The category of the personAnthropology, philosophy, history

Edited byMichael CarrithersSteven CollinsSteven Lukes

CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITY PRESS

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Marce I Mauss, in whosewords:

A comprehensive knowledge of rhe facts is only possible rhrough the col,lahoratron of numerrrrrs speciahsts. Socrology, thotrgh lackrng the re-sources of the laboratory, does nor lack empirical conrrol, on rhe condi-tion that ooe can truly compare all the social facs of history lsunderstood by rhe specialists o{ each branch of history. This is impossiblefor a single person. C)nly mutual supervision and piri less criricism, thanksto the facts being set in opposition, can yield firm results.

Contents

PrefaceContributors

pdSe rxxi

Published bv thc Prcss Syndrca.c of rhe Universrq of CarnbridgeThc Pitt Bui ldint, Trumpington Srrcet, Cambridge CB2 I RPl2 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, IJSAl0 Stamford Road, Oakleigh. Melbourne 3166, Austral ia

O Cambridge University Press 1985

First puhl ished 1985

Reprinted 1996

I-tbtary ol ConSrcss Caralogag n Pubhcattu, DataMain cntry under t ide:The Category of the person.

Bibftographv: p.Includes index.L Self

- Addresses, esseys, lectures.

2. Sell - Cross-cukutal studies - Addresses, ersays,lecturcs. l . Individual lsm

- Addresses, essays, lectures.4. Individual ism

- Cross-cultural studies - Addresses,essays, lectures. 5. Mauss, Marccl, 1872 l9J0 - Addresses,essays, lectures- t . Ca.r i(hers, Mrchael. I l . ColIns,Stven, l95l- I l l . Lukes, Steven.8F697.C288 te85 302.-5'4 84 21288ISBN 0 521 25909 6 hard coversISBN 0 521 27?57 4 p^p.t5eck

Transfc'red lo digilal printing 200J

1. A category of the human mind: the notion of person; thenotion of slf Marcel Meuss (tanslated by W.D. Halk) 1

2. The category of rhe personr a reading of Mauss's last cssayNJ. Allen 26

3. Categories, concpts or predicaments? Remarks on Mauss'susc of phifosophical terminology Steven Collins

4, Marcel Mauss and rhe quesr for the person in Greekbiography and autobiograph), A. Momigliano

5. A modified view of our origins: the Christian beginnings ofmodern individualism Louis Dumont

6. Person and individual; some anthropological reflectionsJ.S. La Fontaine

46

83

93

123

7. Self: public, private. Some Africao representationsGodfrey Lienhardt

8. Between the earth and heaven: conceprions of the self inChina Mark Elvin

9. Purity and power among the Brahmans of KashmirAlexis Sanderson

10. Of masks and nen Marrin Hollis

1 l. An aftcrnative social history of the self Michacl Carrithers

12. The person Charles Taylor

Concfusion StevenLukes

BibliograpbyIndex

Cofltents

141

1.5 6Preface

'A comprehensive knowledge of the facts is only possible through thecollaboration of numerous specialists. . . . Only nrutual supervisron andpiti less crit icism can yield firm results.'Behind these dry words l ies thepassionate communal spirit with which Marcel Mauss and his colleaguesof the Annde sociologiqae school sought to forge a new understanding ofhuman life. Of all their creations one of the most remarkable was Mauss'slast essay, published in 1938, on the notion o{ self or person. The basiclines of argument had already been sketched by Durkheim forty yearsearlier.

Mauss proposes that our seemingly natural and self-evident concep-tions of our selves, our persons, are in truth artefacts of a lo:rg and variedsocial history stretching back, at least in principle, ro the earliest humancommunities. Other societies have held very different notions of the se)f,and each society's notion is intimately connected with its form of socialorganization. The notion least l ike ours, that of the.character'or,role'(personnage), Mauss finds in ethnographic materials from North Americaand Ausrralia. In such societies each role was in daily l i fe the locus ofdifferent rights, duties, t it les and kinship names withrn the clan, and wason ceremonial occasions vividly exemplif ied by different masks or bodypaint. No general rules applied to'roles'as such apart from the clan, norwere they thought to bear an inner conscience.

A revolution then occurred in ancient Rome, when the ,role' - thc'mask' or persona

- was made the locus of general rights and duties as alegal 'person' and a cit izen of the state. To this moie abstract ,person'was later added the notion of an inner conscience and inner l i fe, chiefly

790

217

234

257

282

302304

Preface

through Christianity. And this notion of person, now bearing both a con-science and a civic idenrity, becrme the foundrtron of modern politicai,rocr l l lnt l legal rnstr tut ions.

This sketch does little justice to Mauss's rich argument, but will armthe reader to face its complexity. Perhaps because of this complexity sub-sequent scholars have conducted l i t t lc 'mutual supervis ion'of i t . We haveattempted in this volume to re-create, albeit under very different crrcum-stances, Mauss's communal enterprise. Each of the authors was asked toaddress himself to Mauss's essay, which is translated he re. Most of them,whether implicidy or explicitly, have addressed each other as well. Andalmost all of them attended and gave a first versin of their paper at aseries of seminars held in May and June 1980, in Volfson College, Ox-ford, to whose Felkrws we are deeply grateful for hospitality and finan-cial assistance at ihar time.

Mauss's essay was given in French as the Huxley Memorial Lecturefor 1938, and appeared under the title'Une Catigorie de I'Esprit Hu-main: La Notion de Personne, Celle de "Moi"' in the Journal of theRoyal Anthropokrgical Institute 58 (1938). (lt was reprinred in Mauss,sSociologie et antbropologie lParis, 19501 - with some printing errors.) Atranslation by Ben Brewster was published in Marcel Mauss: Sorio/ogyand Psychology (London, 1979). The translation by W.D. Halls wascommissioned for this volume with the permission of Routledge and Ke-gan Paul PLC. ln all important passages French terms are given in paren-theses in the text. The following are usual equivalents:

rroi -

(the) selfsoi - (one's) selfPefsonne - pefsonpersonnaliti

- personality

perconnage -

role, character.

The quotation from Mauss that prefaces this volume is taken from theautobiographical sketch presented as part of his app,ication for member-ship of the Collige de France in 1930. It appeared in Reuue Franqaise desociologie 20 (11: 1979. G. Lienhardt's paper originally appeared in thetournal of tbe Anthropological Society of Oxford, 1980. L. Dumont'spaper appeared in Religion 12: 1982, 1-27, and is reproduced here withthe consent of the author, the editor o( Religion, and the publishets, @Academic Press, Inc. (London) Ltd.

NJ, Allen is Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of South Asia at OxfordUniversity.Michael Carrithers is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Durham Uni_verslry.Steven Collins is Lecturer in the Study of Religions at Bristol University.Louis Dumont is Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes enSciences Sociales, paris.Mark Elvin is Lecturer in Chinese History at Oxford Universiw.Martin Hollis is Professor of Philosophy ar the University of East Angtia.J.S. k Fontaine is Professor of Social Anthropology at the tondon Schoolof Economics.Godfrey Lienhardt is Reader in Social Anthropology at Oxford Univer_siry.Steven Lukes is Fellow and Tutor in politics and Sociology at BalliolCollege, Oxford University.A, Momigliano is Alexander White professor in the Humanities at Chi_cago University, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at London Uni_versiiy.Alexis Sanderson is Lecturer in Sanskrit at Oxford University.Charles Taylor is

-Professor of political Science at McGill University.

vl l l

Contributors

A category of the human mind: the notion ofperson; the notion of self

Marcel Mauss(translated by W. D. Halk)

I: The subiectr: the'person' (personne)My audience and readers will have to show great indulgence, for mysubject is rcally enormous, and in these 6fty-6ve minutes I shall be ableonly to give you some idea of how to treat it. It deals with nothing lessthan how to explain to you the way in which one of the categories of thehuman mind - one of those ideas we believe to be innate - originatedand slowly developed over many centuries and through numerous vtcis-situdes, so that even today it is stil l imprecise, delicate and fragile, onercquiring further efaboration. This is the idea of 'persot' (personne), theidea of'self' (moi). Each one of us finds it natural, clearly determined inthe depths of his consciousness, completely furnished with the funda-ments of the morality which flows from it. For this simplistic view of itshistory and present value we must substitute a more precise view,

A note on the principle underlying these kinds of researchIn so doing you will see an example - one that is perhaps not up to whatyou expecred - o[ the work of the French school of sociology. We haveconcentrated most especially on the social history of the categories of thehuman mind. We attempt to explain them one by one, using very simply,and as a temporary expedient, the list of Aristotelian categories2 as ourpoint of departure. We describe particular forms of them in certain crv-ilisations and, by means of this comparison, try to discover in what con-sists their unstable nature, and their reasons for being as they are. lt wastn this way that, by developing the notion of nraza, Hubert and I believedwe had found not only the archaic basis for magic, bur also the very

.iL

M. Mauss

general, and probably very primitive, form of the notion of cause. It wasin this way that Hubert described certain features of the notion of time.Likewise our much regretted colleague, friend and pupil, Czarnowki, be-gan

- but, alas, never finished - his theory of the'parcelling out of ex-

tension', in other words, of one of the features and certain aspects of thenotion of space. Likewis also, my uncle and teacher, Durkheim, hasdealt with the notion of the whole, after we had examined together thenotion of genrs. I have been preparing for many years studies on thenotion of substance. Of these I have published only a very recondite ex-ract which is not worth reading in its present form. I will mention toyou also the numerous times that Lucien L6vy-Bruhl has touched uponthese questions in those works of his which deal with the primitive men-tality, especially, as regards our subject, what he has termed'the primr-tive mind' ('Ame primitiue). He, however, does not concentrate on thestudy of each special category, not even on the one we are going to study.But rather, in reviewing all of them, including the category of'self', doeshe seek particularly to ascertain what element of the'pre-logical'is con-tained in this study of the mentality of peoples, in relation to anthropol-ogy and ethnology rather than history.

lf you will permit me, let us proceed more methodically and restrictourselves to the study of one single category, that of the 'self' (moi) . Thiswill be amply sufficient. [n the present short space of time, I shall conductyou, with some daring and at inordinate speed, across the world andthrough time, guiding you from Australia to our European societies, fromextremely ancient history to that of our own times, More extensive re-search studies could be undertaken, each one of which could be gone intomuch more deeply, but I can only claim to show you how such researchmight be organised. What I intend to do is to provide you with a sum-mary catalogue of the forms that the notion has assumed at various timesand in various places, and to show you how it has ended up by taking onflesh and blood, substance and form, an anatomical structure' right upto modern times, when at last it has become clear and precise in ourcivilisations (in our European ones, almost in our lifetime), but not yetin all of them. I can only rough out the beginnings of the sketch or theclay model. Iam still far from having finished the whole block or carvedthe finished portrait.

