of head to subordinate members will be a model of the central control system, the favourite metaphors of statecraft will harp upon the flow of blood in the arteries, sustenance and restoration of strength. According to another, though the body will also be seen as a vehicle of life, it will be vulnerable in different ways. The dangers to it will come not so much from lack of co-ordination or of food and rest, but from failure to control the quality of what it absorbs through the orifices; fear of poisoning, protection of boundaries, aversion to bodily waste products and medical theory that enjoins frequent purging. Another again will be very practical about the possible uses of bodily rejects, very cool about recycling waste matter and about the pay-off fromsuch practices. The distinction between the life within the body and the body that carries it will hold no interest. In the control areas of this society controversies about spirit and matter will scarcely arise. But at the other end of the spectrum, where the vast majority are controlled by these pragmatists, a different attitude will be seen. Here the body is not primarily the vehicle of life, for life will be seen as purely spiritual, and the body as irrelevant matter. Here we can locate millennial tendencies from our early history to the present day. For these people, society appears as a system which does not work. The human body is the most readily available image of a system. In these types of social experience, a person feels that his personal relations, so inexplicably unprofitable, are in the sinister grip of a social system. It follows that the body tends to serve as a symbol of evil, as a structured system contrasted with pure spirit which by its nature is free and undifferentiated. The millennialist is not interested in identifying enemies and disabling them. He believes in a Utopian world in which goodness of heart can prevail without institutional devices. He does not seek to cherish any particular social forms. He would sweep them all away. The millennialist goes in for frenzies; he welcomes the letting-go experience, and incorporates it into his procedure for bringing in the millennium. He seeks bodily ecstasy which, by expressing for him the explosive advent of the new age, reaffirms the value of the doctrine. Philosophically his bias is towards distinguishing spirit from flesh, mind from matter. But for him the flesh does not suggest temptation to lust and all physical delights. It would more likely represent the corruption of power and organization. For him spirit is found working freely in nature and in the spirit of the wild – not in society. By this avenue of thought anthropologists can relate their field material to the traditional subject matter of the history of religions. For it uncovers implicit forms of the great theological controversies. According to some religions gods and men can have sexual intercourse; in others too great a barrier separates them; in others the god can take human form, only in appearance, not in the reality of flesh; in others the god is incarnate, but not by the normal physiological process. Here we have an index, as Leach has pointed out in discussing dogmas of virgin birth, of the way in which spirit and matter are categorized. For some people the categories are very distinct and it is blasphemous to mix them, for others the mixing of divine and human is right and normal. But I hope to show that dimensions of social life govern the fundamental attitudes to spirit and matter.