Thus I shall not discuss the linguistic problem which, for the sake ofcompleteness, should indeed be tackled' In no way do I maintain thatthere has ever been a tribe, a language, in which the term 'l ', 'me' (le,

A category of the buman mind

moi) \yots will note that we still decline it with two words) has neverexisted, or that it has not expressed something clearly represented. Thisis far from the case: as well as possessing the pronoun, a very Iarge num-ber of languages are conspicuous for their use of many 'positional' suf-6xes, which deal for the most part with the relationships existing in timeand space between the speaker (the sublect) and the object about whichhe is speaking. Here the 'sel(' (moi) is everywhere present, but is notexpressed by'me' (moi) or'l ' (1e). However, in this vast domain of lan-guages my scholarship is only mediocre. My investigation will concernsolely law and morality.

Nor shall I speak to you of psychology, any more than I shall of lin-guistics. I sha ll leave aside everything which relates to the 'self' (moi), theconscious personality as such. Let me merely say that it is plain, particu-larly to us, that there has never existed a human being who has not beenaware, not only of his body, but also at the same time of his individuality,both spiritual and physical. The psychology of this awareness has madeimmense strides over the last century, for almost a hundred years. Allneurologists, French, English and German, among them my teacher Ri-bot, our esteemed colleague Head, and others, have amassed a great dealof knowledge about this subject and the way this particular awareness isformed, functions, deieriorates, deviates and dissolves, and about theconsiderable part it plays.

My subject is entirely different, and independent of this. It is one relat-ing to social history. Over the centuries, in numerous societies, how hasit sfowfy evolved - not the sense of 'self' (moi) - bv the notion or con-cept that men in different ages have formed of it? What I wish to showyou is the succession of forms that this concept has taken on in the lifeof men in different societies, according to their systems of law, religiorr,customs, social structures and mentality.

One thing may alert you to the drift of my exposition: I shall showyou how recent is the word 'sell (moi), used philosophically; how recenr"the category of'self' " (moi), "the cult of the 'sel("' (moi) {its aberra-tron); and how recenr even "the respect of'sel(' " (noi), in particular therespect of others (its normal state).

Let us therefore draw up a classiGcation. Making no claim to reconsti-tute a general history from pre-historical times to the present day, let ushrst study some of the forms assumed by the notion of 'self' (rzoi). Weshall then launch into historical times with the Greeks and work out fromthere some definite linkages. Bcforehand, with no other concern save that

l M. Maussof logic, we will make an excursion into that kind of museum o( facts (ldislike the word 'survivals', when it is used for institutions stil l active anoproliferating) which ethnography affords us.

ff; The 'role' (personnage), and thc place of the 'person'(personnelThe PueblosLet us start with the fact that has been the point of departure for all thisresearch. I borrow it from the Pueblo lndians, the Zuiri

- or more accu-rately from those of the Pueblo of Zufri, so admirably studied by FrankHamilton Cushing (who was fully initiated into the Pueblo), and byMathilda Cox Stevenson and her husband for a great number of years.Their work has been criticised, but I believe it to be reliable and, rn anycase, unique. It is true that there is nothing'very primitive'about things.The'Cities of Cibola'were once converted to Christianity and have pre-served their baptismal registers. Yet, at the same timc they have practisedtheir ancient laws and religions

- almost in the'aboriginal state', if one

may say so: this was roughly that of their predecessors, (he cliff dwellersand the inhabi tants of the'mesa'as far as Mexico. In their mater ia l c iv-ilisation and social constitution they were, and have remained, very com-parable to the Mexicans and to the most civilised Indians of the twoAmericas. 'Mexico, that Pueblo', writes admirably the great L. H. Mor-gan, who was so unfairly treated, and yet the founder of our disciplines.r

The document below is by Frank Hamilton Cushing,a an author muchcriticised, even by his colleagues at the Bureau of American Ethnology.Yet, knowing his published work and having considered very carefullywhat has appeared on the Zuii and the Pueblo in general, strengthencdalso by what I believe I know about a large number of American socie'ties, I persist in considering him one of the bcst portrayers of societies ofal l t ime.

If you will allow me, I will pass over everything concerning the orien-tation and distriburion of the characters (personnages) in the ritual, al-though this has very great importance, to which wc have already drawnattent ion elsewhere. But I cannot omit two points:

The existence of a limited number of forenanes in each clan; and thedefnition of the exact rAte played by eacb one in tbe cdst'list' of theclan, and expressed by that name.

In each clan is to be found a set of names cal led the names of chi ldhood'J'hese names arc more of r ir les than o{ cognomens They are derermrned

A category of the human mind

upon by sociologic and divinisric modes, and are besrowed in childhood asthe'verity names'or t it les of the children to whom given. But this body ofnames relating to any one rotem - for instance, to one of the beast totms- wil l not be the name of the totem beast itself, but wil l be names both ofthe totem in its various conditions and of various parts of the rotem, or ofits functions, or of its atrributes, actual or mythical. Now these parts o{functions. or attributes of the parts or functions, are subdivided also in asix-fold manner, so that the name relating to one member of the totem -for example, l ike the right arm or leg of the animal thereof - would cor-respond ro the north, and would be the 6rst in honor in a clan (not irselfof the notthern group); then the name relating to another member

- say

to the left leg or arm and its powers, etc. -

would pertain to the west andwould be second in honor; and anoiher member - say the right {oot - tothe south and would be third in honor; and of anorher member - say theleft foor - to the cast and would be fourth in honor; to another - say rhehead - to the upper regions and would be 6fth in honor; and another -say the tail - to the lower region and would be sixth in honot; while rheheart or the navel and center of the being would be first as well as last inhonor. The studies of Major Powell among the Maskoki and orher tribeshave made it very clear rhat kinship terms, so called, among other Indiantribes (and rhe rule wil l apply no lcss or perhaps even more strictly to theZunis) are rather devices for determining relative rank or authority as srg-ni6ed by relarive age, as elder or younger, of the person addressed or spo-ken of by rhe rerm of relarionship. So rhat it is quire impossible for a Zunispeaking to another (o say simply brorher; it is always necessary to sayelder brother or younger brother, by which the speaker himself affirms nrsrclative age or rank; also it is customary for one clansman to address an-other clansman by rhe same kinship name of brother-elder or brother-younger, uncle or nephew, erc.; but according as rhe cian of the one ad-dressed ranks higher ot lower than the clan of the one using the term ofaddress, the word-symbol for elder or younger relationship must be used.

With such a system of arrangement as all this may be seen to be, wirhsuch a facile device for symbolizing the arrangement (not only accordingto number of the regions and theit subdivisions in their relative successronand the succession of their elements and seasons, but also in colours ar-tributed to them, etc.) and, 6nally, with such an arrangement of namescorrespondingly classi6ed and of terms of relationship signi6cant of rankrather then of consanBuinal connection, mistake in the order of a ceremon-lal, a proccssion or a council is simply impossible. and the people employ-ing such devices may bc said to have written and to be writ ing their sraruresand laws in all their darly relarronships and unerancet.

Thus, on the one hand, the clan is conceiyed of as being made up of acertuin number of persons, in reality of.characters' lpersonnageil. On:he other hand, the role of all of them is really to ac out, each iisofar asIt concerns him, the prefigured totality of the l ife of the clan.

M. Mauss

So much for persons and the clan. The' f raterni t ies 'are even morecomplicated. Among the Puebio of Zufri, and clearly among the oiherstoo - the Pueblos of 5ia and Tusayan, in the Hopi tribe, those of Walpiand Mishongnovi - the names do not merely correspond to the organi-sation of the clan, its processions and ceremonies, whcther private orpublic. They correspond principally to ranks in the fraternities, in whatthe original terminology of Powell and the Bureau of American Ethnol-ogy designated'Fraternities', viz.,'Secret Societies', which we might veryexactly compare to the Colleges of the Roman Religion. There were prep-arations in secret, and numerous solemn rituals reserved for the Societyof the Men (Kaka or Koko, Koyemshi, etc.), but also public demonstra-dons - almost theatrical performances - and, especially at Zurii, andabove all among the Hopi, mask dances, particularly those of the Katch-ina. These were visits of spirits, represented by their delegates upon earth,who bore their titles. All this, whicb has now become a spectacle fortourists, was stil l very much alive less than fifty years ago, and is so eventoday.

Miss B. Freire Marecco (now Mrs Aitken) and Mrs E. Clew Parsonscontinue to add to our knowledge and to corroborate it.

Moreover, let us add that these lives of individuals, the driving forceof clans and of the societies superimposed upon them, not only susrainthe life of things and of the gods, but the 'propriety' of things. They notonly sustain the life of men, both here and in the after-life, but also therebirth of individuals (men), sole heirs of those that bear their forenames(the reincarnation of women is a completely different matter). Thus, inshort, you will understand that with the Pueblo we already see a notronof the 'person' (personne) or individual, absorbed in his clan, but alreadydetached from it in the ceremonial by the mask, his title, his rank, hisrole, his survival and his reappearance on earth in one of his descendantsendowed with the same status, forenames, tides, rights and functions.

The American North-W estIf I had time, another group of American tribes would well deserve inthis study a detailed analysis of the same facts. These are the tribes of theAmcrican North-West

- and it is to the greal credit of your Royal An-

thropological Institute and the British Association to have instigated acomplete analysis of thcir institutions. This was begun by Dawson, thegreat geologist, and so magnificendy continued, if not completed, by thegreat works of Boas and his Indian assistants, Hunt and Tate' and bythose of Sapir, Swanton and Barbeau, etc.

/, categorY of the buman mind

Here also is posed, in different terms but ones identical in nature rnd

function, the same problem - thai of the name, the social position and

the legal and religious'birthright'of every free man, and even more so,of every noble and Prince'

I shall take as a startinS-point the best known of these important so-cieties, the Kwakiud, and confine myself only to some broad facts'

One word of caution: iust as with the Pueblos, so also with the Indtansof the North-Vest, we must not think of anything in any way primitive'Firstly, one section of these Indians, in fact those in the North, the Tlingitand Haida, speak languages which according to Sapir are tonal languagesrelated to those derived from a root which it has been agreed to callproto-Sino-Tibetan-Burman. And even, if I may tell you of one of myimpressions as an ethnograPher - if not an 'armchair' one' at least a'museum' one - I have a very strong recollection of a display exhibitconcerning the Kwakiutl, the work of the esteemed Putnam, one of thefounders of the ethnological section of the American Museum of NaturalHistory. lt was a very large ceremonial boat, with figures life-size, withall their religious and legal paraphernalia, which represented the Ha-matse, the cannibal ptinces, arriving from the sea to carry out a ritual -doubtless a marriage. With their very rich robes, their crowns of redcedar bark, their crewmen less surnptuously attired but nonetheless ma8-nificent, they gave me an exact impression of what, for example, North-ern China in the very remote past might have looked like. I believe thatthis boat, with its somewhat romanticised repressntations, is no longerexhibited; it is no longer the fashion in our ethnographic museums. Nomafter, for at last this one had had its effect upon me. Even the Indianfaces vividly recalled to me th (aces o( the 'Paleo-Asiatics' (so calledbecause we do not know under what to classify their languages). And,from this point in civilisation and of settlement, we have stil l to reckonwith many long and varied developments, revolutions and new forma-tions that our esteemed colleague, Franz Boas, perhaps witlr undue haste,is attempting to trace back.

The fact remains that all these Indians, and in particular the Kwakiutl,installed in their settlements a whole social and religious system where,in a vast exchange of rights, goods and services, property, dances, cere-honies, privileges and ranks, persons as well as groups give satisfactionto one another. We see very clearly how, from classes and clans, 'humanpersons' adiust to one another and how, frorn these, the gestures of theactors in a drama fit together. Here a// the actors are theoretically thesum total o( all kee men. But this time the drama is more than an acs-

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E M. Mauss

thetic performance. lr is religious, and at the sarhe time it is cosmic, myth-ological, social and personal.

Firstly, as with the Zuii, every individual in each clan has a name,even two names, for each season, one profane (summer) (WiXsa), andone sacred (winter) (LaXsa). These names are distributed between thevar ious fami l ies, the'Secret Societ ies 'and the clans cooperat ing in therrtuals, occasions when chiefs and families confront each other in innu-merabfe and interminable potlatch,5 about which t have attempted else-where to give some idea, Each clan has two complere sers of its propernames, or rather its forenames, the one commonly known. the other se_cret, but which itself is not simple. This is because the forename, actuallyof the noble, changes with his age and the functions he ful6ls as a con-sequence of that age.6 As is said in an oration, made, it is true, about theclan of the Eagles, i.e. about a kind of privileged group among privilegedclans:

For that they do not change their names starts from (the time) when longago // O' maxtldlala., the ancestor of the numaym C ig i lgam of rhe /Qlornoye'ya, made the seats of the Eagles; and rhose went dorrn tu t. Inumayms. And the name-keeper Vilts.srala says, / 'Now our chiefs havebeen given everyrhing, and I wil l go righr down (according ro the order ofrank).' / Thus he says, when he gives our rhe properry; for I ivi l l jusi ranJethe names // of one of the head chiefs of rhe numavms of the / Kwakiutltr ibes. They never change their names from the beginning, / when the firsthuman beings existed in the world; for names can not go out / of the familyof the head chiefs of rhe numayms, only to the eldest one / of the childtenof the head chief. //7

What is at stake in all this is thus more than the presrige and the au-thority of the chief and the clan. lt is rhe very existence of both of theseand of the anccstors reincarnated in their rightful successors, who liveagain in the bodies of those who bear their names, whose perpetuation isassured by the ritual in each of its phases. The perpetuation of things andspirits is only guaranteed by the perpetuating of the names of individuals,of persons. These last only act in their t itular capacity and, conversely,are responsible for their whole clan, their families and their tribes. Forinstance, from conquest in war are acquired: a rank, a power, a religiousand aesthetic function, dancing and demoniacal possesstorr, parapherxa-/ia, and copper objects in the form of buckler shields - rc^l crotan sh^pesin copper, important currency for prcsent and fluture potlotch: it suffcesto kil l the one possessing them, or to seize from him one of the trappingsof ritual, robes or masks, so as to inberit his names, his goods, his obli-

A category of the buman mind 9

gations, his ancestors, his 'person' (personne), in the fullest sense o( theword.8 ln this way ranks, goods, personal rights, and things, as well asrhrir parricular spirit, are acquired.

Ttris huge masquerade in its entirety, this whole drama, this compli-cated ballet of ecstatic states, concerns as much the Past as the future,becomes a test for its performer, and proof of the presence within him ofthe naualaku, an elemenr of an impersonal force, or of th ancestor, orof the pcrsonal god, in any case of the superhuman power, spiritual andukimate. The potlatch o( victocy, of the copper won by conquest, corre-spond to the impeccable dance, to a successful state of possession.

There is no time left to develop all these subiects. Almost from ananecdotal viewpoint, I would like to draw your attention to an institu-don, an object commonly found from the Nootka right up to the Tlingitof North Alaska. This is the use of those remarkable shutter masks, whichare double and even triple, which open up to reveal the two or threecreatures (totems placed one upon the other) personified by the wearerof the mask.e You can see some very fine examples of them in the BritishMuseum. And all those celebrated totem poles, those soapstone pipes,etc., all those objects which haye become rubbishy goods designed forthe tourists brought there by train or on cruises - all these may be ana-lysed in the same way. A pipe I believe to be Haida in origin, one towhich I have hardly given any attention, in point of fact represents ayoung initiate in his pointed headdress, presented by his spirit father,likewise behatted, bearing the grampus. Beneath the one initiated, to whomthey are subordinate in descending order: a frog

- doubtless his mother- and a crow, doubdess his maternal srandfather.

We shall not deal with the very iiportant case of change of nameduring a lifetime

- panicularly that o[ a noble. It would entarl exDound-ing a whole succession of curious facts regarding substitution: the son, amlnor, ls temporarily represented by his father, who assumes provision-ally the spirit of the deceased grandfather. Here also we would need toset out a complete proof of the presence among the Kwakiutl of dualutenne and male descent, and of the system of alternate and displacedgenerations,

Moreover, it is very remarkable that among the Kwakiutl (and theirnearest kin, rhe Heiltsuk, the Bellacoola, etc.) every stage of life is named,personified by a fresh name, a fresh tide, whether as a child. an adoles-cent or an adult, both male and female. Thus one mav Dossess a name asa warrior (naturally this does not apply to women).

"s " prin.. o, p.in-

cess' as a chief or a female chieftain. There is a name for the feast that

M. Mauss / category of the human mind I I

of'l ightning, Streak-of-lightning, Walks-in-the-clouds, He-who-has'long-wings, Strikes-the-trec.

N-ow thc thunderbirds come with terriblc thunder-crashes' Everythingon earth, animals, plants everythinS, is deluged with rain Terrible thunder-crashes resound everywhere, From all this a name is derived and that is myname - Crashing-Thunder.12

Each one of the names of the thunder birds which divide up the differ-

ent clcments of the thunder totem is that of ancestors who are perpetuallyaainarrn","d. (We even have a story of two reincarnations' )l I The menwho rein.arn"t. them are intermediaries between the totemic animal and

the protecting sPirit, and the things emblazoned and the rites- of the clano, of ,h. great 'medicines'. All these names and bequeathals of'roles'bersonnalitis) arc determined by revelations whose limits, indicated byir,is grandmother or the eldets, are known to the beneficiary beforchand'Ve discover, if not the same facts, at least the same kind of facts, almosteverywhere in America. We could continue this exPosition for the worldof the lroquois and the Algonquin, tc.

AustraliaIt is preferable ro revert for a moment to more summary and more prim-itive facts, Two or three items concern Australia.

Hcre also the clan is in no way conceived to be entirely reduced to animpersonal, collective being, the totem, represented by the animal speciesand not by individuals

- on the one hand men, on the othcr, animals.ra

Under its human aspect ir is the fruit of the reincarnation of spirits thathave migrated and are perpetually being reborn in the clan. (This is truefor the Arunta, the Loritja and the Kakadu, ctc.) Even among the Aruntaand the Loritja, these spirits are reincarnated with very great precision atthe third generation (grandfather-grandson) and at the fifth, wheregrandfather and great-great-grandson are homonyms. Here again it is thefruit of utrine descent crossed with male descent. We can, for example,study in the disrribution of names by individuals, clans and exact matri-monial category @ight Arunta categories) the relationship of these namesto the cternaf anccstors, to the ratdpa, in the form the), take at thc mo-|nnt of conception, in the foetus and in the children that they bring tothe light of dav, and between the names of these ratapd and those ofadults (which aie, in particular, those of the functions fulElled at clanand tribal ceremonies).r5 The art underlying all these kinds of distribu-hon is not only to arrive ar religion, but also to define the position of thetndividual in the righrs he enjoys and his place in the tribe, as in its rites.

10

men and women give, and for the particular ceremonial that belongs tothem, for their age of retiremenr, their name in the society of seals (thoseretired: no states of ecstacy or possession, no responsibilities, no gair's,save those arising from past memories) Finally is named lbeir'secretsociety', in which they are protagonists (a bear - frequent among women'who are represented in it by their menfolk or their sons - wolves, Ha-matse lcannibalsl, etc.). Names are also given to: the chief's house, withits roofs, posts, doors, ornamentation, beams, openings, double-headedand doubie-faced snake, the ceremonial boat, the dogs' To the lists setout in the Ethnology of tbe Kuahiutllo it must be added that the dishes,the (orks, the copper obiects, everything is emblazoned, endowed withf ife, forming part of rhe petsonrt of the owner and of the familia' of rheres of his clan.

We have singted out the Kwakiutl, and in general the peoples of theNorth-West, because they really do represent the extremes, an excessive-ness which allows us better to perceive the facts than in those placeswhere, although no less essential, they stil l remain small-scale and invo-luted. Yet *e

-urt ,nde.rt"nd that a large part of the Americans of the

prairies, in Particular the Sioux, possess institutions of this kind Thusih. Winn.brgo, who have been studied by our colleague Radin' have inpoint of fact these successions of forenames, whrch are determined by.l"nr rnd families, who distribute them according to a certain order' butalways following precisely a kind o( logical distribution of attributcs orpo*.r, ,nd natrires,rl founded upon the myth of the origin of the clan'and legitimating the right of some Person or another to assume the role'

B.lo'* i, an J*".pli of this orilin of the names of individuals which

Radin gives in detail in his model autobiography o( Ctashing Thundet:Now in our clan whenever a child was to be named it was my father whodid ir. Thar right he now rransmitted to my brother'

Earthmakei in the beginning, sent fou' men from rbove.and.when rhey."-. io thi,

""nh .ue.yti ing thlt h"ppened to them was uril ized rn making

p.op., n".".. This is whai ou' f ' th"' tol

12 M. Mauss

Moreover, if, for reasons that will immediately become apparent, Ihave spoken especially about societies with permanent masks (Z-uni,Kwakiutl), we must not forgrt that in Australia, as elsewhere, temporarymasquerades are simply ceremonies with masks that are not permanent.ln these men fashion for themselves a superimposed 'personality' (per-sonnaliti), a true one in the case of ritual, a feigned one in the case ofplay-acting. Yet, as berween the painting of the head and frequently ofthe body, and the wearing of a robe and a mask, rhere is only a differencein degree, and none in function. ln both cases all has ended in the enrap-tured representation of the ancestor.

lifhat is more, the presence or absence of the mask are more distin-guishing marks of a social, historical and cultural arbitrariness, so rospeak, than basic traits. Thus the Kiwai, the Papuans of the lsle of Kiwai,possess admirable masks, even rivalling those of the Tlingit of NorthAmerica, whilst their not very distant neighbours, the Marind-Anim, havescarcely more than one sizgle mask, which is entirely simple, but enjoyadmirable celebrations of fraternities and clans, of people decorated fromtop to toe, unrecognizable because of their adornment.

l-et us conclude this 6rst part of our demonstration. Plainly what emergesfrom it is that a whole immense group of societies have arrived at thenotion of'role' (person4age), of the rolc played by the individual in sa-cred dramas, just as he plays a role in family life. The function had al-ready created the formula in very primitive societies and subsists in socr-eties at the present day. lnstiturions like that of the'retired', seals of theKwakiutl, usages like that of the Arunta, who relegate to the people ofno consequence he who can no longer dance, 'he who has lost his Ka-bara', are entirely typical.

Another aspect which I am still somewhat ignoring is that of the notionof the reincarnation of a number of spirits that bear names in a determt-nat number, into the bodies of a determinate number of individuals.Nevertheless, B. and C. G. Seligman have rightly published the papers ofDeacon, who had observed the phenomenon in Melanesia, Rattray hadseeD it among the Ashanti Ntoro.r6 I should like to state to you that M'Maupoil has found in this one of the most important elements in the cultof the Fa (Dahomey and Nigeria). All this, however, I am omitting.

Let us move on from the notion o('role' (personnage) to the notion of'person' (personne) and of'self' (moi).

A category of the human mind 13

J1I: Thc Latin 'Persona'you alf know how normal and classical is the notion of the l.atin per-sot4.. a mask, a tragic mask, a ritual mask, and the ancestral mask. Itdates back to the beginnings of Latin civilisation.

I have to show you how indeed the notion has become one shared alsoby us. The space, the time and the differences that separate that orrgrnfrom this terminal point are considerable. Evolutions and revolutions pileup upon one another, this time in history, according to precise dates, forcauses, plain to see, which we are about to describe. In one place thiscategory of the mind has wavered, in another it has set down deep toots.

Even among the very great and ancient societies which first becameconscious of it, two of them, so to speak, invented it, only to allow it toIade away almost irrevocably. All this occurred in the last centuries B.C.The examples are edifying: they concern Brahmanic and Buddhist India,and ancient China.

lndialndia appears to me indeed to haye been the most ancienr of civilisationsaware of the notion of the individual, of his consciousness

- mav I sav.of the'sel f ' (moi) . Ahamhara, the "creat ion of the'1. ' ' ( leJ, is the nameofthe individual consciousnessl aham equals'l ' ( ie): lt is the same Indo-European word as 'ego'. The word ahamkara is clearly a technical word,invented by some school of wise seers, risen above all psychological illu-sions. The sarzA}ya, the school which in point of fact musr have precededBuddhism, maintains the composite characer of things and minds$Aryhbya actually means 'composition'). esteeming that ihe .self' (zoi)h.the illusory thing. For irs part, Buddhism. rn a 6.st phase of irs history,laid down that it was a mere composite, capable of division and of beingresolvabfe into the s kandha, and solg)tt after its annihilation in the monk.-

The great Brahmanic schools of the Upanishads - assuredly predatingthe siukhya itself, as well as the two orthodox forms of the Vedantawhich follow them

- all start from the maxim of the ,seers, (uoyants),

right up. to the dialogue of Vishnu in the Bhagavad Grta demonstratingthc truth to Ariuna: tat tuam asi, which corresponds almost word forword to the English,'that thou art' (the uniuerse;. Even the later Vedicntuel and the commentaries upon it were already imbued with these me-taPhysics.

China

l:o.ut Clrina I know only what Marcel Granet, my colleague and friend,rras becn kind enough to in{orm me. Even today nowhe.e iJ more accounr

14 M' Mattss

raken of the indiv idual . and parr icul : r ly of h is social status' nowhere is

he more rigorously categorizcd. Vhat G.anet\ admirable studies revealto us about ancient Uhina rs the strength and grandeur of institutionscomparable to those of the American Nlnh-Wes"t. Birth-order, rank and

the interplay of the social classes settle the names and life style of the

individual, hir'{r.. ', as is stil l said, in terms that we are also beginningto.rnploy. His individualiry is his rrirg, his name. China has preservedthere arcitai. notions, yet at the same time has removed from individu-ality every trace of irs being eternal and indissoluhle The name' the rzizE',.praran,a a collective noun, something springing from elscwhere: one'scorr.sponding ancestor bore it',ust as it will fall to the descendant of itspr.r.n, b""r.i. Whenever they have philosophized about it '. whenever in

ccrtain metaphysical schools they have attemptcd to explain what it is'

they have r"id of,h. individual that he is a composite, made up of sben

^ni kwei - two other collective nouns - in this life' Taoism and Bud-

dhism also went down this road, and the notion of the'person'(per-sorre) ceased to evolve

Other nations have known or adoPted ideas of the same kind' Thosewho have made of the human person a comPlete entity' independenr o{all orhers save God, are rare.

The most important were the Romans' In our view it was thele' (n

Rome, that this lafter idea was worked out'

IY: The 'pcrsona'ln contrast to the Hindus and the Chinese' the Romans' or perhaps rather

the Latins, seem to be the people who in part established the notion of

'petson' (personne), the designation for which has remained precisely theiatin word, From the very outset w ar transPorted into the same sys-

tems of facts as those mentioned before, but already in a new form: the

'yrson' (personne) is more than an organisational fact' more than a nameJr

"

,igfti to assume a role and a ritual mask' It is a basic fact of law' In

law, alcording to the legal exPerts' there are only personae' res and ac'

ilo*rr thi, pi;nciple stil l regulates the divisions beween our codes of

law. Yet this outcome is the result of particular evolution in Rom-an law'

Somewhat rashly, this is the way I can envisage this state ot altarrs to

hau. arisen.tt lt does seem that the original meaning of rhe word was

exclusiuely that of 'mask'. Naturally the explanation of Latin erymolo-

giri., .hr,'p"rroro, coming from p'''t'o'o'."' i" rhe mask tnt:".qt *f::l

i l"r) ,.rounds th. voice (of the actor) is a derivation invenred atterwero'I

"flrt""-i *e do distingulsh betvveen persona and persona muta' the

A category of the human mind 15

silent role in drama and mime. In reality the word does not even seem tobe from a sound Latin root. It is believed to be of Etruscan origin, likeother nouns ending in '-na' (Porsenna, Caecina, etc.) Meillet and Er-nottt's Dictionnaire Etymologique comPares it to a word, fatsu, handeddown in garbled form, and M. Benveniste informs me that it may comefrom a Greek borrowing made by the Etruscans, zp6o

i16 M. Mauss

study of other Roman collegia would permit other hypotheses. All in all,Samnites, Etruscans and Latins stil l l ived in an environment we have;ustfeft, from personae, masks and names, and individual rights to ritualsand privileges.

From this to the notion of'person' (personne) but a single step needsto be taken. It was perhaps not taken immediately. I imagine that legendslike that of the consul Brutus and his sons and the end of rhe right of thepater to kill h is sons, his sai, signify th e acquisition of the persona by thesons, even while their father was stil l alive. I believe that the revolt of thePlebs, the right to full citizenship that, following upon rhe sons of sena-torial families, was gaind by all the plebeian members of the gentes, wasdecisive. All freemen of Rome were Roman citizens, all had a civil per-sotta; some became religious person.le; some masks, names and rrtuatsremained attached to some privileged families of the religious collegia.

Yet another custom arrived at the same 6nal state: that of forenames,surnames and pseudonyms (nicknames). The Roman citizen had a rightto the nomen, the praenomen and the cognomen that his gens assignedto him. A forename, for example, might signify the birth-order of theancestor who bore it: Primus, Secundus. The sacred name

- nomen, nu-

men - of the gens; the cognomen, the pseudonym (nickname) - not sur-name

- such as Naso. Cicero, erc.20 A senatus-consultus decision deter-mined (clearly there must have been some abuses) that one had no rightto borrow and adorn oneself with ariy other forename of any other 8?rsthan one's own. The cognomen followed a different historical course: itended by confusin g cognomefl, the pseudonym that one might bear, withimago, the wax mask moulded upon the face, the np6vonrov o( the deadancestor kept in the wings of the aula of the (amily house. For a longtime the use of these masks and statues must have been reserved for pl-trician families, and in fact, even more so than in law, it does not appearto have spread vety widely among the plebeians. It is rather usurpers.rndforeigners who ad opt cognomina which did not belong to thcm. The verywords cognomen and imago are, in a manner of speaking, indissolublylinked in formulas that were almost in current ose. I give below one otthe facts

- in my view typical - which was my starting point for all this

resarch, one whrch | found without even looking for it. It concerns adoubtful individual, Staienus, against whom Ciceto is pleading on behalfof Cluentius. This is the scene. Tum appelat hilari uultu horninefl Btll-bus, ut placidissime potest. "Quid tu, inquit, Pdetea" Hoc enin sibi Sbiettuscognotflen ex imaginibus Aeliorum delegerat ne sese Ligurem fecisset,

A category of the human mind r7

nattoflts ntagts quan generis uti cognomine uideretur.2l paetus is a rog_nomen of the Aelii, to which Staienus, a Ligurian, had no right, andwhich he usurped in order to conceal his nationality and to make believethat he was of an ancesry other than his own. Usurpation of .person,(personne), 6ctitiousness of ,person' (personne), tide and af6liatron.

One of the finest documents, and among the most authentic, signed inthe bronze by Claudius the emperor (iust as the Tables of Ancyre o{Augustus haye come down to us), the Table of Lyons (4g A.o.) conrarn-ing the imperial oration on the senatorial decision de Jure honorum Gal_lis dando, concedes to the young Gaulish senarors freihly admined to theCuria the right to the imagines and cognomina of their ancestors. Nowthey will have nothing more to regret. Such as persicus, ,my dear friend,(who had been obliged to choose this foreign pseudonym Inickname].,. . lacking this senatorial decision) and who can now intet ,magmesmalorum suorum Allobrogici nomen legere (,choose his narne of Allo-brogicus among the "images" of his ancestors.).

To the very end the Roman Senate thought of itself as being made upof a determinate number of palres representing the .p ersons, (personnesl,the 'images' of their ancestors.

It is to the pelsoza that is attribured the property of th e simulacra andthe imagines.22

Afong with them the word persona, an artificial ,charaslsr, 1psrcsn_nage), the mask and role of comedy and tragedy, of trickery and hypoc_rlsy

- a stranger to the'self' 1,rzor) _ continued on its way. yet rhe per-

sonal nature of the law had been established,zr and per:sond had alsobecome synonymous with the true nature of the individual.2a.

Moreover, the right to the pelsona had been established. Only the slavets excfuded from it. Seryas non habet personazr. He has no ,pcrsonality,(personnalitd). He does not own his body, nor has he ,n..r,o.r. nu_..:ognome , .or personal be longings. Old Germanic law still distinguishedhrm from the freemrn, the Leibeigen, rhe owner of his body. But at thetime when the laws of the Saxons and Swabians *.r. dr"*n up, if theserfs did nor possess their body, they already had a soul, *hi.h Ch.is-ttanity had given them..But before turning to Christianity, we must trace hack another scrurceof enrichment, in which not oniy the Latins participated, iui'rtro ,t,.i,Greek collaborators, their teachers and interprete.s. With Greek philos-ophers, and Roman nobles and legal .*p.r,, i, i,

"ltng.th., " Jiff.rrntedifice that is erected.

11

18 M. Mauss

V: The'person' (personne): a moral factLet me make myself plain: I think that this effort. this step forward, cameabout above all with the help of rhe Stoics. whose voluntarist and per-sonal ethics were able to enrich the Roman notion of the,oerson'(per-sonne), and was even enriched itself whilsr enrichins the law.2t I believe,but unfortunately can only begrn ro prove ir. thaithe influence of theSchools of Athens and Rhodes on the developmenr of Latin moral rhink-ing cannot be exaggerated, and, conversely, the influence of Roman ac-tions and of the educational needs of young Romans on the Greek think-ers. Polybius and Cicero already attest to this, as do later Seneca, MarcusAurelius and others.

The word Tp6o@fiov did indeed have the same meaning as percona, amask. But it can then also signify the 'personaBe' (personnage) thar eachindividual is and desires to be, his character (the two words are oftenlinked), the true face. From the second century B.C. onwards it very quicklyassumes the meaningof persona. T ranslating exactly an d legally persona,it stil l retains the meaning of a superimposed image; for example, in thecase of the 6gure at the prow of a boat (among the Clts, etc.). But it alsosignifies the human, even divine, 'personality' (personnaliti). k all de-pends upon the context. The word rp6oarov is extended to the individ-ual, with his nature laid bare and every mask torn away, and, neverthe-less, there is retained the scnse of the artificial: the sense of what is theinnermost nature of this 'person' (personne), and the sense o( what is the'rof e-pf ayer' ( pe rsonnage ).

Everything about the classical Latin and Greek Moralists (200 n.c. to400 a.r.) has a different ring to it. rp6oarov rs no longet anly a percona,and

- a matter of capital importance - to its juridical meaning is more-ovcr added a moral one, a sense of being conscious, independent, auton-omous, free and responsible. Moral conscience introduces consciousnessinto the juridical conception of law. To functions, honours, obligationsand rights is added the conscious moral 'person' (personne).In thrs re-spcct I am perhaps more venturesome, and yet more clear-cut than M.Brunschvicg, who, in his great work, Le Progris de la Conscience, hasoften touched upon these matters.26 For me the words designating 6rstconsciousness rnd then psychological consciousness, the ovvi6\o.s-7i)ouvet 66s are really Stoic, seem technical and clearly translate cozscias,conscientia in Roman law. We may eyen perceive, between the early phaseof Stoicism and that of the Greco-Latin era, the progress and changesdefinitevely accomplished by the age of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.In one of the original meanings of accomplice, 'he who has seen with

one', o'itvoe6e, as a witness, we have passed to the meaning of the ,con-sciousness of good and evil'. In current use in Latin, the word finallytakes on this meaning with rhe Greeks, with Diodorus of Sicily, Lucianand Dionysus o( Halycarnassus, and self-conscious ness (conscience desor) has become the attribute of the moral person. Epictetus stil l keepsthe maning of the two images which this civilisarion had worked on,when he writes u'bat Marcus Aurelius guotes, 'carve out your mask', puton your 'role' (personnage), your 'type', your 'character', when he sug-gested to him what has become with us the examination of conscience.Renan saw the importance of rhis moment in the life of the Mind.27

But the notion o f 'person' (personne) stil l Iacked a ny sure metaphysicalfoundation. fiis foundation it owes to Christianity.

M: The Christian 'person' (pcrsonne)It is Christians who have made a metaphysical entity of the .moral per-son' (personne monle), after they became aware of its religious power.Our own norion of rhe human person is stil l basically the Christian one.Here I need only follow the excellent book of Schlossman.zs He clearlysaw - after orhers, but better than they did

- the rransirion from the

notion of persona, of 'a man clad in a condition', to the notion of man,quite simply, that of the human 'pcrson' (personne).

Moreover, the notion of a'moral person'had become so clear that,from the very beginning of our era, and even earlier at Rome andthroughout rhe Empire, it was applied ro all non-real .personalities'(per-sonnalitis)

- what we still call by the term.moral persons'(.legal enti-

ties'): corporations, religious foundations, etc., which have become.per-sons' (personnes). The word rp6o

I20 LL Mauss

physite dispute, which continued for a long while to exercise men's mrndsand which the Church resolved b', taking refuge in the divine mystery,although however with decisive firmness and clarity: Unitas in tres per'sonas, unL persona in duas naturas, the Council of Nicea pronounceddefinitively. Unity of the three persons - of the Triniry - unity of the twonatures of Christ. It is from the notion of the 'one' that the notion of the'person' (personne) was created - | believe that it will long remain so -for the divine persons, but at the same time for the human person, sub-stance and mode. body and soul, consciousness and act.ll

I shall not comment further, or prolong this theological study. Cassio-dorus ended by saying very precisely: persona - substontia ntiotalis in-ditidua (Psalmum VII). The person is a rational substance, indivisibleand individual.32

It remained to make of this rational, individual substance what it istoday, a consciousness and a category,

This was the work of a long study by philosophers, which I have onlya few minutes left to describe.r3

MI: The'pcrson' (personne); a psychological beingHere t hope I may be forgiven if, summarising a cerrain amount of per-sonal research and countless views the history of which might be tracedback, I put forward more ideas than proofs.

However, the notion of the'pcrson' (personne) was stil l to undergo afurther transformation to become what it has become over less than oneand a half centuries, the "category oI 'self' " (moi)' Far from existing asthe primordial innate idea, clearly engraved since Adam in the innermostdepths of our being, it continues here slowly, and almost right up to ourown time, to be built upon, to be made clearer and more speci6c, becom-ing identified with self-knowledge and the psychological consciousness.

All the long labours of the Church, of churches and theologians, of theScholastic philosophers and the Renaissance philosophers - disturbed bythe Reformation - even brought about some delay, setting uP some ob-stacles to the creation of the idea that tbis time we believe to be clear. Upto the seventeenth and even up to the end of the eighteenth century' theftentrlity of out ancestors is obsessed with the question of knowrngwhether the individual soul is a substance, or supported by a substance:whether it is the nature of man, or whether it is only one of the twonatures of mani whether it is one and indivisible, or divisible and sepa-rable: whether it is free. the absolute source of all action, or whether rt isdetermined, fcttered by other destinies, by predestination Anxiouslv they

A category of the humdn mind Z,l

wonder whence it came, who created it and who directs it. And in thearguments between sects, betwcen coteries in both the great instirurionsof the Church and in the philosophical schools, we do iardly any betterthan the results achieved in the fourth century A.D. Fortunately the Coun_cil of Trent put a stop to futile polemics regarding the personal creationof each individual soul.

Moreover, when we speak of the precise funcrions of the soul it is tothought, thought that is discursive, clear an,j deductive, that the Renais_sance and Descartes address themselves in order to rlnde.stand thelr na_ture. Ir is thought that contains rhe revolutionary Cogito eryo sum; rnr"it is thatconstitutes Spinoza,s opposition of the .extension, t"o .thought,.

Even Spinozara contiDued to hold precisely the idea of Antiqurty re-garding the immortality of the soul. We know that he does not believe inthe survival alter death of any part of the soul other than that which isimbued with 'the intellectual love of God'. Basically he was reiteratrngMaimonides, who was repeating Aristotle (De Anima, 40g,5; cf . 4J0 a;Ceneration of Animals, rrans. A.L. peck ll943J, Heinemann lLondonJand Harvard University press, Il, 3, p.736 b). Only the noetic soul canbe eternal, since the other two souls, the vegetative and the sens

22 M. lvlauss

ness', 'perceptions'. Yet he ended up by hcsitatine when faced with thenotion of 'sel(' (moif6 as the basic i"t.go.y of .o-nrciousnert. The Scotsadapted hrs ideas better.

Only with Kant does it take on precise form. Kant was a Pietist, afollower of Swedenborg, the pupil of Tetens, a feeble philosopher but awell-informed psychologist and theologian. He found the indivisible'self'(moi) all around him. Kant posed the qucstion, but did not resolve it,whether the 'sel|' (moi), das lch, s a caregory.

The one who finally gave the answer that every act of consciousnesswas an act of the'self' (moi), the one who founded all science and allaction on the 'self' (zoi), was Fichte. Kant had already made o( the in-dividual consciousness, the sacred character of the human person, thecondition for Practical Reason. It was FichterT who made of it as well thecategory of the 'self' (moi), the condition of consciousness and of science,of Pure Reason.

From that time onwards the revolution in mentalities was accom-plished. Each of us has our 'self' (moi), an echo of the Declaration of theRights of Man, which had predated both Kant and Fichte.

VIIL ConclusionFrom a simple masquerade ao the mask, from a'role' (personnage) to a'person'(personne,), to a name, to an individual; from the latter to abeing possessing metaphysical and moral value; from a moral conscious-ness to a sacred being; from the latter to a fundamental form of thoughtand action - the course is accomplished.

Who knows what progress the Understanding will yet make on thismatter? We do not know what light will be thrown on these recent Prob-lems by psychology and sociology, both already well advanced, but whichmust be ur&ed on even more,

Who knows even whether this'category', which all of us here believeto be well founded, will always be recognised as such? It is formulatedonly for us, among us. Even its moral strength - the sacred character ofthe human 'persoa' (personne) - is questioned, not only throughout theOrient, which has not yet attained the level o( our sciences, but even inthe countries where this principle was discovered. We have great posses-sions to defend. With us the idea could disappear. But let us refrain frommoralising.

Yet do not let us speculate too much. Let us say that social anthroPol-ogy, sociology, history - all teach us to perceive how human thought'riou., on' (Meyerson). Slowly does it succeed in expressing itsilf, through

t ime, through societies, their contacts and metamorphoses, along path-ways that seem most perilous, Let us labour to demonstrate how we musrbecome aware of ourselves, in order to perfect our thousht and to ex-press it better.

NotesMauss's notes have been correcred and elahorated by Ben Brewsrer, in hrs rranslation ofMauss's rssays, Socnlogy and Psycbology (1979: Rourtedge and Kegan paul, London),which we have largcly fol lowed in our presentation of the notcs here.

L Two lheses of rhe Ecole de5 Hautes Etudes have already touched upon nroblens ofrhis narure: Charles le (joeu(, Le Cuke de la ginirutnn az Glriaie (voi. c., ot theBibliothique de I'Ecole des Hautcs Etrldes, Sciences Rclitrcusfs)j and V. Larock, fsrdisul la Valeur sa.tie et la Valeur sotiale des noms de personnes dans les So.dtes infir-ieurcs (Paris 1932\.

2. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Milanges d'Ilistoire des Re ligions, fretace, 1908.3. On the respective dates of the dif ferenr crvrhzaoons whrch have occupied this area of

the'basket people', the cl i f f dwellers' , rhe people of rhe rurns ol the .mesa,and f inal lyof the'pueblo'(of square and circular shape), a good exposit ion of l ikely recent ny_potheses is to bc found in F. H. H. Roberts, .The Village of the grear Kivas on the ZuijReservatron', Bul let in of American Erhnology, No. I I l , 1932, Vashrngron, p. 23 / lAlso, by the same author, 'Early pueblo Rurns', Bul letn of Amencan Eti ' ,olog, , t9J0,No. 90, p.9.

4, Cushing, Frank Hamilton 0E96), ,O'rt l ines of Zui i Crcatron Mvths,.I l tb AxnualRepott ol the Eureau ol Amencan Ethnology to tbe Secretary of the Smthsoman In-st, tutnn, 1891-2, Washrngron, D.C., pp. i7t_2.

5. See also C. D^'1,/ , lot iude (Paris 1922); Mauss, .Essar sut le Don., Anft ic Socrolo_gQue, 1923, where I was not able to cmphasrse, becausc rt wls oursrdc my subyect, tnefact of the'person' (pprronze), his r ighrs. dunes and relrgrous pow..r, no. th. ru.."r-ston ot names, etc. Neithcr Davy nor I were able eirher to insisr on the fact that rhpotlatch not only comptises'exchanges'of men and women, rnherrtances, conrracrs,properry, ritual services, and first, especially, dances and initiations _ but als,r. ..st"trctrances, sraies of possession by the eternal and reincarnare spirits. L.uerything, et)enua| and cofiflicts, tahes lthce only betueen the beaters of these hercditary ti es, uboucarnate tbese souls.

5. Boas,'Ethnology of the Kwakiutl', 3ith Annual Repoft of the tsureau of AnertcanEthnology. |e I I- | 4, V)ash'nt ion, I e2 t, p. 4I L

7. Boas, Franz (t 92 1 ), 'Erhnography of the (wakiut l based on drt. col lc(d by GeorgeH\tnt, 3sth Annxal Repo/t of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Seoetary o7the Smithsonta, Institt tion, 191J-14, e 823

8. Thc lrcst gencral cxposi ian af Eoes is ro bc lound rn .The Socral Organtrarron and rh.Secret Societi.s of th Kwakiutl Indians', Repott of the lJ.S. Uatioii iusern, tt9S,p.396lf. See also oaces 46j, 50j. and 6j8.9 Thc last rhun., op.n. to reucal if not his whole face, at lcast in any casc his mourn,

and most frequently his cycs and mouth. (Sce Boas article cited in Note 6, p.62g, fig.195)10, See Boas artrcle, Note 6. oo.792-gClIf . P,.Ra_din. 'The Vrnnebago frf te' , lTth Annuat Repo ol tbe B*eau ol AmctrcanEthnology, Vt246, Eives rhc namer of rhc Buffalo clan and in the followinq oaees rnose

of the other clans. Note especially rhe disrribution of the 6rst four t" ,,r'iir!"l_* r.,men, and rhose for womcn. See also othet lists, daring from J.O. Dorscy,s worl.

A category of the humut mind zl

24

12.I l .

14.

15.

15.

17.

19.

M Mauss

Notc also the same fact, set out drffcrently, rn Radrn, The wrnnehago Trrbe'. F - lc4P. Radrn, Craslrn6 Thundet, The Autobut1r;phy ol an Amza

Categoly ef the person in Mauss )7L

Th. cat.go.y of the person:Mauss's la st essay

N. J. Allen

r ' freaolng oI

- I he Person, as I shal l cal l i t , can st imulate explorat ion of part icular cul-tures in all sorts of ways, and the more the better. However, there is alsomuch room for reflection sirrply on the purpose of Mauss's paper as hesaw i t and on i ts place within his thought. As i t stands, i t has a com-pressed and allusivc quality that accounts for part of its ch,rrnt, but at thesame t ime moves i t away from most academic prose in the direct ion of6ne fiterature, almost poetry (cf. Dumont 1972 18). The full nreanrngscarcely emerges unless it is read in the l ight of the rest of his work.lConversely, the essay clari l ies, almost epitomizes, a l ifetirne's thinking byone of the great minds of social anthropologv. Although there have becna number of atrempts to express what is essential in Mauss's contributioltro the subiect. none of them takes ?-bg Person as starting point 2

I shall not considcr the gcneral theoretrcal prohlcms of assessing sonle-one's'thouplht', but regarding l\ ' lauss specifically it needs to be said tharmuch of h is ear ly work was publrshed io int ly * ' i th other members of theAnne school. The diff icult problcm of isolating his own contributionwill be touchcd on only in passing. tndeed beyond a ccrtain point such aseparation woLrld be meaningless, as is clear from the imPortant sum-mary of h is academic act iv i ty (1979), rvhich he prepared (* ' i thout fa lsemodesty) in connection with his candidature for thc Coll ige dc France.

The structrtre o( The Person ts clear. Apart from thc introduction andconclusion, the paper consists of an ethnographic section dealing withtribal societies and a historical section dealing with Europe, the latterbeing introduced by the brief paragraphs on the ancient oriental civil isa-tions. The relarionship between the iwo main sections is frankly evolu-

tionary: tribal societies observed and described within the last cenruryare adduced as representing a rype of sociery which preceded the Greco-Roman and the other historical civilisations. Thus I begin by consideringMauss's evolutionism, an aspect of his thought which is often drsmrssedas outmoded even by people who admire and use other aspects of hiswork. He himself was of course aware of conrrary trends in ihe subiect.but refused to ioin in the 'scalp dance'over the collapse o[ evolutronrsm(27 lll 287).

The label 'evolutionist' is an unhappy one since it covers such a varreryof positions. Surprisingly often, it is stil l understood as connotins thespeculations, dogmatism and complacency of nineteenth-centu.,,h.n.rists with their now wholly discarded notions of .primitive promiscuiry,,'primitive matriarchy' and the like. perhaps it would be berter ro talkrather of Mauss's world-historical awareness, i.e., his habit of assessingparticular cultures or social phenomena against the history of humanrryas a whole. Such assessments mof society ranging rrom o.i-,,."';':,';'::'.il:::TilJ;H'J:'."-:f::background to Mauss's work. ln Tbe person, as often, the typology islargely implicit, but even here his assumptions are apparenr in ihe threeuses of the word 'primitive'in the tribal half of rhe essay. Sometimes heis^exnlicit. 'One can classify societies into four great groups'. he wntes rn1920 (lll 580), and goes on to of{er a straightforward evolutionary ry-pology of political structures. ln the simplest rype (segmentary or poly-segmentary), the whole sociery is divided into totemic clans, and centralauthority is non-existent.

In most contexts, however, Mauss emphatically rejected the notion ofan undifferentiated tribal stage in human hisrory. In his lnaugural Lec-ture_ (02 ll 231-21, and repeatedly rhereafrer (e.g., .l I l l 2JJ;, -he consis_tently presented Austraiian aboriginal societies as the most primitive thatwere accessible to history or ethnography (as distinct from prehisrorrcarchaeology). Unfortunately the even more primitive Tasmanians (Aurig-nacians, as he sometimes called them

- M 26,174J had been destroyedt-oo soon to count as accessible, and it was only the Australians, as sur-:l-.r^t:':l lh. P"laeolithic age, who could properly be rermed primrtrve(e.9. , 23 I I I28 ) ..-Yt,1".":r one thinl

28 N.l. Allen

to represent to oneself schematically the 6rst human groupings from whichthe others have originated' (09 I420). Although he rook it as plausiblethat primitivity in certain respects should be accompanied by primitivityin others (i!tid. 427), he was quite clear that the hisrory of particdlarsocieties did not necessarily follow the unilineal schemata one can con-struct for humanity as a whole (01 Ill 1-52,05 I 164). Moreover afier theFirst riVar he came to realise that in so vast a 6eld premature systemaiis.ation was unprofitable (33 lll 438), and he warned the fieldworker agarnstsearching for the primitive (M 165). ln any case rudimentary forms werenot necessarily easy to understand: they had their own type of complex-iry resulting from the mutual inrerpenetration of elements and meaningswhich would be distinct in more evolved forms (09 | 396,34 II 149, M168 ) .

Like his uncle Durkheim, Mauss saw the study of the primitive as cen-tral to the sociological enterprise. ln 1909, in the inroduction to histhesis on prayer (which concentrated on the Australians), he put the mat-ter clearly: 'l believe that in sociology the study of primitive forms foznesfrustes) is, and will long remain, more interesting and more urgent, venfor the understanding of contemporary phenomena, than the study of theforms that immediately preceded the latter. It is not always the phenom-ena closest in time that are the profound causes of rhe phenomena we arefamiliar with' (09 | 366).lt is true that later (possibly under the influenceof Granet), Mauss came to think that the pre-war Annde had neglectedthe older literate civilizations and overdone the primitive lZ7 lll 184,295); but this was a mafter of emphasis.

ln Tbe Person Mauss undertakes to lead us 'from Australia to ourEuropean societies', but in fact he starts not with Australia but with the'far from primitive'North American Indians. The main reason is proba-bly that the relevant Australian phenomena ar more summary and lessclear-cut (moins nsa 06 II 138) - he often stressed the advantage of study-ing a social phenomenon in a society exemplifying it in an exreme form.Perhaps he also wanted to starr with a sociery that used masks, since it isthe Latin 'persona equals mask' which bridges the two halves of the es-say, and its derivative, personne, which is the key word in the tide. Isuspect too that he had a particular affection for the Zuii. They wereprominent in 1903 in PC, which (excluding book reviews) was his firstsubstantial venture into tribal ethnographic materials, and he was stil llecturing on the same people in 1940 (tl 258). Moreover he particularlyadmired Cushing (a'profound observer and sociologue gdnial 27 lll 185)'who had anticipated some of the ideas in PC (04 It 31 I ). Whatever rhe

Category of the person in LIauss Dreasons, rhe implicarion of his ordering of the paper is that so far as thecategory of the person is concerned, rh; primiJv;es;;i ,r,."irr,r",,"",in technology.and other respects makes litti. dif;;;. ;

"-nrr, "o_lr:Iirnl,':n all the tribal peoples ,mentioned (N,r.th Arne.i."i, p".iti.,African) share a similar notion or rhe rrerson.

If we ask what exacdy is the notion rhar rs supposed to h.rvc evolvedin th transition (rom tribal life to Mauss,s ."ir.rnporrr" i.rrup., *"meet-first a terminological problem that .".r,"",i/.[,., in'"l,,n.ooot,

ogy. We have little alternative but ro analyse alien.ultu.., in uof"t,ut".ydeveloped in our own, but the result i, th"t t.rm, f;;;;;;; ';;"-.".l ;1me

srstemalrcal ly ambrguous. Words hke .1"* ' . . . . t ig,Jnf o, . r , ,n.snrp may rnean (r) what they are ordinar i ly raken ro mean rn Fnglrsh. ( i i )the nearest equiyalcnt in some a,tl":::.::l:l; t";; ;:;;Ji,;1,;:..J:::',:.,"#.:,:llxSi;l;1,_ ill:l:-::,",.-p""O rdea of rhe person (which we wrongly believe ro oelnnate), sometimes with its nearest equivalent in arl,u..r"ra|nor. in rpr..or time (Zuni, Rome), and sometimes with the d..pe.,

_"i. ,i""r.n.",concept that gives the essay its unity. Ir ir unrortunr,.'rt "i ' ir,. ..""0* ,,left to make the distinctions himself, but. a",. c..",1, .ir.ir, *.argument. Modern society has a

'i-bar so.i.tres i"u;;; h"; ;;;.'.a;:,ti"::il",ll:ii: li.Hlffi;:l

,.rr. iii that has evotved from "".

," *.',J.., lii'*,,i'.""r*Mauss was naturally aware of these distinctions: .Our rnusic rs onryone music, and yer there exisr5 rornething *hich merirs ih;""i.

., ,,v"

li:,:1t!:.ii;ii:,",::i,;,,JLffJ.;:*r: j::,::* jlx*,,*lJetim,inav de6nitions, both in his methodological ,",r_.",rloiii,

,*_o, and in his empirical studies {e.g., Saoifce 99 | 205, MagicO4 SA 15,ftayer 09 | 414), where rhev arrl;.o,a nreiuaicing ;;;il;;"il:JH lill.'itlll;If .:*iffi :;

ff***ff*ffffi

r l

l

lisvq* the

""'"#;;#;'.rl'j':"'-'1 llw' whilc mgrate (M t6t)

los ot a society. Nevertfisle5s 1y. a"n

N.J. Allcn Category of the Person in Mauss . t l

criticised the philosopher's insufficient sensitivity to world history, andespecially his tendency to abstract an idea from its related social institu'dons and milieu. For instance, Lvy-Bruhl was perfecdy correct in notingthat many more or less tribal societies identified an individual's namewith his soul, but this was merely to describe the facts. 'A sociologist ofthe strict obedience'- Mauss means a true Durkheimian - would under'stand the belief by showing its foundation in social organisation (23-9II 125-35). Vhat Lvy-Bruhl saw as a problem in primitive cognition, atopic for psychological and philosophical consideration, Mauss saw asone social phenomenon among others, as something to bc related to otheraspects of the life of members of societies. He even went so far as tosuggest (ibid. 128) that a complete anthropology could replace philoso-phy'since it would comprehend Precisely that history of the human mindthat philosophy takes for granted'. It is this aspect of Mauss's positionthat explains the brevity of his remarks on lndia. The ancient metaphy-sicians invented sophisticated notions of the Person closer in character tomodern European ideas than to tribal ones, and these even enioyed con-siderable currency through religious teaching and writing. But they didnot come to dominate droit et morale; they were submerged within theencompassing ideology of caste.

The main purpose of the essay, then, is to establish a base-line notionof the person obtaining in tribal society - let us call this elementary (ormthe persoanage - and then to link it to contemporary notions of theperson. Being embedded in beliefs and institutions of various kinds, theconcept of the person is not the sort of entity that is immediately acces-sible. 'Just as the Iinguist must recover beneath the Ialse transcriptions ofan alphabet the true sounds (phonimes) that wcre pronounced, so be-neath the information of the best of the natives, Oceanian or Anerican,the ethnographer must recover the deep phenomcna, the ones which arealmost unconscious, since they exist only in the collective tradition. It isthese real phenomena, these croses [i.e. Durkheimian social factsJ tharwe shall try to reach through the documentation' i.02 lll 3591. The briefsketches of the tribes in The Person are miniature synchronic analyses,but since Mauss's style is suggestive rather than systemaiic I try below tosummarise and 6ll out the picture he presents.

l. The personnage is a member of a bounded tribal society. Whilerecognising that in practice an thnographer might find it extremelyproblematic to identify such a social entity (M 17), Mauss thercand elsewhere offered definitions of a sociery. The essence is a def-

.10

soecifv thar the essay concerns ssentislly the concept of the individual

,r"rrooor",1 by or expressed in a society's dorninant ualue sy.stetn or

'irrtii"])i i"rrnr"ri l tt. e nrphasis is on the public and institutionalJornrin, , s;crrty's theories oI the biological' psychologic:tl and

meta-

Itrur,."in",ur..ri ,n"nk,nd are relevant t'nly in to 1ar as they.a(tect drot'rr'^n*1". Untlersrood as I have delined it, the category of the person ts

necessar i lyreaI isedinsomeform,however indist inct ' inanysocretywor-;;;;;;;. '""... tt could onlv be whollv absent in a 'societv" presumablv

ore-human, whtch lacked value" and inst i tut i r rns '"'t, ';;;;; ;. obi..te,l th"t the formularton I offer lavs the emphasis roo

ru.h .in ,t. ,uiiology and on the ethnograPhic half of the essay' too

littl. on th. philosophy and the European history There are several an-

,*.rr . ,f itl ift. piilosophical language is in pan a holdover from Dur-

lfrii-;, "-r*1.

to establish "n "tadtmic

niche for socrology' to found a

discipline combining the emprrtcism of the natural sciences with the pro-

i"".a''t "f

philosopiy The list of categories was probably little more

,irrr-I .*"-i.", and suggestive device for organising the division of

;;;"; ;;;;; -..b."

oilh' Annfe school As for the philosophers'

il;;;; th.ir plac. in the essav mainlv because thev articulate the con-

cepts of the person that were expressed in solietY i-".t-t-"-:l:t^:t""--oJr"n.ourly'*i,tt them, tbat is' in the sectarian movementsr

or in the

;;:j;;;,

I'l 3Z N J. Alleninite group with a sense of attachment to a tract of territory and ashared'const i tur ion'(10l t t 377J.The group wi l l be large enoughto contain at least two subgroups and several gnerations' and itssense of wholeness and distinctness from others wil l generally beexpressed in a name, a belief in common origin and an aspirationto internal harrnony (M t 15, 34 I I I 306-7,314-15). Many tr ibalsel[appellations mean something l ike 'man' or 'human', outsidersbeing by implication non-man and a fortiori not pe6o 48es.The tribe is divided into segments which may cross-cut each other(cfans, age-sets, sections, etc. - 3l l l l l l f f). The prototyPical pel-sonnage for Mauss would seem to be a member of a totemic clan.Totemism is the commonest religious system in societies where so-cial organisation is based on clans, though it is not possible to saywhether all societies have passed through a totemic phase. One shouldnot talk of tolerDism unless there is a theriomorphic cult practisedbv clans. each of which bears an animal namet or less commonly,the name of some other natural species (05-6 I 163, 40). Mauss'slater definit ions also mention a belief in community of substancebetween the natural species and the members of the clan (or othersocial unit) such that both are of the same nature and possess thesame vir tues (M |31,176).The totemic group possesses a 6xed stock of names (prenoms) andsoufs, one ktr each personnage. This is another sense in which thesociety is closed or bounded.The bearer of a name at any time is regarded as thc reincarnationof the original mythical bearer. {Points 3 and 4 seem to be at thevery centre of Mauss's concePt.)The name may have a meaning relating to the clan's ancestral totemand the associated mythological narratives. These narratives wil l beacted out at init iation ceremonies (M 178).A name is commonly taken over from a grandfather or great-great-grandfather, tbough tbere are otber possibil i t ies (Kwakiutl, Win-nebago), including divination (as in Dahomey M 185)The bearer of a name has the right and duty at ritual Satherings torepresent the original bearer and/or to be possessed by his spirit 'This may involve wearing the ancesral mask. Horvever' tbe iden-tity of performer and ancestor can be symbolised in other ways,and there is no difference in principle berween enduring masks andbody paintings created afresh for each ritual according to a tradi-tional pattern; anyway masks are often burnt after one rrse (M 82).

Category of the person in Mduss

The ritual regularly involves dancing, an art often learned at initi-ar ion (M I8l ) .

8.

l

2.

3.

7.

5.

o.

9. Members of a clan are not necessarily personnages. This may bebecause they have had to retire owing to old age or because theyare female or too young, lt would seem that some clan membersotherwise qualif ied could not be personnages because there wouldnot be enough names to go round (unless there were some doublinsup). This demographic dif6culty seems to be the aspect of the paperthat most needs touching up, even in a 'clay model; for a full study.Nor is it clear whether people who are not perconnages are ,non_persons'in the same sense as the outsiders to the society or as Ro_man slaves. I suppose not, and this implies the possibil i ty of gra-dations of personhood.

Despite such uncertainties, one can sum up Mauss's vision as follows:a bounded society consisting of totemic clans, each clan havins a fixedstock of names transmitted by recognised procedures, the bearers of aname being reincarnations of their predecessors back to mythical t imesand dancing our the facr ar riruals.

The idea is one that he had been developing for a very long time. Al-ready in 1902 (l 490) he was desoibing magico-religious biirh amongthe Australian Arunta as a'truly elementary ph.no-.non, explanatoryof numerous customs', for instance of the frequent practice of recognrs-ing a child as some particular ancestor and grving him the latter,s name.By 1905 (l l 138) the essenrials were well esrablished:

There exisrs ar enormous group of societics, Negro, Malayo_ polynesra n,Amerindian (Sioux, Algonquin, Iroquois, pueblo, North_wesrern), iskimo,Ausrralian, where rhe system of reincarnarion of rhe deceased and inheri-tance of rhe namc within rhe family or clan is the rule. The individual isborn with his name and his social functions. ... The number of individu-als, names, souls and roles is l imited in the clan, and the l ine of the cran rsmerely a collection (ensemble) of rebirths and deaths of individuals whoare always the same.

f nls passage _conta ins most of rhe elements o[ the personnage, though itooes,not explrc i t ly ment ion r i ruals, dancing. masks, myth or the way in

which namrs characrcrrstically skip one or three generations. Many ref_crences to the subiect appear about this time. For instance from 1910 onemlSht nore the rrearmenr of alrernating generations among pacific coasttribes (fl l 8l). and the Vergil ian Tu Marcellus

"ri, quot.i in a revrewqeal ing wirh West Afr ica ( l l l80). Larer, in l925 when reviewing Trob-

, l l

j

34 N.l. 'Allen

riand and Ashanti materials (ll l l.l1-.1), Mauss refers ro the complex ofideas as morc widespread than had been apparent.

The idea of a sociological approach to the categories of the philoso'phers has an equally long history. It is foreshadowed in 1903 (ll 88), andseveral of the categories, though not the person, are treated together assuch in 1908 t l ZBff , which bui lds on 1,4 5A I I l - 2) , The locus cl . rssicusis no doubt f)urkheim's treatment of the theory of knowledge in 1912 inEF(12-26, 627ffl, brr although this u'ork discusses the category of theperxmnaliti with reference to Australian ideas of the soul, it fails to fol-low up N{auss's central observation about the finite stock of names andsouls,

As for the later transformations of the persontdge, a few hints appearin early book reviews, In 1905 Mauss noted an interesting treatnrent ofthe contrast betwecn the egrlitarian individualism characteristic of Chris-tianity and thc aristocratic outlook of the Greek philosophers (ll 647),while in 1907 he touches on the signi6cance of Jewish sects around thet ime ofJesus in the development of ideas about the indiv idual and hisconscience ( l l 589). ln i920 ( l l l 616-18) he talks more general ly of theproselytising religions as evolving and spreading the notion of hum.rnitvas everywhere identical; this was the context in which'the notion of theindividual disengaged itself from the social matrix and man gilinedawarness of himself '. ln 1921, building on Fauconnet, he spoke brieflyof the development of the notion of liberty, referring to rhe history ofRoman law, to Christian notions of original sin, to 'the appearance ofthe individual conscience

36 N l Allen

also be cited. In Greece the work was exrracted from the poet by hisMuse, while often elsewhere it is revcaled to him by spirits (M 190); theactive agent is external like the soul reincarnated in the tribal.

This brings us back to the Kwakiud masquerade, with its componentsof theatre, ballet and ecsrasv. Apart from his personal interest in the arts{Cazeneuve 1958b: 9), Mauss attached great academic importance toaesthetic phenomena, for example, in the Manual, thinking that, togetherwith demography and human geography, linguistics and material cttl-ture, the subiect had been unduly neglected by the pre-war Ann6e (27 lll190//). One might distinguish three aspects to the importance of the arts'The pyschobiological effects of collective rhythmic movcmeDt and vocal-ization attracted his attention early on (03 II 251,393), for they helpedto explain belief in the effectiveness of prayer and oral ritual (04 I 548,21 ll 122).'they were the sort of phenomenon that needed to be includedin the study of the whole man (24 SA 305), for human sociology wasonly a component of anthropology, thar is, human biology (34 III 3l

-1)Secondly, the ethnographer should be particularly sensitive to the rzix'ture of the arts (M t71), to the way in which dance may be associatedwith drama, singing, chanting, music, the decoration of the body or ofobjects, even with that proto-architecture recognisable in the preparationof a clearing for an Australian initiation (M 86). Above all, Mauss wasfascinated by the context in which all these activities rypically take place,i.e., the ftte or rirual gathering, which represented for him the acme bothof the sacred and the social.

Consider his well-known contrast between the secular, dispersed Iife-sryle o{ rhe Eskimos in summer, and the concentrated communal life ofthe winter setdement. The laner is passed, 'one could almost say, in astate of continuous religious exaltation . . . a sort of prolonged fAte'. So-cial life is marked with a sort of holiness and is collective in the highestdegree. The heightened sense of the oneness of the community sometimesembraces the ancestors, of all generations since mythical times, who aresummoned to become incarnate in thcir living namesakes and to takepart in the exchange of gifts (05 SA 444-7).lt was this concept of thefhte that enabledhim (wirh Hubert) to write of 'the ideDtity of the sacredand the social' (est conEu comme sacft rout ce qut' Pour le Sroupe et sesmembres, qualifie la sociit - 08 | 16-171.

Of all f^tes the rype that interested him most was the North-WestAmerindian potlatch with its competitive gift exchange and its numerousfunctionsr 'such a svncretism of social phenomena is, in our opinion'unique in the history of human societies' (10 III 33)' This led to his best-

caregory of tbe person in Mauss i7

known book, Tbe Gift,